Jad Ganem: Politicizing the Faith

 Arabic original here.

 

 Politicizing the Faith

An interview that Metropolitan Elpidophoros recently gave to a Greek newspaper demonstrates a striking paradox in church discourse when it comes to the relationship between the Church and politics. On the one hand, the metropolitan sharply criticizes the Russian Church, regarding it as employing Orthodoxy in the service of state interests and stating that the churches ties to "non-democratic organizations" harms Christianity in the long term. The paradox arises, however, when the discussion turns to his own role and the relationship between his archdiocese and the Greek government, since he explicitly states that his institutional duty is "serving Greece and national interests."

This discrepancy in standards raises a whole set of essential questions about the concept of "politicizing the faith" and who has the right to define the boundary between what belongs to the Church and what belongs to the nation. If using the faith to serve Russian politics is to be condemned, then how can "serving the national interests of Greece" be an institutional duty? Here lies a critical point: this discourse rejects employing religion for politics when others do it, but it excuses it when it comes from within the Greek-Constantinopolitan system.

The contradiction can be highlighted with three chief observations:

1) The metropolitan describes Russian influence in Syria as a "tutelage" that exploited Orthodoxy as a cover for a Russian nationalist agenda. This is a political characterization par excellence, which assumes that the role of the Church is to be completely apart from the state, even when the state is providing momentary protection. However, in contrast, when he is asked about his own role with regard to the Greek government, he emphasizes that it is his institutional duty to serve Greece "regardless of which government is in power."

2) The metropolitan repeatedly refers to "national interests" by characterizing them as the point of reference for his ecclesiastical activity in the United States. Within this context, he justifies any contact with the White House or interference in bilateral relations as a national duty. This statement shows that in his view, the Church is not only a religious institution, but part of the Greek state apparatus abroad, reproducing exactly what he criticizes when it comes to the Russian Church.

3) When asked about the baptism of children from a same-sex family, the metropolitan talks about "a distortion of the message of the Gospel," by classifying baptisms as "gay" or "straight." This admission gives the impression that the standard is not theological so much as it is tied to the social and political context, raising further questions about the extent to which his pastoral decisions are independent.

The metropolitan also talks about "a network of centers and paracenters" in Greece and America that is working to distort his image, stating that part of the media campaign against him is tied to internal political conflicts in Greece, which once again drives home the point that his ecclesiastical position now strongly intersects with national policies, despite his sharp criticism of such a phenomenon in the Russian context.

On this basis, the picture of a double discourse comes together: from one side, affirmation of the purity of the faith and its separation from authoritarian organizations, while from the other side an obvious integration of the role of the Church into Greek national identity. This problem is not only personal. Rather, it expresses the historical tension within the Patriarchate of Constantinople between its global spiritual identity and its nationalist role within the Greek diaspora. When condemnatory language is deployed against others' political use of Orthodoxy, while at the same time there is a demand for the bishop to serve "Greek national interests," the question naturally becomes: Is the problem a matter of principle, or is it an issue of who is acting on this principle?

This discourse reveals that the greatest challenge for worldwide Orthodoxy today lies not only in the division between ecclesiastical centers, but also in the ability of each center to transcend narrow ecclesiastical nationalism and to distinguish between what is of the Gospel and what is of nationalism. In a world where everyone uses religion to bolster political influence, there is a pressing need for fixed standards that do not change according to which national flag the speaker happens to be waving.

Adrian Pirtea on a Newly-Discovered Maronite Chronicle from 713

Adrian Pirtea, "A Hitherto Unknown Universal History of the Early Eighth Century: Preliminary Notes on the Maronite Chronicle of 713." Medieval Worlds 23 (2025), 155-167.

 

Abstract

This research note introduces the Maronite Chronicle of 713, a hitherto unknown Christian world chronicle in Arabic, recently identified by the author in the collection of manuscripts at St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai. Extant in a single thirteenth-century manuscript (Sinai Ar. 597), this Arabic chronicle is a translation of a lost Syriac work, originally composed in 712-713 CE, probably in a Syriac Monothelete milieu with close ties to the Monastery of Mar Maron. The chronicle covers the history of the world from Adam to 692-693 CE and exhibits numerous parallels with the so-called »eastern source«, which informed the chronicles of Theophanes, Michael the Syrian, Agapius of Mabbug and the anonymous Syriac Chronicle of 1234. To demonstrate the links between these sources and the new chronicle, the note analyses, as a case study, a passage discussing the main events of the year 633-634 CE. The author argues that the Maronite Chronicle of 713 provides an alternative chronology of events for this year and thus represents an independent source for the early stages of the Arab conquests. A more detailed study and a critical edition and annotated translation of this new chronicle are in preparation.

 

Read the entire article in open access here. 

Joe Glynias: Ibn Buṭlān, a Physician on the Move between the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds

 

Ibn Buṭlān, a Physician on the Move between the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds

 

Joe Glynias 

 

Medieval Worlds 23 (2025), 115-138.

 

 

Abstract:

 

In this paper, I introduce a novel perspective on the Baghdadi physician Ibn Buṭlān, analyzing how he flexibly deployed his Christian identity, his Baghdadi medical education and connections, and his knowledge of the Greek and Arabic traditions to gain employment and fame as he traveled across both the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. Ibn Buṭlān is known to scholars of medieval Arabic medicine and literature as an exemplary Arabic litterateur of the Islamicate world. However, his actions and career as a Christian Arabic author – including his authorship of a treatise on the Eucharist for the Byzantine patriarch in the midst of East-West schism in Constantinople in 1054 – are much less well understood. In this paper, I show how Ibn Buṭlān marketed his Baghdadi intellectual heritage as he traveled across the Islamic world. Furthermore, I show that he converted to join the Byzantine church and became a Byzantine monk. This enabled him to join other Arabic-speaking Christian scholars active under Byzantine rule in the city of Antioch, and to market his Baghdadi heritage to new Byzantine audiences, both Arabic- and Greek-speaking. I argue that, by composing Arabic texts and instructing students in Antioch, he helped instigate a wider, long-lasting Byzantine interest in the Greco-Arabic medicine of Baghdad. 

Download the article free in open access here.

 

Habib Ibrahim: The Correspondence of Mūsā Ṭrābulsī (1732-1787)

This new book, free to download in open access here, provides an Arabic edition and English translation of letters written in the circle of Orthodox churchmen and intellectuals around the secretary of the Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch. Taken alongside Mihai Țipău's monograph on Sylvester, published last year and available in open access here, we now have a vastly richer understanding of the life of the Patriarchate of Antioch in the immediate aftermath of the Melkite Schism.

 

The Correspondence of Mūsā Ṭrābulsī (1732-1787)

Critical Edition, English Translation, and Introduction

Habib Ibrahim, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany

 

The correspondence of Mūsā Ṭrābulsī preserved in the unique MS 300 of the Orthodox Syriac Patriarchate in Homs is a collection of 71 letters (+1 repeated) received mainly by Mūsā from various correspondents during his tenure as a secretary of Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch (1724-1766) and his travels in the Patriarch's company. The letters exchanged by Yūsuf Mark and Mūsā Ṭrābulsī illustrate the help that Sylvester received in Moldavia and Wallachia and his efforts to secure the printing of Christian Arabic books there in 1745–1747, and in Beirut in 1750–1753. Other letters connect Ilyās Fakhr and Sophronios of Kilis with this circle of Syrian intellectuals who supported many of Patriarch Sylvester’s projects.

The volume contains the Arabic edition of the letters, an English translation, an introduction presenting the biography of Mūsā Ṭrābulsī and key figures in the letters, a codicological study of the manuscript, and indexes. Through various sources, the editor was able to gather new bibliographical material. Thanks to these findings, we now have a deeper knowledge of the Nawfal family members, Mūsā himself, the books that interested him, and his translation activity. The present edition demonstrates that Mūsā was an exceptional figure in the history of the Antiochian patriarchate during the challenging period following the 1724 division. Although he did not attain higher ecclesiastical ranks, he was held in special esteem by the clergy of the patriarchate.

 

Jad Ganem: Weeping over the Ruins

Arabic original here.

 

Weeping over the Ruins

The meeting in Iznik, which welcomed the leaders of various churches and Christian groups to commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, ended in a symbolic scene amidst the ruins of the imperial palace and the Basilica of Saint Neophytus. The participants gathered to recite the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which still today defines the boundaries of the Christian faith, in an attempt to rekindle a spiritual spark that has gone out.

Patriarch Bartholomew opened the meeting with a speech in which he emphasized that the gathering is not merely a recognition of the past, but rather "a return to the pure source" that united the early Church and a call to proceed towards "perfection of unity." Pope Leo XIV, for his part, raised a direct theological question: "The 1700^th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea is a precious opportunity to ask ourselves who Jesus Christ is in the lives of men and women today and how we can live out our witness in a broken world," emphasizing that overcoming divisions is necessary for any credible evangelical witness.

Nevertheless, the symbolism of the scene appeared much greater than its results. Compared to previous ecumenical meetings, this meeting was rather weak in terms of its attendance and representiveness and it did not issue any joint statement that would indicate that real breakthrough has been made.

On a practical level, the most prominent disappointment was the lack of any progress on the issue of having a single date for celebrating Easter, the very issue where the late Pope Francis had hoped to see a historic step taken on this occasion. The project, however, remained suspended and the commemoration of Nicaea did not bear the fruit that was expected of it.

On the Orthodox side, the picture of crisis was most evident: the Patriarch of Constantinople, flanked only by the Patriarch of Alexandria and representatives of Antioch and Jerusalem, while the other Orthodox churches had not even been invited at all. This picture can be summarized with a single word: division.

This picture confirmed a fact that is already well-known: Orthodoxy is fragmented and Constantinople is incapable of bringing the churches together around the same table, despite efforts to revive the "Pentarchy" as a substitute for an absent Orthodox conciliarity. However, despite the efforts to dust off the Pentarchy, it remains an artifact of a bygone period of history and is worthless for administering a vast, scattered and diverse Orthodox world.

The lesson that imposes itself--and not only on Constantinople, but on all the Orthodox churches--is that any effort toward Christian unity starts with the unity of the Orthodox themselves and that talk of ecumenism in light of this rupture will only amount to a nice photo-op without any content.

The deeper lesson, however, is that to flee from Orthodox unity to the glory of the Pentarchy is to flee from the future to the past. The future is not made on the thrones of the past, but among the people of God scattered throughout the world and torn between nationalities and the diaspora, which the churches are unable to pastor as they should on account of their internal conflicts and power struggles.

Thus, there emerge questions that cannot be ignored:

Would it not have been better to invite all the Orthodox churches to Iznik?

Should the priority not have been to resolve the differences between the Orthodox before appearing to the world as a divided church?

Would it not have been wiser for the churches of the Pentarchy not to succumb to Constantinople's desire to present a flimsy and unrealistic image of Orthodoxy?

Would it not have been better for the Orthodox to practice Nicene conciliarity... instead of commemorating it in its absence, as it itself has been transformed into ruins?

The image of Iznik 1700 is not a celebration, but a mirror.

A mirror reflecting a church that weeps over the ruins of an empire that has turned to dust, singing of a conciliarity that has also become a ruin that only exists in her imagination, instead of building unity that reconciles the past and the future.

There remains a final question, not before the ruins of palaces but before Christ Himself:

When will the Orthodox realize that they are not the church of the empire, but the Church of Christ? And when will they leave the ruins to go and forge the future? 

 

Jad Ganem: Diversity in Disintegration

Arabic original here.

 

 Diversity in Disintegration

1700 years after the Council of Nicaea, the Christian world returns to celebrate the event that established unity and purity of faith. The cruel irony is that this celebration, which is being held at the ruins of that very place that witnessed the First Ecumenical Council, comes as the Orthodox Church is experiencing one of the worst moments of disintegration and division in centuries. In this context, Pope Leo XIV makes a bold appeal, stating that "what unites us is much greater than what divides us" and calling for a path of reconciliation based on the Nicene Creed, which united the early Church.

The Orthodox reality, however, stands in stark contrast to this appeal. The divisions between Constantinople and Moscow are hardening into a theological-political struggle that drags the local Orthodox churches in its wake: churches break communion, others respond with opposing decisions, and yet others are left bewildered in a gray zone. Instead of "unity in diversity," Orthodoxy experiences diversity in disintegration.

The irony is that another chapter of division was opened with the contested recognition of the so-called "Orthodox Church of Ukraine," contrary to the spirit and decisions of Nicaea, while the Ukrainian Orthodox Church itself remains under legal and physical persecution in its homeland.

The Pope says that the Creed is the "bond of unity" and that dialogue is the only path to reconciliation. The Orthodox today, however, are incapable of even sitting down at the same table. Dialogue has been cut off, meetings have ceased, conciliarity has broken down--and indeed, has been rejected by some--and patriarchates have divided into opposing camps.

Pope Leo calls to "leave behind theological controversies that have lost their raison d’être" while the Orthodox world is still immersed in centuries-old debates about primacy, jurisdiction and prerogatives and is attempting to revive an outmoded "Pentarchy" or privileges that go back to the days of emperors and sultans.... as though Nicaea had never been held. 

Instead of a call for unity, as Pope Leo said, the blood of the martyrs that has been shed over the centuries across the Orthodox world has become fuel for stoking greater division. In Ukraine, brothers are killing each other and the killing is dressed up as sanctity. The largest Orthodox church is subject to accelerating persecution, while many churches keep silent and others act to legitimize the new situation, ignoring the open wound. 

Ukraine has become the place that patriarchates use to settle historical scores in the name of the faith, at the expense of the blood and tears of the faithful. 

The Pope recognizes that unity is "a long and arduous path" that starts with repentance, listening and mutual confession. The tragedy, however, is that Orthodoxy today does not have even the slightest desire to listen, nor the ability to see the other apart from geographical and political considerations. 

Nicaea, which united the Church, today reveals Orthodoxy's fragility and division.

Nicaea is not a celebration, but a judgment.

Nicaea is a prophetic question:

How can you celebrate the unity of the fourth century while you experience the splintering of the twenty-first century?

How can you lift high the Creed when you tear down its spirit?

How can you invoke the memory of the Fathers while you destroy what they built?

The 1700th anniversary of Nicaea is not a feast, but a warning.

It is not a commemoration: it is a judgment.

Do you want Nicaea to unite you, or do you want to bury your unity under its ruins? 

Jad Ganem: The Tragedy of Contemporary Orthodoxy

 Arabic original here.

 

The Tragedy of Contemporary Orthodoxy

In the spring 1992, a few months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Patriarch Bartholomew invited the patriarchs and heads of autocephalous churches to a historic meeting at the patriarchal headquarters at the Phanar in Istanbul.

At that time, the Orthodox world was facing a major period of transformation: countries were leaving communist captivity for freedom, churches were being revived after decades of repression, and divisions started to come to the surface again after decades of having been frozen by the previous political regime.

At that meeting, which was held on the occasion of the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the participants expressed their shared consciousness of the magnitude of the challenges that the Church was facing in the post-communist era.

In their closing statement, they declared that "The Holy Orthodox Church throughout the world, since she abides in the world and is inevitably affected by the changes that take place there, today finds herself confronted with serious and urgent problems that she wishes to treat as a single body."

That key phrase amounted to a declaration of intent to restore the Orthodox conciliarity that brought the local churches together in unity of faith and canons on the basis of the words of the Apostle Paul: "If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it" (1 Corinthians 12:26).

At that time, Constantinople was not behaving as a "ruling church" with special privileges, but as a "servant of unity," working to coordinate the Orthodox body in the face of the divisions that had begun to emergy, especially with the appearance of the so-called "Kyiv Patriarchate" established by Filaret Denysenko after he failed to attain the position of patriarch of Moscow.

Those gathered at that meeting called for spiritual and canonical unity, stating that schism is no less dangerous than heresy and that "even the blood of martyrdom does not erase the sin of schism," in the words of Saint John Chrysostom.

At the start of the third millennium, Patriarch Bartholomew renewed his initiative and invited the patriarchs of the churches to another gathering of a comprehensive ecclesiastical and humanitarian character. The heads of the churches met in Bethlehem where they celebrated the Nativity service according to the Julian Calendar at the Church of the Nativity with the participation of the heads of Orthodox countries, and released a joint message entitled "The Incarnation and Nativity of Jesus Christ: A Guarantee of the Sanctification of History and the World."

That meeting was a continuation of the spirit of conciliarity that brought the Orthodox churches together in a single worldview, in which Orthodoxy offered a message of salvation to the modern era instead of being closed in on itself.

On December 26, 2000 this path was completed with a festal liturgy at the ancient cathedral of Haghia Sophia in Nicaea, where a document "to the Church and the world" was signed. It resembled a global Orthodox declaration that affirmed the unity of faith and diversity of churches at a moment when Orthodoxy appeared as a single cohesive body, despite internal disagreements.

Now that a quarter-century has passed since Nicaea 2000, Patriarch Bartholomew is once again making invitations to a new celebration on the occasion of the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea (325 AD).

However, what was supposed to have been a general celebration of Orthodox unity has turned into a limited celebration to which only the patriarchs of the Pentarchy (Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem) were invited, with the attendance of Pope Leo XIV, representing the See of Rome, indicating the Pentarchy of patriarchs that preceded the Great Schism, based on a new classification by which Constantinople considers the local churches that obtained their autocephaly in recent decades to be canonically subject to its authority.

This change in the nature of the invitation reflects a dramatic retreat from the ecclesiastical vision that governed the previous meetings. After having previously invited all the autocephalous churches to dialogue and participation, today Constantinople limits the meeting to a narrow, symbolic group going back to a time prior to the establishment of the modern autocephalous churches which  constitute the numerical majority of Orthodox in the world.

Limiting the invitation to the patriarchs of the Pentarchy can only be read as a sign of the decline of Orthodox conciliarity, the disappearance of channels of dialogue between the Orthodox churches, and an increase in the nationalistic and political character of the local churches' identities.

In this sense, Nicaea 2025 is not an extension of Nicaea 2000, but rather a break with it, since it expresses contemporary Orthodoxy's inability to come together around a single table, transforming the meeting into a symbol of division, not of unity.

In 1992, the idea of the Orthodox Church as a body capable of suffering and recovering together was born at the Phanar. In 2025, it seems that Orthodoxy's body is divided, with each member suffering alone. 

The Patriarchate of Constantinople has gone from a theology of unity and conciliarity to a politics of axes and historical symbolism. Instead of being the servant of unity, it has become the instrument of division.

And so, the new meeting at Nicaea comes to embody the tragedy of contemporary Orthodoxy: churches rooted in faith but unable to come together in one body like they did a quarter-century ago. 

At Nicaea 325, the Creed was born.

At Nicaea 2000, the unity of the Orthodox churches was celebrated.

As for Nicaea 2025, a new chapter is being written in the story of lost Orthodox unity.

History will inevitably judge everyone who contributed to and participated in writing this story!