CONCILIAR DECLARATION OF THE PATRIARCHATE OF ALEXANDRIA AGAINST RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE
In recent times, humanity has witnessed chain explosions of religious violence that have catalysed social peace, in the form of intimidation, persecution, forced expulsions, torture, or even death. These atrocious acts, beyond and beyond any bounds of reason and logic, recall in the collective memory images of dark periods that we all hoped had been definitively and irrevocably consigned to the oblivion of history. The inciting manifestations of religious violence, in addition to the extremely negative social and psychological consequences at local level, tarnish, through the rapidly interactive information society, the image of cultures and religions at global level, opening up, through the uncontrolled psychological excitement and the horse’s mouth emotional mobilisation of the masses, unbridgeable gaps and impenetrable walls between people of different confessional identities. The use of violence under the guise of faith is a complete perversion of the concept of any religious tradition, since religions as a whole must function as a vehicle for reconciliation between people. In particular, not only the use of violence, but also the tolerance of violence, is completely out of place for believers in Christ. It is necessary to emphasize that violence as a practice is not only an annulment of the Gospel concept, but constitutes in essence a complete denial of Christ, who in His divine-human person substitutes love according to the Johannine saying “God is love” (John. 4, 8), peace as “the peace of God which overcomes all understanding” (Philippians 4, 7), and finally life itself according to the unmistakable gospel saying “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11, 25).
Message for Christians who suffer for their faith
Orthodoxy, throughout its history, has suffered countless times the violence of persecution by alien, irreligious, anti-Christian regimes, with its hagiography, adorned with heroic figures of Martyrs and Confessors who offered their own lives out of love for Christ, as an irrefutable witness. In any case, a supreme example of love and sacrifice for the existential authenticity and salvation of man is the God-Man Jesus Christ Himself, who offered His life as an innocent victim for the union of mankind with God. With the unmistakable marker of God’s condescension, who “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3,16), we wish to address our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the African continent and everywhere else who are suffering for their faith. We call upon them to remain unfailingly faithful to the loving confession of our faith, not forgetting that our Lord has assured them, on the one hand, of the perniciousness of violence, stressing that“all who have received the sword shall die by the sword” (Mt. x 52), and on the other hand, of the worthiness of self-sacrificial piety, pointing out that:
“Whosoever shall confess in me before men, I will also confess in him before my Father in heaven” (Matt.)
Need for containment actions
We call upon all those who commit or condone inhuman acts of religious violence to consider that God, as Creator, Authority and Source of the world, is God of all nations and people, God of Love, Providence and Salvation “in the fullness of His mercies” for all His creatures. We call on national and international political, peace and humanitarian actors to pursue active policies to halt the absurdity of religious violence, so that the exploitation of religious sentiment and the inability to understand and tolerate religious diversity cease to act as the Trojan horse for the sanctification of religious intolerance and religious fanaticism. It is time for people to stop invoking God to serve divisive or terrorist choices, whether collective or individual. It is time to marginalise psychopathic zealot ideologies of God’s high missions, carried out by any means possible, including aggressive or vengeful violence. It is time for people to stop politicising religion, religiousising politics and falsifying religious faith by associating it with tendencies towards totalitarianism, chauvinism and tribalism in order to glorify wars of false sanctity. On the threshold of the third millennium since the redemptive incarnation of the Son and Word of God, humanity is realising, on the one hand, the timeless application of the axiom ‘no man is a spectator, neither of the city nor of the godless’ (Plut. Colossians 31) and, on the other hand, the self-evident principle that there can be no peace without peace between religions. The Patriarchate of Alexandria, as the oldest bearer of the Gospel word in Africa, strives and struggles daily for the actual transmission of the word of Christ as the way to holiness and theosis. From this position, it explicitly rejects and categorically denounces any form of religious violence as a dead-end expression of the moral co-optation of faith with violence, as a desecrated expression of the debasement and fall of the crown of divine creation, man. To this end, charitably, diaconically and sacrificially, it works towards the embodiment of a loving and conciliatory association, devoid of blind instincts; an association which, moving not “to the homogeneous only, but to all the homogeneous” (Cyril Alex. RG. 72,686), can cast out the absurdity of violence and transform itself into a dwelling place of God; a companion temporarily connected to the earthly homeland, but always aiming at the true homeland, the Eternal Kingdom of God.
Great City of Alexandria, November 23, 2012
†The Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa I T E O D O R O S B’
†O Elder Peter of Axome †O Elder Kallinikos of Pelusio †O Kambalas Jonas †O Zimbabwe and Angola Seraphim †O Nigerian Alexander †O Good Hope Sergios †O Kyrenis Athanasios †O Cartagena Alexios †O Muanzas Hieronymos †O Ptolemaides Proterios †O Guineas Georgios †O Hermoupolis Nikolaos †O Irinople Demetrios †O Zambia and Malawi Joachim †O Johannesburg and Pretoria Damaskinos †O Madagascar Ignatius †O Khartoum Emmanuel †Cameroon Gregory †Leontopolis Gabriel †Akkras Savvas †Central Africa Nikiforos †Katagas Meletios †Mozambique John
