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In 2025, Christians of all traditions will share the same Easter date, 20 April. But, in many years, major Christian traditions celebrate Easter on different dates, thus giving the impression of a divided witness to this fundamental aspect of the Christian faith.
The search for a common date for Easter was one of the central issues of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea 1700 years ago.
Rev. Prof. em. Dr. Sandra Beardsall, from Saskatchewan, Canada, is moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Nicaea Steering Group, and also moderated the webinar discussion.
She opened the conversation by briefly addressing the history and complexity of finding a common date. “The feast of the Resurrection lies at the heart of Christian faith, but finding a common date for that celebration is complex,” she said. “This Nicaea year, when all Christians will, in fact, celebrate Easter on a common day, there is fresh impetus to explore this hope.”
Mawuli Assimadi, a member of the WCC Commission on Faith and Order as well as a member of the WCC Young People in the Ecumenical Movement Commission, offered a youth perspective on the common date for Easter.
“Reflecting on the common celebration of Easter, we find it very good that Easter will be celebrated together this year,” said Mawuli Assimadi. “We think, in times like this, with crises and polarization, unity is very important.”
Panelists from four traditions then shared perspectives on finding a common date.
Offering a concise history and explanation of how Orthodox traditions choose a date to celebrate Easter, H.E. Metropolitan Prof. Dr Job (Getcha), Metropolitan of Pisidia, explained that this year, “by accident,” all Christians will celebrate Easter on the same date.
The metropolitan also offered an overview of the many times over hundreds of years that the subject of a common date for Easter has been discussed by Orthodox Churches.
Although Autocephalous Orthodox Churches decided unanimously that the Holy and Great Council should be convened on the island of Crete in June 2016, “they resolved that the question of the calendar and the common celebration of Easter, be omitted from the agenda of this council,” said the metropolitan, “and this is where we stand today.”
Fr Prof. Dr Arsenius Mikhail, St Athanasius and St Cyril Coptic Orthodox School, Newport Beach, California, USA, approached the topic from the perspective of a historian of Coptic culture and ritual, as well as that of a practicing member and priest of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
"It would be no exaggeration to say that the debate over the date of the annual Easter celebration is nearly as old as Christianity itself,” he said. “Already, before the 4th century, works of ecclesiastical history record the divergence in the date of celebration between Christians, for example, in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Türkiye.”
Dr Johannes Oeldemann, Johann-Adam-Möhler-Institut für Ökumenik, Paderborn, Germany, commented from a Roman Catholic perspective, underscoring that it is important that Christians celebrate Easter together.
“At the end of the Week of prayer for Christian Unity, on 25 January 2025, Pope Francis emphasized that the Catholic Church is prepared to accept any proposal that leads to a common Easter,” said Oeldemann. “The decade ahead of us offers the opportunity to to give new momentum to efforts to agree on a common date of Easter.”
Rev. Dr Tomi Karttunen, executive secretary for Ecumenical Relations and Theology, Lutheran Church of Finland, offered a history of how Finnish Christians followed a unique and even pioneering path when it came to deciding a date for Easter.
"It could be said, from a historical perspective, that the Finnish tradition would probably be quite open to a model that dated Easter astronomically in the spirit of Nicaea,” said Karttunen. “Easter is a vital part of Christian faith and life. When Christians celebrate it together, it supports the positive understanding of unity and diversity within Finnish society.”
