Happy Easter, brothers and sisters!

No, this wasn’t posted late. Where I live, today is Easter.

No, I don’t mean that it’s April 9 here. It’s April 16, which is Easter — an amazing sign of Christian unity, besides being the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

Christians around the world have different beliefs about the right date to celebrate Easter. If you know that, you might think I mean today is the day the dominant Christian sect here celebrates the Resurrection. That would be true in some places, but in the Kingdom of Jordan, where I live, all Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Evangelical Christians celebrate Easter today.

The Christian communities here have achieved cross-denominational unity regarding the dates of both Easter and Christmas. This is unusual. Orthodox churches typically follow the older Julian calendar, and the Catholic and Protestant churches typically follow the revised Gregorian calendar.

This makes holidays fall on different dates. Many church leaders — including Pope John Paul II, Eastern Orthodox Archbishop Job Getcha, and the Coptic patriarch Tawadros II — have dreamt of uniting the Christian world on Easter. But so far, it hasn’t been possible.

Here in the Kingdom of Jordan, it isn’t impossible. The church has been united in celebrating the birth and the resurrection of Jesus since 1975. It happened through a simple compromise: the Orthodox Church agreed to celebrate Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar on December 25 (as opposed to January 7, as is typical for the Orthodox). The Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical churches agreed to Celebrate Easter according to its date on the Julian calendar — which this year is April 16.

Pressed Into Unity

Why did this happen in the Kingdom of Jordan, of all places?

I recently asked a local Orthodox priest, Father Panteleimon, why everyone celebrates on the same date here, and he replied (in Arabic), “Because this is an Islamic country. Suppose my cousin is Catholic, and I’m Orthodox. Is he going to celebrate on one day, and me on a different day? That wouldn’t be nice.”

There are relatively few Christians here, which makes unnecessary divisions a nuisance. On top of that, discrimination and persecution against Christians in Muslim countries creates motivation to stand together in united mutual support.

By compromising on these holiday dates, the Christian communities in Jordan have been able to successfully petition for rights that would have otherwise never been granted. Christmas (Gregorian) was made a national holiday for all Jordanians in 1999, and Easter and Palm Sunday (Julian) were made national holidays for Jordanian Christians in 2012.

This means that Christians in government ministries, schools, universities, and other public institutions have the right to take off work those days for their religious services.

This unity among believers is easier when the church is a small and sometimes persecuted minority. Some of our “major” differences can seem quite minor when Christians are a minority group in a Muslim country.

Where the church is dominant, on the other hand, infighting can easily arise over disputable matters. Worse yet, the majority may persecute minority sects. I’m thinking of the historical violence against Catholics in Protestant countries, and against Protestants in Catholic countries.

This is a tragedy. Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are persecuted because of righteousness.” Perhaps unity is one of the blessings he was referring to.

Unity Without Compromise

We all agree unity is important. But what do you do when your convictions don’t allow you to compromise?

Take a historic example. In the second century A.D., there was another debate over the date of Easter. Pope Victor I wanted to calculate the date of Easter independently of the Jewish Passover, so that Easter would always fall on a Sunday. A group of Christian congregations in Asia Minor wanted to continue celebrating it on the date of the Jewish Passover, the 14th day of the lunar month (not always a Sunday). This was a tradition they had inherited from the Apostle John, who had died in Asia Minor two generations previously.

One Asian Bishop, Polycrates, had very strong words to say about the proposal of a different date. He invoked the memory of martyrs and heroes of the faith: the apostles John and Philip, and the Church Fathers Polycarp and Thraseas. All of these died in Asia, and:

All these observed the fourteenth day of the Passover according to the Gospel, deviating in no respect, but following the rule of faith… I, therefore, brethren, who have lived sixty-five years in the Lord, and have met with the brethren throughout the world, and have gone through every Holy Scripture, am not affrighted by terrifying words. For those greater than I have said ‘We ought to obey God rather than man.’ (Eusebius, Church History, XXIV 2-7)

Clearly, Polycrates’ conscience would not allow him any alteration in the date of Easter. The pope would not budge, either: he wanted to excommunicate Polycrates and the churches that followed him. Schism would have certainly come as a result.

The bishop Irenaeus rebuked him, though. He wrote a letter arguing for peace, in which he pointed to the example of the martyr Polycarp. Polycarp “disagreed a little” with one Anicetus “over certain other things,” but “they immediately make peace with one another, not caring to quarrel over this matter.”

The story ends with the true mark of peace, Polycarp and Anicetus sharing the Eucharist together. Then, “they parted from each other in peace, both those who observed, and those who did not, maintaining the peace of the whole church.” (From Eusebius, Church History, XXIV 16-17)

Christians, Unite!

It’s probably no coincidence that Irenaeus, Polycarp, and Anicetus lived in a time and place where Christians were a minority. In the face of outside persecution from the outside, Christians are less likely to become divided over disputable matters.

It’s mostly when everything seems to be going well — when we seem to have the World, and the Kingdom, too — that we bicker, and quarrel, and fall apart.

This isn’t about dates on a calendar, obviously. It’s about uniting in peace, or if need be disagreeing in peace. Our Enemy isn’t waiting around. He is trying to destroy us, and he finds that easiest when he finds us divided.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and set us free from the power of Sin and Death and Satan. We who believe in that are one in Christ Jesus. Let us live that way!

Peter Rowden is a friend of The Stream living in the Middle East.