At this point, we must mention the similar treatment accorded our Muslim neighbors. They, too, have their faith dissected and their history disfigured. For this reason, the Ecumenical Patriarchate is a sponsor of "a dialogue of loving truth" between Muslims and Orthodox Christians. We hope to put behind what is unpleasant while putting forward the best values of humankind. We have a sacred duty, especially in light of our 540 years of co-existence in a predominantly Muslim milieu, to affirm the Christian gospel that we must "love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourself".

As leaders, we must stand prophetically, and work for brotherly and sisterly co-existence among those of different faiths, for the benefit of all. We must set aside our differences and learn to "speak the truth on love", as person created in the image of the one, true God.

Entire libraries have been written about nationalism. But a curious element of most nationalisms is the way they combine distant memories with new ideas. In art, this combination of old and new is called "post-modernism", and state-builders are certainly "artists" in the most literal sense of the world. The genesis of nationalism involves selective memory, and in the case of the Orthodox countries, nationalism has favoured past periods of ethnic glory over the combined splendour of Orthodox civilization.

We lament this imbalance. Without the church, we of the Orthodox tradition can never have more than a lop-sided, skewed, and incomplete view of who we are.