Economics

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Calls to “Resist Europe’s secularization” made at Taizé youth meeting

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The Presbyterian Outlook

(ENI) — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I, a spiritual leader who represents Eastern Orthodox Christianity, has urged young Christians to resist secularization in Europe in a message to an ecumenical meeting that was greeted by global and regional leaders.

“After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe no longer recognizes the place for Christianity that history dedicated to it — it is as if Christianity were being expelled from the history of Europe,” said Bartholomeos I, the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The patriarch made his appeal in a message sent to a five-day European Youth Meeting, organized by France’s ecumenical Taizé Community in Poznan, Poland.

“We wish to recall here that the identity of Europe is primarily Christian and cannot be considered without this legacy,” he said in his message to the

December 29 – January 2 gathering. “The secularization of Europe here takes the form of a rejection of the God of history. Nonetheless, the mobilization of Christians throughout Europe is an important initiative recalling the Christian roots of this continent, its identity and its values.” Continue reading →

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Roundup of Green Patriarch videos: Biden, Reid and Coca-Cola

Going global with the Cola Bear

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(L to R) Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Coca-Cola Polar Bear, and Archbishop Demetrios

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Demetrios paid a visit to Coca-Cola world headquarters last week to meet with Muhtar Kent, president and chief executive officer of the company. It is a striking image here: Two hierarchs from the ancient see of Constantinople meeting with the mascot of a company that is the symbol par excellence of economic and cultural globalization.

One of the pleasant surprises in the Patriarch’s book “Encountering the Mystery” was his assertion that “the Orthodox Church is not opposed to an economic progress that serves humanity as a whole.” This is about 180 degrees from what you usually hear from Old World hierarchs, who so often condemn globalization and its chief architect, “the West.” In truth, there’s a bit of that in Bartholomew’s views, but more balance. Unfortunately, like other Orthodox hierarchs, he continues to view economic activity as a zero sum game — whoever gains does so by taking from someone else. There’s no real understanding of how wealth is created or how the market economy, despite its uneven benefits, is the most effective means of eliminating dire poverty. (See “Socialism Kills: The Human Cost of Delayed Economic Reform in India” by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar at the Cato Institute).

Case in point. In the year 2000, SCOBA issued the A Pastoral Letter on the Occasion of the Third Christian Millennium, a statement which acknowledged how the faithful suffered under communism but, in the next breath, said this:

We acknowledge that our capitalist system is no less predicated on purely materialist principles, which also do not engender faith in God. There is no place in the calculus of our economics to account for the “intangibles” of human existence. Reflect on how the simple accounting phrase “the bottom line” has shaped our whole culture. We use it to force the summarization of an analysis devoid of any externals or irrelevancies to the “heart of the matter.” This usually means the monetary outcome.

This is a deplorable bit of moral relativizing, on the economic plane, which trivializes the great catastrophe that afflicted Orthodox Christian churches under the communists, and is blind to the ways that the bishops’ American flock — with its glittering, air-conditioned neo-Byzantine churches dotting the landscape — has flourished in a market economy. This is not incidental to the American Orthodox experience; the vast majority of Orthodox Christians who immigrated to this country did so in pursuit of the “American dream,” another way to say “economic liberty.” Continue reading →

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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: Unity in God’s Time

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From “Unity as Calling, Conversion and Mission,” the opening address of His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to the Plenary of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on Faith and Order event, “Called to be One Church” (Crete, Greece, October 7, 2009):

We should not be frustrated by our human limitations, which unfortunately determine our disagreements and divisions. Our ongoing and persistent pursuit of unity is a testimony to the fact that what we seek will occur in God’s time and not our own; it is, by the same token, the fruit of heavenly grace and divine kairos.

[ … ]

… genuine humility demands from all of us a sense of openness to the past and the future; in other words, much like the ancient god Janus, we are called to manifest respect for the time-tested ways of the past and regard for the heavenly city that we seek (cf. Heb. 13.14). This “turning” toward the past and the future is surely part and parcel of conversion.

[ … ]

… it is the preservation of creation as the proper way of worshipping the Creator and the promotion of tolerance and understanding among religions and peoples in our world. Working closely together on issues of ecological awareness and ecumenical dialogue is a crucial reflection of the “everlasting covenant” (verses 25-26), whereby Ezekiel’s God proclaims: “I will be their God and they shall be my people … forevermore” (verses 27-28). Continue reading →

Green Patriarch backs UN climate change framework

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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I weighs in on the Bangkok Climate Change conference where delegates were greeted with “stern pep talks”:

Istanbul, Turkey, 9/28/2009

In view of the international negotiations on climate change commencing in Bangkok, Thailand, and only two months before the crucial United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, we urge the international community to undertake courageous commitments for the prevention of the most severe consequences of global warming.

The accomplishment of a good agreement within the framework of the international negotiations in Copenhagen does not solely constitute a moral imperative for the conservation of God’s creation. It is also a route for economic and social sustainability. Taking action against climate change should not be understood as a financial burden, but as an important opportunity for a healthier planet, to the benefit of all humanity and particularly of those states whose economic development is lagging behind.

We pray for the achievement of the best possible international agreement during the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, so that the industrialised countries undertake generous commitments for a total reduction of the polluting greenhouse gas emissions by 40% until 2020, compared to the 1990 levels, as well as for the provision of important financial support to the developing countries.

The urgency of the situation and the progress of science and technology pave the way for a low-carbon global economy, the development of renewable energy sources and the aversion of further deforestation. We all need to collaborate, in order to make sure that our children will be able to enjoy the goods of the earth, which we bequeath to them. We need to secure justice and love in all aspects of economic activity; profit and more specifically short-term profit making can not and should not constitute the sole incentive of our deeds, specifically when it undermines our common and God-given natural heritage.

Source: Order of St. Andrew the Apostle

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