Events in northeast Asia this year “dramatize how much the region and
the world still live in the shadow of mass destruction,” the World
Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary said in a comment on the
68th anniversary this week of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945. “The God of life calls all of us to take up [the
survivors’] tireless cry and make certain that a Hiroshima or Nagasaki
bombing can never happen again.”
Churches from around the world are coming to South Korea soon for the
10th Assembly of the WCC. Participants will learn the Hiroshima legacy
from churches there, said WCC general secretary Olav Fykse Tveit. These
include Cold War rivals North Korea and the United States “still
brandishing nuclear weapons,” increasing US military deployments in the
region, and government officials in Tokyo speculating about Japan
developing nuclear weapons.
Sixty years after the Korean War ceasefire, “none of the antagonists
have a peace treaty,” Tveit noted, “but every country in northeast Asia
has its own nuclear arms or accepts protection from US nuclear weapons.”
He cited Buddhist, Christian, and civil society advocacy that the
Korean Peninsula “must be freed of nuclear weapons as a cornerstone for
any durable peace.”
The finest tribute to the two destroyed cities, Tveit said, will be
to achieve the elderly survivors’ undying hope. This means ensuring that
no one suffers the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ever again. It means
protecting “God’s gift of life...for the good of all.”
-- This report is from a World Council of Churches release. The
WCC promotes Christian unity in faith, witness, and service for a just
and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in
1948, by the end of 2012 the WCC had 345 member communions representing
more than 500 million Christians from Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and
other traditions in over 110 countries. Find the full text of Tveit’s
comments at www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/general-secretary/statements/68th-anniversary-of-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki .
Source: 8/8/2013 Newsline
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