including His Eminence Metropolitan Ignatios of Demetrias
and the Director of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies, Dr P. Kalaïtzidis

 

    The value of dialogue between people of different cultural backgrounds and religious beliefs was at the center of a seminar Tuesday April 11, organized by the Embassy of Indonesia in Athens under the auspices of the Foreign Ministries of Greece and Indonesia.
    The seminar was attended by religious leaders, university professors, ambassadors and senior diplomatic officials in Athens from more than 20 countries, journalists, and students.
The discussion was opened by addresses from the Ambassador of Indonesia, Ahmed Rushdie, and Ambassador Evangelos Damianakis, Director of Religious Affairs for the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as greetings sent by the General Secretary of the Ministry of Religious Affairs of Indonesia, Baroul Hayat.
    A message from the Archbishop of Athens Hieronymos was read by Dr. Michael Marioras, a lecturer at the Theological School of Athens and a representative of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece to the event.

    The first session on the future of interfaith dialogue in Indonesia and Greece featured Professor Komaruddin Hidayat, Dean of the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, the Protestant pastor the Rev. Dr. Margaretha M. Hendriks-Ririmasse from the Christian University of the Moluccas in the city of Ambon, Professor Anna Triandafyllidou, a member of various European academic and teaching foundations and ELIAMEP, as well as Dr Pantelis Kalaitzidis, the director of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies of the Metropolis of Demetrias, Teaching at the University of Thessaly in Volos and Visiting Professor at the Orthodox Theological Institute of St. Sergius in Paris.

    The moderator for the first session was the journalist Nikos Papachristou, a religion correspondent for SKAI Radio and the portal for religious information Amen.gr.

 

 

    The Indonesian speakers stressed the importance of interreligious dialogue in multicultural Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. They pointed out that conflicts are due to social causes and grievances and religions are inevitably part of the problem. This is why, they added, dialogue between them contributes to mutual understanding, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence.
    Anna Triandafyllidou began her talk by saying that she knows that her position will not find many supporters in Greece. She described the situation in Greece, noting the position of the Orthodox Church which, as she said, is the official religion. She also spoke about the problems Muslim immigrants face in being accepted in Greece.
     In his presentation, Pantelis Kalaïtzidis laid the groundwork for a theology of dialogue and otherness, and argued that religions do not function only as agents of division and conflict but also as agents of reconciliation, peace, and solidarity. He focused on the obstacles, difficulties, and problems posed by inter-religious dialogue, referring, among other things, to spiritual self-sufficiency and self-righteousness, the understanding and use of Orthodoxy and other religions as part of identity formation, and the implicit idea of a "chosen people" who identify with a "promised land" and a place which belongs to them exclusively, the inability to manage the immigration problem and the traumatic historical memories associated with the Turks, the fundamentalist and ahistorical interpretation of sacred texts, and ignorance and misinformation about the religious and cultural tradition of the "other."
    At the end of the talks, the director and creator of Amen.gr, Nikos Papachristou, at the request of the Ambassador of Indonesia, expressed his view of the interreligious dialogues, many of which he has covered as a journalist.
"This year marks the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers of New York. The Israeli author Amos Oz in his book ‘Against Fanaticism’ writes that the attack was not associated with poverty turning against wealth. In my view, neither was it an attack of one religion against people of another religion. But let's see what Amos Oz writes.
"No, Oz would say, here we are dealing with a struggle between fundamentalists, who believe that the goal, any goal justifies the means, while the rest of us believe that life is a goal rather than a concept... . This is the old conflict between fundamentalism and pluralism.
“Unfortunately, fanaticism is a permanent component of human nature and its seed is always found in an uncompromising sense of righteousness, an age-old plague, as Oz would put it,” Nikos Papachristou said.
    "Dialogue, then, is our weapon in the battle against fundamentalism. The media should remember their social mission—above and beyond their commercial interests—
and highlight the soft voices who seek dialogue but are usually lost among the screams of the monologue. Also the media can and should highlight the significant efforts by enlightened religious practitioners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who, in dialogue, aim for mutual understanding, reconciliation, and peaceful coexistence of people of different religions, social, and ethnic origins," Papachristou continued.
    "In December 2001, I attended interreligious meetings organized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Brussels. It was a new experience for me, as I was rather unaccustomed to seeing Christians, Muslims, and Jews sitting at the same table, discussing and denouncing the use of religion to justify violence, which is a crime against religion itself. Ever since then, I have followed all the dialogues that have taken place either between the three monotheistic religions or bilaterally. And I have brought this experience to the audience of SKAI, then later to readers of the newspaper "Kathimerini," and finally in the last two years to the readers of Amen.gr. Cultures and religions can today, as always, become bridges to peace and mutual understanding between the people that constitute them, far from fanaticism and particularly dogmatism. It should not be forgotten—and I recall here the words of a clergyman whom I highly respect, Fr. Georgios Tsetsis, which he expressed at a similar conference—that respect for human dignity is the foundation of peace, justice, liberty, fraternity, and love. One of the main Christian dogmas is the position that man was created in the image of God. Consequently, all men are brothers, regardless of ethnic origin and religious faith."
    This was followed by a second session on the role of religious communities in promoting mutual understanding, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence.
    The featured speakers were Metropolitan Ignatios of Demetrias and Almyros, Dr. Angelika Ziakas, lecturer at the Theological Faculty of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Dr. Gerasimos Makris, Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Social Anthropology at Panteion University, the Roman Catholic priest Heru Prakosa, Lecturer at the Institute of Philosophy of Sanata Dharma of Yogyakarta, and Adolfina Kaomesach, a member of the Orthodox Church in Indonesia. The moderator of the discussion was Professor Made Titib, Dean of the Hindu Institute of Denpasar.
    "The Church must continue—in the Holy Spirit—the dialogical work of Christ’s salvation within history; it must, in other words, dialogue with everything that is not the Church. Extrapolating from this position, then, I would add that there is no meaning in a theology that does not dialogue with the realities beyond the Church, whether they be other religions or different cultures, just as there is no meaning in an introverted Church that does not open itself to and engage the world and history, that does not move out from itself in an exodus toward the encounter, evangelization, and transformation of the world," noted Metropolitan Ignatius of Demetrias, who later added: "I have repeatedly stressed that, as a bishop of the Church of Christ, the only basis on which I can act and speak is: ‘What would Christ Himself do in my place?’ And for Jesus Christ, Who was born as a stranger and a foreigner, who grew up as an immigrant and as a refugee, there is no ‘us’ and ‘them,’ no natives and immigrants, no nationals and foreigners, no goats and sheep. All people are children of the same heavenly Father, because our neighbor, according to the parable of the Good Samaritan to which I referred already, is not just our fellow countryman or coreligionist, but every person in need of our love and solidarity."

 

To read the speech (in English) by His Eminence Metropolitan Ignatius, click here .

To read the speech (in English) of Dr. Pantelis Kalaïtzidis, click here .
 
Report and photos taken from the ecclesiastical news portal AMEN (www.amen.gr)