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Speaking in Manhattan at the Council on Foreign Relations, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew urged political and civic leaders to resist authoritarian temptations and rediscover the role of faith in sustaining democracy and healing division.
The Ecumenical Patriarch described his institution and the Council as “fundamentally different” but bound by common traits: longevity, global perspective, and independence from state power. “The United Nations is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year,” he said. “In these September days when the U.N. brings together the political leadership of our planet, we feel a special responsibility to bring a religious perspective to the global conversation.”
He organized his remarks around three themes: the American experiment, the forces driving division, and the path to reconciliation.
Democracy, Born of a Judeo-Christian Consciousness
His All-Holiness hailed the American founding documents — the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — as not merely national charters but world-changing texts. “They created a new form of self-government with built-in safeguards against the flaws that had brought down prior experiments,” he said.
Those safeguards, he argued, were rooted in the founders’ immersion in the Judeo-Christian tradition and its teachings about human nature. “Human beings are both fallen and fallible — the tale of Adam and Eve,” he said. This acknowledgment, he continued, led to a system of checks and balances: government constrained by divided powers, and citizens safeguarded by rights to speech, religion, press, and assembly.
The Ecumenical Patriarch warned that the erosion of these checks—and the rise of charismatic authoritarian figures—now threatens democracies around the globe. Quoting Lord Acton, he added pointedly: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Nationalism as a Poison
The second portion of his address turned to nationalism, which he described as both unifying and dangerously divisive. Benign nationalism, he said, is “a set of values that could unite different groups of people in a geographic area under a common banner.” But malignant nationalism, he warned, “puts one tribe above all others and divides us.”
The Orthodox Church itself, he acknowledged, has not been immune. A pan-Orthodox council in 1872 condemned “phyletism” — the organization of church life along ethnic lines—as a heresy. Yet, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew lamented, “this heretical behavior lives on,” most vividly in the Moscow Patriarchate’s endorsement of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The Orthodox Church of Russia has given its ringing endorsement to the invasion of Ukraine and the murder of fellow Orthodox Christians,” he said, denouncing the church’s embrace of the imperial doctrine of Rússkiy Mir. In 2019, he granted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church independence from Moscow, framing it as the realization of “the freedom of conscience they desired.”
The Ecumenical Patriarch also spoke of the war in Gaza and the plight of dwindling Christian communities there, condemning both Hamas’s October 7th attacks and settler violence in the West Bank. “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,” he said.
Divisions at Every Level
Beyond geopolitics, the Ecumenical Patriarch warned of polarization closer to home: families, communities, and workplaces splintered by political identity, wealth disparities, and social media. “Algorithms … feed us a steady diet of those with like minds, deepening our divide with those who may be of a different mind,” he said.
He condemned the phenomenon he called “digital public execution,” describing cancel culture as a form of mob justice that corrodes empathy and conversation.
Against these currents, he offered the same remedy the founders had relied on: faith. Quoting George Washington’s Farewell Address and Dwight Eisenhower’s Naval Academy speech, he reminded listeners that American leaders have long understood religion as indispensable to democratic life.
“Without faith, we have no anchor. We are adrift,” he said. The alternative, he warned, is nihilism: “not so much a belief in nothing, as it is a chaotic unleashing so that we become capable of anything.”
A Return to Faith
Despite bleak diagnoses, the Patriarch pointed to hopeful signs: growth among Catholic immigrants in the United States, a surge of converts to Orthodoxy, renewed Jewish engagement after the 2023 attacks in Israel, and parents pushing back against social media’s grip on children.
“The search for meaning is a fundamental human instinct,” he said. “Not to find meaning in one’s life is a tragedy—an avoidable tragedy.”
Closing his address, he invoked the words of Christ: “He that is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone.” The task ahead, he suggested, is to recover humility, forgiveness, and a shared commitment to human dignity.
“May God bless us all with an abiding faith and a continuing sense of wonder at the miracle of life that surrounds us,” he said, to applause in the Council’s chamber.
Photo by Archons/Orthodox Observer/J. Mindala
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