The bearded, robed, and bespectacled keynote speaker at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall on Tuesday made a wise first move. His All Holiness Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Christian World, began his speech by naming the elephant in the room. “It may appear strange,” he acknowledged, “for a progressive think tank to sponsor a lecture by the leader of a faith that takes pride in how little it has changed in 2000 years.”

But as this leader pointed out, so-called progressive terrain — like care for the sick or the environment — is not the sole preserve of today’s “progressives.” In fact, it never has been.

Even though our faith may be 2000 years old, our thinking is not … Christianity was born a revolutionary faith, and we have preserved that. In other words, paradoxically, we have succeeded in not changing the faith that is itself dedicated to change.

Indeed, some of the U.S.’s most “revolutionary” political goals make for pretty stale news. The early Christian church in Turkey, for instance, spearheaded the first effort for universal health care. This ancient perspective provides a surprisingly relevant perspective on the current debate.

How many people know that the modern hospital originated in the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire? … [The first hospitals in modern-day Turkey] were public institutions free of charge, and were created for the public good … Every member of society, from the greatest to the least, deserves the best quality care available at that time. As the United States debates the best way to provide health care for its citizens, we hope and pray that the Byzantine orthodox approach provides a model worthy of emulation.

The Orthodox tradition also has much to say about the need for climate change legislation. An ethos of creation care underlies orthodoxy’s ascetic element, which instructs us to practice “voluntary restraint in order for us to live in harmony with our [world].” As Bartholomew I emphasized, we need to fight the tendency to leave our personal beliefs in the realm of abstraction (which, by the way, is largely where climate change campaigns seem to be floating these days):

We must challenge ourselves to align our personal and spiritual attitudes with public policy … If human beings treated one another’s personal property the way they sometimes treat the environment, we would view that behavior as antisocial. We would impose the judicial measures necessary to restore wrongly appropriated personal possessions. It is therefore appropriate for us to seek ethical and even legal recourse where possible in matters of ecological crimes.

As His All Holiness Bartholomew I reminded us on Tuesday, today’s most pressing social and environmental initiatives don’t just belong to progressives. Or Orthodox Christians. Or anyone else for that matter. Care for people and for creation are ancient ideas; lots of folks can claim them. Isn’t this the dream of pluralism — that we find ourselves echoing the mantras of people who look nothing like us? (Never before, by the way, have I sat in the company of so many well-shaped beards and so much flowing black fabric.) That people from vastly different traditions can wind up as partners in the same movement, which then becomes richer and more forceful for that variety? The Ecumenical Patriarch’s lecture was an important reminder of the power of common causes to “unite all humankind, just as the waters of the world are all united.”

Amy Barger is an editorial assistant at Sojourners.