Within a few years, Christianity’s most important holy day may begin falling on the same predictable Sunday every year. That’s if leaders of the world’s largest Christian denominations can agree to adjust their liturgical calendars in unison.
The UK’s Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of England and a top figure in the Anglican Communion, revealed today he is in discussions with Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church, Patriarch Bartholomew of the Orthodox Church, and Tawadros II of the Coptic Church on adopting a fixed date for Easter.
Most likely, this would be a date in mid-April.
“Pope Tawadros has put forward the idea to churches in the eastern tradition and the western tradition that it be fixed somewhere around the second or third Sunday of April and we will certainly be joining in. We have agreed that we support that,” Archbishop Justin Welby told journalists.
Attempts to get Christian churches to unify around a common date for Easter have been unsuccessful in the past, but perhaps this time will be different.
If the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Coptic faith communities all switch to a common date for Easter, most of the world’s Christians would be celebrating the Resurrection at the same time. Other Protestant churches would also have the option of aligning their liturgical calendars with those churches if they wished.