An Orthodox Dialogue with Islam: Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras

This was 4th event out of 8 sessions dedicated to the WIHW2023. We organised a reading of recently translated book about Ecumenical Patriarch and his dialogue with Islam. Following reading we had an open discussion. The recent publication of the English translation of Olivier Clément’s Dialogues with Patriarch Athenagoras (Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2022) brings one of Clément’s major works to the English-language reader. In his Foreword, Archbishop Elpidophoros, Greek Archdiocese of America, describes the book as “the key that unlocks the treasure chest of Orthodox Christianity…” The Dialogues take you into the heart of the Church’s relationship with the world, to the heart of what it means to be a Christian in today’s world. In 1968, Athenagoras, Patriarch of Constantinople, invited the French Orthodox theologian, Olivier Clément, to Istanbul, to explain the student uprisings and social turmoil of May 1968. Clément spent several weeks at the patriarch’s side, in constant conversation. He wrote the Dialogues with Patriarch Athenagoras on his return to France. (Dialogues avec le Patriarche Athénagoras, Paris, Fayard, 1969, 2nd Edition, 1975) This session focused on one aspect of their dialogue, the interaction of Christianity with Islam. Athenagoras proposes that Islam is “a rebirth of the faith of the forefathers and patriarchs.” In his book of dialogue with Islam, Un Respect Têtu (1989), Clément writes: “The message of Mohammed is a challenge to a Christianity that is established, divided and closed off. Against Christianity’s claims to have captured … and to monopolise grace … Islam summons us to the mysterium tremendum of the Inaccessible One, the imminence of the judgment, the eschatological nature of the feast to which we are invited.” We read four passages from Dialogues with Patriarch Athenagoras that take us from the Patriarch’s childhood village in Northern Greece, to his early years as an archdeacon in Monastir, Macedonia, and then into his dialogues with Clément.

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