Ecumenical Easter Won’t Always Be an Option

Eastern and Western Christians will celebrate the Resurrection on the same calendar date this year. But we aren't always able to do so -- and at some point, we never will again.

The clock is ticking. We only have 675 years left to fix a huge problem bedeviling the churches.

What is it, you ask?

Well, after 2700 AD, Easter in the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity will never fall on the same date again, the way they do this weekend.

Thank God He’s given us sinners some breathing room to get the theological calendar right.

This year, Easter falls on the same date — April 20 — for both Catholics and Protestants on the one hand, and Orthodox Christians on the other. (Although the latter prefer the term Pascha, from the Hebrew פֶּסַח‎, “Pesach,” meaning Passover, via Greek Πάσχα, “Pascha”).

This will happen 29 more times in the twenty-first century. But, as noted above, that number will fall to zero over the next six centuries — unless we Christians all get on the same timetable.

The Roles of Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII

How did it come to this? You can thank (and blame) Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII.

The (in)famous Roman dictator declared a new calendar for the Republic in 46 BC, but its years were not entirely accurate. About four centuries later, in 325 AD, the by-then Christian Roman Empire’s Council of Nicaea decreed that Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the first full spring moon (making it moveable, unlike, say, Christmas, which is always on the same date).

However, Caesar’s experts’ miscalculations had added 10 extra days to the calendar by the sixteenth century. So Gregory, relying on the Catholic Church’s crack astronomers, then axed 10 days in October, and added periodic leap years in order to fix that issue.

Protestant states eventually adopted the same calendar, but most Orthodox churches, even when their countries had adopted the Gregorian one, kept Julian time for liturgical purposes. Many still do. (Example: the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of North America provides daily Scripture readings on both the old Julian and modern calendars.)

The Christian Calendar, Writ Large, Is the World Calendar

Of course, the Gregorian calendar, thanks to 500 years of European Catholic and Protestant states’ global expansion and domination, became the de facto world calendar. Attempts to push “BCE” and “CE” as alternatives to “BC” and “AD” are popular in non- or anti-Christian circles (mainly academia and the media) but are, of course, based on the same baseline date: the birth of Jesus Christ.

Other calendars exist, mostly religious kinds; the most-used, next to the Christian one, is the Islamic Hijri one. But global trade, travel, and treaties depend on Earth’s denizens agreeing on what day and year it is — even if many don’t realize, or want to acknowledge, that 2025 derives from the year that the Christian Messiah was born in human form.

We Christians all agree on when Jesus was born (although we might be a few years off). It’s a shame that we can’t all agree on when He was resurrected.

Pope Francis, for all his flaws (and they are legion), has been pushing for the Catholic and Orthodox worlds to work out a common, set date to celebrate Easter. The Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, has done likewise.

However, while he is the titular ranking bishop in the Eastern churches, Bartholomew’s main rival, the Patriarch of Moscow, is not on board with this idea — and frankly has more power and followers. (In fact, any agreement, even on something as seemingly uncontroversial as this could cause more divisions between the Orthodox churches.) Meanwhile, the World Council of Churches has thrown its support behind this movement as well. And although that body is dominated by liberal Protestant denominations, well … even a stopped clock can be right twice a day.

So while Christian groups differ on the exact date to celebrate it, we do all, or certainly should, agree that Jesus was raised from the dead. That belief is, after all, the crux of Christian faith, for as St. Paul wrote: “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith” (1 Corinthians 15:14, NIV); and “if you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9, NIV).

Can’t We All Just Get Along—At Least on This Point?

Four years ago, in these very pages, I made a plea for Christians — Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and even those considering themselves none of the above — to acknowledge our overwhelming similarities in order to sympathize with and support one another, especially considering the antichrist forces arrayed against us: media, Marxist, and Muslim.

This chronologically ecumenical Easter Sunday is an excellent place to start. The church overall might theoretically have 675 years left to fix the liturgical calendar. But none of us will individually live that long. And He may well return before then. As Christ Himself warned us, “keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42 NIV). But St. Peter reminds, and comforts, us that “the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9 NIV).

So rejoice on Sunday as you say, with fellow believers east and west, “He is risen. He is risen indeed!”

Timothy Furnish has a PhD from Ohio State in Islamic, World & African history. He’s been an Arabic interrogator in the 101st Airborne, a US Special Operations Command analyst, an author and professor. Furnish is the military/security affairs writer for The Stream.