WCC general secretary speaks at Oslo University bicentenary
The 200th anniversary of the University of Oslo in Norway provides opportunities for celebration, reflection and assorted special events. On Tuesday 20 September 2011 the general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, was featured in a series of presentations on justice, peace and the role of religion in global perspective.
Tveit called for Christians and other people of faith to honour past victims of religious violence “by a deeper self-critical reflection on the ambiguity of religious expressions and traditions”. While the teachings of world religions have reflected wisdom and love, he continued, they also “sometimes support, or function as, systems of oppression and exclusion”.
The WCC general secretary described contemporary churches’ attempts to seek justice and peace as a reaction to the historical “Just War” theories by which theologians have attempted to rationalize warfare. He encouraged a quest for a “critical, creative, Christian theology” that recognizes human rights and the capacity to answer human need as basic to our contemporary understanding of the gifts and calling of God.
