For the first time, texts from the Muslim holy book, the Koran, were read during a service in the Nidaros Cathedral.
The reading was met with applause by the students of the Kolstad and Tonstad schools in Trondheim, who had congregated in the national cathedral for a peace service on UN Day Friday.
The texts were read by two students from Kolstad and one from Tonstad. They joined in after Tonstad students read famous Bible verses from the Old and New Testaments. Much of content was about seeking peace and justice - both in the Christian and Muslim text.
Faiza from Somalia referenced the prophet Muhammad's call to "Repel (Evil) with what is better: Then will he between whom and thee was hatred become as it were thy friend and intimate!" (41:34)
Laok from Iraq cited the prophet's definition of the required way. It is to give a slave freedom and give food to the poor, according to the Koran. (90:13-14)
Parish priest Lars Sperre from Tiller congregation led the service together with colleague Bodil Slørdal of the Domkirken congregation. Sperre didn't hide that he was proud of having been part of a historic event.
"By allowing the Koran's message in our house of prayer, we wanted to show that this will be a service in the spirit of tolerance. We live in a multi-religious society and this must be expressed in the Church, says Sperre, who led a procession of participating students both at the start and end of the service.
The priest also said that the children play together without thinking that they follow different religions. The church must have the same attitude and not work divisively to indicate sharp differences between the religions.
"It is we adults who divide, while children unite and tear down borders," comments Sperre.
He's glad Tonstad and Kolstad - two schools with many immigrants - were the ones who took part in the peace service. The cultural plurality was illustrated by having the word "peace" said in the 18 different languages used by the students at the two schools.
The students contributed further by reading various human rights articles, which were added to the UN regulations 60 years ago. A speech was also given by Tonstad students Ingrid and Julie about peace prize winner Martti Ahtisaari.
Source: Adressavisen (Norwegian)
The reading was met with applause by the students of the Kolstad and Tonstad schools in Trondheim, who had congregated in the national cathedral for a peace service on UN Day Friday.
The texts were read by two students from Kolstad and one from Tonstad. They joined in after Tonstad students read famous Bible verses from the Old and New Testaments. Much of content was about seeking peace and justice - both in the Christian and Muslim text.
Faiza from Somalia referenced the prophet Muhammad's call to "Repel (Evil) with what is better: Then will he between whom and thee was hatred become as it were thy friend and intimate!" (41:34)
Laok from Iraq cited the prophet's definition of the required way. It is to give a slave freedom and give food to the poor, according to the Koran. (90:13-14)
Parish priest Lars Sperre from Tiller congregation led the service together with colleague Bodil Slørdal of the Domkirken congregation. Sperre didn't hide that he was proud of having been part of a historic event.
"By allowing the Koran's message in our house of prayer, we wanted to show that this will be a service in the spirit of tolerance. We live in a multi-religious society and this must be expressed in the Church, says Sperre, who led a procession of participating students both at the start and end of the service.
The priest also said that the children play together without thinking that they follow different religions. The church must have the same attitude and not work divisively to indicate sharp differences between the religions.
"It is we adults who divide, while children unite and tear down borders," comments Sperre.
He's glad Tonstad and Kolstad - two schools with many immigrants - were the ones who took part in the peace service. The cultural plurality was illustrated by having the word "peace" said in the 18 different languages used by the students at the two schools.
The students contributed further by reading various human rights articles, which were added to the UN regulations 60 years ago. A speech was also given by Tonstad students Ingrid and Julie about peace prize winner Martti Ahtisaari.
Source: Adressavisen (Norwegian)
8 comments:
alhamdulillah.. maybe this is the beginning of something peaceful insha'allah
"'By allowing the Koran's message in our house of prayer, we wanted to show that this will be a service in the spirit of tolerance. We live in a multi-religious society and this must be expressed in the Church,' says [the parish priest]."
Yes, the West, unlike Muslim countries, is a multi-religious society and people are free to worship whichever god they prefer (or none), but why must that be "expressed in the Church"? That makes no sense. This is a Catholic priest basically saying that everyone's religion is equally valid and the church itself is nothing more than an interfaith conference hall. If he is that much of a religious relativist, why is he a Catholic priest?
It is this ludicrous degree of unprincipled, multicultural wimpiness that is diluting Western culture and paving the path for Islamists, who have no such lack of cultural or religious conviction, to steamroll over it. This priest has absolutely no clue that Islamists consider the reading of the Koran in a Catholic Church to be a victory. This is the hidden faultline in such multi-faith exercises - that it is ALWAYS the Christians who concede and appease, and the Islamists who gain ground.
If that sounds cynical, let's test whether there's truly a spirit of tolerance and equality: see if the local Trondheim mosque will allow verses from the Bible to be read inside it. I think one can safely bet that will NEVER happen.
Big Shaker,
Just a small correction: This is a Lutheran church and Lutheran priest.
Ah yes, thank you Esther. I read the piece too early in the morning!
"It is we adults who divide, while children unite and tear down borders," comments Sperre.
There is a sophisticated argument that this is Gnosticism. I'll settle for this being "Rousseau on LSD."
I might have been more impressed if a parallel service were held in a mosque during which verses from the Torah, not just "the old testament" were recited. I somewhat resent the fact that the article says nothing about Jewish verses of peace being read.
When the author mentions "They joined in after Tonstad students read famous Bible verses from the Old and New Testaments."
he implies that it was a Christian-Muslim exchange, and not a "multi-religious" ceremony.
To me the subliminal message is clear: Christians and Muslims can understand each other. Who is excluded from the circle of amity?
It reminds me of The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams' interview in the glossy Muslim "lifestyle" magazine Emel, in which he commends Islam on the basis that “Jesus as an individual” is “shared by both the Christian and Muslim tradition”.
He deliberately excludes the Jews from the humanity that appreciates the glory of God:
“What are humans for? The Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu, the Sikh, would say that we are for the glory of God; so that God’s light may be reflected and God’s love diffused”.
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2007/11/rowan-williams-on-good-and-bad.html
It is the sentimentalisation of children's understanding of the world and life that I find so repulsive in these so-called religious figures in the West. This is Rousseau gone mad.
A wonderful book on this phemomenon, Faking it: The Sentimentalisation of Everything, sums up the Irrationality of our time in a few hundred pages of essays by a select group of essayist, Mark Steyn, for example. Here is a short excerpt from a review by Ruben Alvarado.
"This is anything but an innocent phenomenon. It is the sign of what Johan Huizinga observed way back in the 1930s, with the rise of fascism (and what parallels can be drawn between the contemporary period and that one!), in what he described as the weakening of the capacity to judge. It seems as if people no longer have a mind of their own, that they allow their minds to be taken over by some collective spirit that moves everyone in the same direction and plants the same thoughts in everyone’s heads. One then no longer exercises a critical judgment but allows oneself to be subsumed, and thus intellectually annihilated. Is this the contemporary version of religious ecstasy? Perhaps."
When our intelligentsia refer to the highest state of moral understanding as that of children, then we know things have gone sadly and badly wrong.
I follow up this book (edited by Digby Anderson) with a recommendation of Diana West, Death of the Grown-up.
I have time to read because I never go to church. I put away childish things years ago, thank you very much. I'd be happy to return when the churches become something other than factories of infantalization.
Till then, "Dig your own groove, Death Hippies."
God have mercy on you all and on the house that was once reserved for God for allowing such deification
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