Down a small, narrow alleyway deep within the interior neighborhoods of Istanbul, Turkey, is the residence of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, of Constantinople, and spiritual leader to the world's 350 million Orthodox Christians. Unlike the Pope or the Dalai Lama, however, Bartholomew receives considerably less press coverage and media attention outside countries and communities where Orthodox Christianity is the majority. As a Christian leader living in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, most Turkish citizens do not even know of his existence, or his office. Despite the low profile, Bartholomew is considered one of the most progressive and forward-thinking religious leaders of our time, championing environmental awareness, drug awareness, sex education and interreligious dialogue.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate remains something of an enigma in our present world. Its residence is in Istanbul, though almost every Orthodox Christian still calls it Constantinople, not so much in defiance of present politics, but in nostalgic memory that harkens back to a time when the city and nearly the entire boundary of present-day Turkey and Greece formed the core of Christian Byzantium, the successor to the Roman Empire. The patriarchs were the spiritual leaders of the Eastern, or "Greek," Church, and essentially served as "popes" of the East.
The Patriarchate can trace its lineage back to St. Andrew the Apostle, and has remained in Constantinople up to the present day, long after the Turkish conquest of Byzantium in 1453. Conditions have certainly been rough at times, especially during periods of nationalist tension between Greece and Turkey. The Greek community of Istanbul now numbers around 3,500, a dwindling shadow of what was once 150,000 strong at the turn of the 20th century. The Great Church of Hagia Sophia, one of the greatest churches and architectural masterpieces in history, was first converted into a mosque and then into a museum.
Like the situation of the Dalai Lama and Tibet with the Chinese government, religious minorities in Turkey have certainly been victim of statewide stifling of religious and linguistic pluralism in recent times. The famed Greek Orthodox theological school of Halki has remained closed since 1971 by the Turkish government to combat what it believes to be "anti-Turkish rhetoric" and "religious propaganda." In order to enter the Patriarchal Residence, one must walk through a metal detector because of numerous bomb scares by Muslim zealots and Turkish nationalists over the years. Unlike the Dalai Lama who is forced into exile, the Patriarchate remains in Constantinople under less strict but equally difficult positions.
However, these conditions, Bartholomew says, give him the resolve to encourage interreligious dialogue with his fellow Turkish Muslim neighbors and to transform his church from a specifically Greek Church into a "global" institution. Since his inauguration to the ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople in 1991, Bartholomew has been an outspoken critic of environmental abuse, especially throughout Eastern Europe, and has worked closely with scientists, ecologists and fellow theologians making environmental concerns a central policy of political and religious concern. He has declared polluting to be a "sin" against creation and "a sacrilege" of the duties given to mankind to protect earth and nature.
Environmental destruction also takes place within our own bodies, he says. Whether we commit physical acts of self-inflicted violence in the form of drug abuse or unprotected sex, or mental violence in the form of over-consumption and vainglorious narcissism, we pollute our bodies as much as our rivers, oceans, forests and air. In an address given in Venice in 2002 before signing a dual declaration for environmental awareness with then Pope John Paul II, the Patriarch argued, "We are to practice a voluntary self-limitation in our consumption of food and natural resources. Each of us is called to make the crucial distinction between what we want and what we need. Only through such self-denial, through our willingness sometimes to forgo and to say, "No" or "Enough" will we rediscover our true human place in the universe. … Greed and avarice render the world opaque, turning all things to dust and ashes. Generosity and unselfishness render the world transparent, turning all things into a sacrament of loving communion - communion between human beings with one another, communion between human beings and God. This need for an ascetic spirit can be summed up in a single key word: sacrifice. This exactly is the missing dimension in our environmental ethos and ecological action."
Self-indulgence also comes in the form of religious fundamentalism and xenophobia. His words on environmental awareness belies parallel references to the "pollution of religion" in the form of "selfish" and "unscrupulous" theologians and demagogues of all faiths, dumping what he calls "religious waste" into our churches, mosques and synagogues. Much religious xenophobia in the world he says stems from historical grievances and unresolved transgressions.
The Patriarchate of Constantinople is no stranger to such conflicts, as it stands as the most enduring symbol of Greece's Byzantine past, in what was once the capital of a great multiethnic, multilinguistic empire that at one point stretched from Spain to Syria. In 1994, the Patriarch spearheaded, along with other major religious leaders of Turkey and Greece, what has become known as the Bosphoros Declaration, denouncing all forms of religious fundamentalism that embraces violence, xenophobia, warfare and the physical harm of others, especially toward women and children. Directly influenced by religious tension in the Balkans, the Middle East and in former areas of the Soviet Union, Bartholomew stood side by side with his Muslim and Jewish colleagues in Turkey, calling for an end to all violence perpetrated in the name of God, declaring that "a crime committed in the name of religion is a crime against religion."
The Patriarch's efforts to embrace environmentalism on physical, moral, and spiritual grounds is part of his broader agenda to modernize his church and bring it out of its perceived distant and insular positions after centuries of foreign domination and self-imposed seclusion. With the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the rediscovery of religion and traditional values by society, Bartholomew's goals have been met with widespread acceptance from all sides of the political and religious spectrum. In trying to demonstrate that the Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church can come to symbolize a renewed Byzantine cosmopolitanism, Bartholomew is seeking to find common ground with his Christian and Muslim neighbors who share similar concerns for how their societies and communities will develop and cooperate in a globalizing and modernizing world.
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