Celebrating the Nicene Creed?

 I keep seeing news items about last month's celebration of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed. I appreciate that May 20th probably wasn't on your party calendar and I can't imagine that many churches marked the event. It did commemorate what was a pivotal event in the history of Christianity. The Emperor Constantine convened roughly 300 church leaders in Nicaea (modern-day İznik, Turkey) in 325 AD to define the core tenets of Christian faith through the Nicene Creed. As Professor Jan Williams describes this event: 

Leaders came from some of the most sophisticated, wealthy and educated parts of the Roman Empire, like Alexandria, with its famous school and library. But they also came from some of the simplest parts, where peasant life was the norm for both the bishop and the congregations. St Spiridion, now the patron saint of Corfu, was one of the signatories; he maintained his hard life as shepherd while leading his human flock; St Nicholas of Myra, whom we now know as Santa Claus, was there, too; altogether there were probably 200 to 300 bishops there, highlighting the extraordinary spread of Christian faith across the Roman Empire. That is why the Council of Nicaea is called the First Ecumenical or world-wide Council. This was the first opportunity for the Church to take stock of itself and to notice and learn from its diversity.  

                                                         Constantine and the Bishops at Nicea

While this may seem like a yawner, Christians have always attempted to find common ground, with mixed success. When I led a study group on the Creeds at the end of 2024 the number of participants wasn't exactly huge yet we had good discussions about the ways in which statements of faith can be maps of the coastline of what we believe in common, ways to identify where we want to go.The Apostle's Creed and the New Creed of the United Church were the go-to's for our group and we also looked at the more recent Song of Faith. 

The Nicene Creed is in our worship resource, Voices United, tucked away in the back at #920. Today we tend to dismiss creeds as dry dogma but when we look at the hot mess of entertainment Christianity and the rise of "Christian" white supremacy out there we might do well to reconsider these touchstone statements. 

I'm surprised to read that there are scores of tour groups heading to Nicea/Iznik this year as part of the celebration -- how nerdy is this? The irony is that there are no Christian churches and no Christians in this city of 44,000. While Turkey is officially secular, no new Christian worship spaces are allowed, no Christian schools, no right for Christians to share their faith. 

Maybe we can stifle our yawns and admire the fact that in our age of zero attention span this creed has endured for 1,700 years. And if Santa Claus was at the Council of Nicea, shouldn't we be impressed?