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Knut Refsdal arrives at WCC Central Committee. Photo: Ned Alley/WCC

Knut Refsdal arrives at WCC Central Committee. Photo: Ned Alley/WCC

St Olav’s Way, the long path from Oslo’s old city to Trondheim’s Nidaros Cathedral, was for 500 years crowded with pilgrims, a heavily used popular route until the Reformation. It was restored and re-opened in 1997.

Knut Refsdal knows the rugged path well, having just spent nearly a month walking the 643 km route in rain and shine through Norway’s mountains and valleys to Trondheim.

Norway’s thousand-year-old city is hosting the World Council of Churches (WCC) central committee meeting, appropriately themed around discerning new landscapes in its Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.

A picturesque port city midway along the coast of the country, Trondheim was founded by King Olav Tryggvason in 997 and was often the place where Norway’s kings were hailed. Its fame as a pilgrimage site stems from its cathedral’s housing the remains of St Olav. King of Norway from 1015 until 1028, Olaf II Haraldsson  was canonized soon after his death in 1030 and is considered the patron saint of Norway, revered for his role in uniting the country under the Christian banner. Trondheim was thus both the religious and national center of Norway and remains the spiritual heart of the Church of Norway.

Reprising the medieval route, Refsdal’s journey culminated in a visit with the WCC central committee, where he greeted participants and tied his effort to the WCC’s Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.

Refsdal, general secretary of the Christian Council of Norway, used the informal system that has grown up around the pilgrimage way to stay in barns, cabins, people’s homes, and hotels along the way. He was joined at intervals by about 30 persons, he says.

During his trek, Refsdal invited local leaders of faith communities and life-stance (humanist) communities to walk with him and to engage in dialogues about local issues and situations. Also joining the walk at times were leaders of nonreligious local institutions—schools, police, and others—discussing such issues as refugees or radicalization of youth.

Walking on the pilgrimage enabled Refsdal to meet and walk with persons of very different orientations and convictions, he says—for example, walking with a Pentecostal minister and an imam. Walking together, says Refdsal, forces one to concentrate not on differences between pilgrims but on the shared basics of food, water and battling tiredness. “We just became fellow human beings,” he said.

His pilgrimage, says Refsdal, also enabled him to realize “that the potential in churches is strong enough to invite collaboration with other organizations, and all people of good will, to work together to sustain local communities.” In Hamar, for example, building on pilgrimage conversations, churches and secular humanist organizations are working programmatically with the schools to combat radicalization of youth.

Becoming catalysts for such local initiatives offers an increasing role for the council and local churches, says Refsdal, particularly in this new era, when Church of Norway is no longer the established church of Norway.

By revisiting old vantage points, Christians and Christian churches can perhaps envision new roles and a future enabling justice and peace.

Further information on the theme:

Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace

WCC Central Committee meeting 2016

High resolution photos