{"id":17141,"date":"2023-11-14T15:48:39","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T14:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/?p=17141"},"modified":"2023-11-14T15:48:39","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T14:48:39","slug":"religions-can-help-to-renew-democracies-says-ecumenical-patriarch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/religions-can-help-to-renew-democracies-says-ecumenical-patriarch\/","title":{"rendered":"Religions can help to renew democracies, says Ecumenical Patriarch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

10.11.2023<\/p>\n

THE Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople, has insisted that religious institutions can help to resolve current world problems by offering \u201chopes for unity\u201d based on their accumulated historical wisdom.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe crisis of democracy, increased crime and xenophobia, the weakened sense of citizenship \u2014 these are the direct results of a spiritual and ethical regression,\u201d Patriarch Bartholomew said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYet religions have resisted this trend. Having often been marginalised, in part by their failure to adapt, their resistance is now becoming an asset. . . As more and more people turn to them in search of spirituality and hope, religions have the necessary elements to fill the void that has settled in souls. They can contribute to breathing new life into democratic societies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking on Sunday at a World Policy Conference in Abu Dhabi, the Patriarch said that the end of the Cold War had released a \u201cwave of hope\u201d around the world, which had been curtailed by financial, environmental, climatic, and energy crises, followed by the pandemic and latest wars.<\/span><\/p>\n

He said, however, that religion could \u201cinspire significant hopes\u201d in an interregnum between old and new world orders, by countering the \u201creductionism\u201d forged from an over-reliance on \u201cphysical science methods\u201d in human relations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGlobalisation has unified the world superficially, and today we see strong trends towards fragmentation, as memories of the colonial era resurface, and the Russian invasion in Ukraine and terrible war between Hamas and Israel reveal a growing spiritual gap between the West and global South,\u201d the Patriarch said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMost religious networks extend across continents and borders, thus forming a spiritual structure that can attenuate the forces of dissociation and division. . . In a world currently threatened by fragmentation, religions can offer a hope of unity, a role of mediation between economically, politically, and culturally distinct worlds.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The annual World Policy Conference, founded in 2008 by the French economist Thierry de Montbrial, brings together politicians, diplomats, media, and civil society representatives for a discussion of current global issues, and was also addressed by Muslim and Jewish leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his speech, Bartholomew said that religious institutions, although declining in the West, were growing elsewhere, and had a greater potential reach in areas such as environmental protection than other international organisations, think tanks, or NGOs.<\/span><\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Read the article on Church Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10.11.2023 THE Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople, has insisted that religious institutions can help to resolve current world problems by offering \u201chopes for unity\u201d based on their accumulated historical wisdom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-17141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-review","tag-154"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}