NCC Rekindles Debate Over Common Easter Date

This year, Easter will be celebrated on April 4 in all forms of Christianity – a tradition that the National Council of Churches (NCC) would like to keep permanently.

Most years, Easter is celebrated on different dates in Western and Orthodox churches because of the uses of different calendars, Gregorian and Julian, respectively.

In an open letter issued on Friday, NCC General Secretary the Rev. Michael Kinnamon and Dr. Antonios Keropoulos, NCC Senior Program Director for Faith & Order and Interfaith Relations, lamented the fact that "almost every year the Christian community is divided over which day to proclaim this Good News."

"Our split, based on a dispute having to do with ancient calendars, visibly betrays the message of reconciliation," they said. "It is a scandal that surely grieves our God."

In their letter, the NCC officials proposed a continued movement toward a common Easter date based on the recommendations of a 1997 conference held in Aleppo, Syria by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Middle East Council of Churches Consultation.

A statement issued at the end of the Aleppo conference called on churches to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, which maintains the biblical association between Jesus' death and Passover and adheres to the decision of the first ecumenical council at Nicaea in 325.

The conference statement also recommended that churches agree to use the most up-to-date scientific methods to analyze astronomical data, and to use the meridian of Jerusalem, due to its centrality in the Passion of Christ, as the point of reference for these calculations.

While seemingly simple requests, for Orthodox churches, shifting calendar dates -or anything for that matter- is not such an easy task.

"It is difficult, especially for the Orthodox churches, to change anything," the Rev. Dagmar Heller, a German pastor who serves on the WCC's Faith and Order Commission and helped organize the 1997 conference in Syria told Religion News Service (RNS).

"There's a conviction that you just do not touch the calendar," said the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, ecumenical officer of the Orthodox Church in America. "Any attempt, even a perfectly appropriate one, in historical and theological terms, is interpreted at the popular level as an assault on tradition."

Orthodox churches will have some time to consider the NCC's request as Easter will be celebrated jointly by Western and Eastern traditions not only this year, but the next, with 2011's Easter date falling on April 24 on both calendar.

The rare two year convergence is the first since 1943 and isn't expected to happen again until 2037.

The WCC's 1997 statement noted Easter as "the ultimate victory over the powers of sin and death" and called Jesus' resurrection "not only an [sic] historical event but a sign of God's power over all the forces which keep us from his love and goodness."

"It is a victory not only for Christ himself but also for all those united with him. It is a victory which marks the beginning of a new era," they said. "The resurrection is the ultimate expression of the Father's gift of reconciliation and unity in Christ through the Spirit. It is a sign of the unity and reconciliation which God wills for the entire creation."

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