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President Froman,

Esteemed Officers, Directors, and Members of the Council on Foreign Relations,

Your Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America,

Most Reverend Metropolitans and Right Reverend Bishops,

Dear Friends,

The Council on Foreign Relations, a most valuable and significant center of thought and dialogue in our world today, is an excellent venue to share our perspectives on global matters, and we are grateful for this opportunity. 

The Council on Foreign Relations and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church are fundamentally different organizations. You are decidedly secular and we are decidedly not. But we do have a few things in common – for example,

• We have both demonstrated longevity, in context: yours has existed for more than 100 years in the New World – ours has existed for 1700 years in the Old World;
• We are both headquartered in global cities that are cultural crossroads: New York speaks 800 languages and straddles 5 boroughs – Istanbul speaks 80 languages and straddles 2 continents; and finally, and most importantly by far,
• We are both non-state actors with global – you might say, ecumenical perspectives. 

The United Nations is celebrating its 80^th anniversary this year. In these September days when the UN brings together the political leadership of our planet, we feel a special responsibility to bring a religious perspective to the global conversation.

We will offer that perspective today on 3 topics: 

1. the American experiment, its Judeo-Christian influences, and its importance for the entire world;
2. the forces that are dividing us at all levels, from personal to international; and finally, 
3. our thoughts on the path to healing those divisions.

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Next July 4^th, Americans will celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And just 2 days ago, we marked the 238^th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution.

It is fair to say that these 2 documents and the Bill of Rights changed not just the 13 British colonies on this continent – they changed the world. They created a new form of self-government with built-in safeguards against the flaws that had brought down prior experiments in self-government in the West – from Greek democracy and the Roman republic in ancient times, to the Italian City-States, the Dutch republic, and Swiss cantons in medieval and early modern Europe.

What were these new safeguards? A layered system of checks and balances: 

• For the government: a division of power among three branches, each with unique and significant authority and the ability to check the other two branches … 
• And for the governed: freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition, among others.

Why did the founders create this intricate system, so replete with checks and balances?

They were – each of them, especially the leading figures of Adams, Madison, Jefferson, and Washington – students of, and participants in, the Judeo-Christian tradition and its teachings.

And one of the very first teachings of that tradition is that human beings are both fallen and fallible – the tale of Adam and Eve.

Now, however one takes the Genesis narrative, we can acknowledge two key lessons:

First, human beings are endowed by their Creator with free will.

And second, that free will allows us to choose between right and wrong, or good and evil. 

How else could Adam and Eve have defied God’s will?

How else could Cain have slain Abel?

These acts were performed by human will – the free will with which we are endowed by our Creator.

With free will, we could commit the greatest acts of selflessness, kindness, love, and even divinity.

But we could also commit the worst acts of selfishness and hate and the most heinous evils imaginable, as in the death camps of the so-called “Final Solution.” Since the fall of Adam and Eve, we remain imperfect creatures.

And here we return to the founding fathers, who, as noted, were steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition and painfully aware of our flawed and fallen nature. That understanding led them to create a system of checks and balances – as a safeguard, not a guarantee, against the imperfections of our nature. 

The founders knew that, no matter how brilliant or courageous or inspiring a political or religious or business leader or faction may be, they are all fallen, like the rest of us.

The American experiment has been a rousing success. It has taught the world that a society that recognizes the fact of our fallen nature, and builds a strong system of checks and balances around it, has the best chance for success.

Unfortunately, in recent decades, we’ve seen a global trend away from the wisdom of America’s founders, and toward charismatic, authoritarian leadership, along with the elimination, avoidance, or corruption of checks and balances – not just in government, but also in business, academia, and other sectors of society. 

Let us be clear: We speak here not of any particular person or government, but rather of a system of governance that has an almost unbroken record of disaster. And for an obvious reason: because we are flawed by nature, it is a mistake for any human being to have absolute power.

Without checks and balances, sooner or later the enterprise will end in disaster. In the familiar words of Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

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Now to our second topic: the forces that are dividing us at all levels, from personal to international.

During the Enlightenment, educated Western Europeans felt they had rid themselves of a kind of tribalism by rejecting the religiosity of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, which had seen devastating wars of religion. They ended up trading religion for nationalism, which has become an essential building block of modern society. 

But nationalism has two forms – the benign form was simply an idea, a set of values, that could unite different groups of people in a geographic area under a common banner. The malignant form of nationalism, however, puts one tribe above all others and divides us. It has been perhaps the most destructive force in human history, having killed more than 75 million human beings between 1914 and 1945 alone – and it continues to cost millions of lives to this day. 

A curious element of most nationalisms is the way they combine distant memories with new ideas. The process involves selective memory; and sadly in the case of Orthodox countries, nationalism has sometimes favored past periods of ethnic glory over the combined splendor of Orthodox civilization.

We lament this imbalance. In 1872, the pan-Orthodox Council of Constantinople condemned any attempt to organize the Church based on ethnic or racial groups rather than on territorial principles, saying, “We renounce, censure, and condemn phyletism, that is, racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds, and dissensions within the Church of Christ…”

But this heretical behavior lives on. The emphasis on national or ethnic heritage has had the effect of fragmenting our ecumenical family, as seen most vividly and brutally today in Russia and Ukraine. This illegitimate war is estimated already to have cost more than a million lives – a huge and completely unnecessary tragedy.

The tragedy also has a spiritual dimension: The Orthodox Church of Russia has given its ringing endorsement to the invasion of Ukraine and the murder of fellow Orthodox Christians by the Putin regime. It has done so in service to an outdated and outlandish imperial doctrine of Rússkiy Mir, which has been growing since the fall of Soviet Union. Indeed, if one maps the contours of the current Moscow Patriarchate over the silhouette of the former Soviet empire, you will quickly see a near convergence of the two. 

This is why our Ecumenical Patriarchate fulfilled the hope of the Ukrainian People to have their own Self-Governing, Autocephalous Church in 2019. Ukrainians longed for freedom of conscience during more than 7 decades of oppression under the Russian Soviet system, which re-established the Moscow Patriarchate in 1917 to use for its own purposes. After Stalin nearly destroyed every vestige of Orthodox Christianity in the USSR, he was forced to revive it in 1943, to face down the Nazi invaders. Sadly, though Communism fell, the Church of Russia continues to be an instrument of the state to this day.

Ukrainians, however, are no longer subject to a church that has compromised itself – they have the freedom of conscience they desired. 

We are also following events in the bloody conflict between Israel and the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah. 

It is an irony of history that both Gaza and the West Bank were ruled by the Eastern Roman Empire for hundreds of years, with a Christian majority until the Muslim conquest of the 7^th century. Today, Christians are a minority, with an estimated 20,000 in the West Bank and less than 1,000 in Gaza. 

We were horrified by the savage events of October 7, 2023, in Israel and we remain horrified by the continuing loss of life in Gaza. In the West Bank, we lament the July 7^th attack this year by Israeli settlers on the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh – the place to which Jesus withdrew before His Passion (John 11:54), and the last town in the West Bank populated entirely by Christians.

We look to the United States, Israel, the Arab countries, the European Union, and the United Nations to find a pathway to peace and prosperity for these two territories, for the sake of Christians, Jews, and Palestinians alike, and we will support such an effort in every way possible. 

But it is not just nations that are at each other’s throats. Far too many of us find ourselves, our families, our workplaces, and our communities deeply divided today – 

• by politics… 
• by an emphasis on differences in identity – whether of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, or ability… 
• by striking inequalities of wealth and opportunity… 
• and by the algorithms of social media, which feed us a steady diet of those with like minds, deepening our divide with those who may be of a different mind.

That is our third topic – what can we as individuals do to heal these divisions? 

We are here to provide a religious perspective on global issues, so it will not surprise you that we turn to faith for answers. What may surprise you is the degree to which American leaders have seen faith as fundamental to democracy and turned to faith for answers.

Let us begin with a question:

What supra-national institutions exist that can bind together massive numbers of people regardless of political party, race, gender, ethnicity, economic class, age, or education?  

Only religious institutions are capable of that task. 

And that, dear friends, is part of the challenge: In America, communities of faith have been declining in recent decades. Nearly 70 percent of Americans were members of a church or synagogue in the postwar era, but their number has declined sharply since 2000 – a 2020 Gallup poll, for example, found membership at just 47 percent. 

In his Farewell Address, published in Philadelphia 229 years ago today, George Washington did not mince words when it came to faith as the foundation of good government:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports… [the] firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”

Far from the isolated thoughts of one President, this belief has been constant since the founding – take, for example, the words of President Eisenhower to graduates at the Naval Academy in 1958:

“Basic to our democratic civilization are the principles and convictions that have bound us together as a nation. Among these are personal liberty, human rights, and the dignity of man. All these have their roots in a deeply held religious faith — in a belief in God.”

These leaders understood that, without faith – without belief in values that are transcendent… that inspire us with hope… that teach us to love one another… that understand our fallen nature and forgive our transgressions and offer a path to fulfillment – without faith, we have no anchor. We are adrift. We become overwhelmed by nihilism, which is not so much a belief in nothing, as it is a chaotic unleashing so that we become capable of anything.

And today with the internet, and social media in particular, we have a bottomless pit of “anythings” to believe in: the proliferation of conspiracy theories and copycat performances… self-help trends that change almost weekly… pornography… extremist sects and cults… get-rich-quick schemes… the cult of wealth… the cult of celebrity… drug and alcohol abuse… radical politics as a substitute for religion… and more.

Social media in particular has provided a shockingly effective tool for division – 

• through algorithms that reinforce our biases rather than encouraging the critical thinking which might question them, 
• by building hugely profitable applications that allow us to judge and attack one another from a distance, in a place divorced from empathy and honest conversation, and 
• by facilitating the formation of virtual mobs that attack and destroy individuals who dare to think, speak, or act differently – euphemistically called “cancel culture,” but perhaps more accurately described as “digital public execution.”

Clearly we have forgotten some of our most essential cultural and spiritual anchors.  

When a woman who committed adultery was sentenced to death by stoning, Jesus said to her accusers, “He that is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7)

How far have we fallen from, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”? (Matthew 22:39)

What happened to the admonition, “Judge not, that you not be judged…”? (Matthew 7:1)

We repeat: We are flawed by nature. It is not only governments and other organizations, but also we as individuals who require checks and balances – in the form of divine precepts, parables, commandments, and proverbs, as well as the human laws and systems of justice that complement the divine. 

These two trends have magnified our divisions greatly in the last 25 years: ubiquitous social media, capable of manipulating our emotions – combined with the extensive loss of faith in a transcendent God, which has bound human societies for thousands of years.

Thankfully, there is cause for hope. In recent years, small rays of light have begun to pierce the darkness and, by the grace of God, may in time illuminate a path toward restoring balance and unity in human society. For example,

• The Catholic church in the US has gained almost 3 million followers since 2010, largely the result of immigration, while a recent Harvard study found a surge in the percentage of young people identifying as Catholic;
• A survey of Orthodox churches in the United States reported a 78 percent rise in converts from 2019 to 2022;
• Our Jewish brethren in the United States have also experienced a surge in engagement with their faith and community, especially in the wake of the 2023 terrorist attack; and finally,
• A rebellion against the pernicious effects of social media and inappropriate content has begun in the US and Europe, with parents calling for greater control over the content available to their minor children, and schools prohibiting smart phones in classrooms; 

There is much talk today about the emptiness and malaise felt by younger generations. The search for meaning is a fundamental human instinct, and not to find meaning in one’s life is a tragedy – an avoidable tragedy. We pray that young people will join this emerging “return to faith” in ever greater numbers – for their good and the good of our governments and our globally interconnected society. 

May God bless us all with an abiding faith and a continuing sense of wonder at the miracle of life that surrounds us.

Thank you.

 

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photo: Ecumenical Patriarchate