The Meaning of Easter

Moral Maze

BBC

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.4 • 623 Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2021

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Easter 2021 comes at the end of an annus horribilis. We are meaning-seeking creatures, and the symbolism is everywhere if you want to find it. There’s the re-birth associated with the Spring equinox, the hope in the Christian account of the resurrection, the freedom marked by the Jewish Passover, and the reflection and restoration embodied in the Muslim observance of Ramadan. While many faith and spiritual groups instinctively see this is a powerful moment in the calendar, for many people, the Easter bank holiday weekend means very little other than gorging on chocolate eggs. What should Easter mean? In Christianity, it’s more important than Christmas, and no story has had a greater influence on Western civilisation. While we are no longer a ‘Christian’ society, should Easter be more of a moment of national unity, which transcends the cultural and faith traditions of Britain? We all instinctively know what is meant by the ‘Christmas spirit’, but should we be re-imagining an Easter equivalent, based on values like sacrifice and forgiveness? Or does the very fact of having designated time off work to spend how we chose provide meaning enough? Some people think we need to come together more than ever as a means of channelling our soul-searching following the existential insecurity of the last year. Others are more sceptical about the insistence that crises like pandemics naturally lead to deep moral or spiritual introspection, and question the value of collective gestures like clapping the NHS. As a nation and as a society should we invest more in the meaning of these moments as a basis for dialogue and togetherness? Or is any national endeavour of this kind bound to be seen as coercive and rendered meaningless? With Julian Baggini, Ronald Hutton, Rev Rachel Mann and David Mills.

Producer: Dan Tierney.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good evening. Easter is the most important, specifically Christian festival, even though nearly all editions of the Bible make no mention of it, and the timing, the narrative of resurrection, even the trappings, eggs, rabbits, buns with crosses, are shared by more ancient beliefs.
0:15.7	Spring, rebirth, renewal, redemption, freedom. From captivity if you're Jewish, celebrating Passover, from
0:22.8	death if you're a Christian, from worldiness if you're a Muslim observing Ramadan. This Easter
0:27.9	coincides with freedom of another kind, a qualified, half-fearful semi-release from the national
0:33.9	house arrest in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Should this year of all years, Easter have a special meaning for us beyond the religious narratives,
0:43.3	a collective reflection on unity, togetherness, sacrifice?
0:47.2	Or is it time to stop the claustrophobic naval gazing, give up soul-searching and virtue signalling,
0:53.6	and get on with our lives. That's our
0:55.6	seasonal moral maze tonight. The panel Anne McClevoy, senior editor at The Economist, the historian Tim
1:01.4	Stanley, Ash Sarkar, editor at Navarra Media Group, and the chief executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor.
1:08.1	Matthew, I have a fair notion of your politics, but no idea of your religious
1:11.3	beliefs, if any. What do you think this Easter should mean to us all? I'm not a Christian,
1:18.2	but I think essential elements of the Easter story about self-sacrifice, forgiveness, renewal,
1:24.6	but I think they're powerful ideas that we could do with thinking about and celebrating,
1:29.2	particularly after the year we've all lived through.
1:32.3	Tim, you're a practice in Catholic, I know. Does Easter have a meaning separate from its specific
1:38.0	religious narrative of sacrifice, resurrection, redemption?
1:41.6	No, I don't think it has, and I don't see how it could. And I feel as a Christian that Easter has a very particular theological meaning, and I worry about it being appropriated by others, because in the process that meaning can get lost. But I also wonder if people want to commemorate and dwell on COVID, because many of us would actually like to forget about it and move on to stop thinking
2:01.0	about death and get back to living. Anne McElvoy? I was brought up to be quite observant
2:07.0	about Easter and particularly about Lent and the run up to Easter. And I have to confess,
2:11.6	I'm quite relieved that a lot of that sense of a burden of a ritual has been lifted and
2:17.3	that I can make the Easter
	...

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