The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (707 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
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E

 

E
(Jap., ‘gather, understand’). An assembly or gathering in Japan, especially for religious purposes.
E.
The name of a putative source used in the composition of the Pentateuch. See further
PENTATEUCH
.
East African Revival
or Balokole
(Luganda, ‘saved ones’). A widespread Christian renewal movement with several independent origins. In the 1930s it spread among Ugandan
Anglicans
and then into Kenya and Tanzania, working alongside the churches and avoiding schism, although meeting at first with a mixed reception from church leaders. It is essentially a lay movement, African in style and control, that has transcended tribal, racial, and church divisions, and has produced its own theology, organization, and hymns; one revival chorus, ‘Tukutendereza’ (‘We praise thee, Jesus’), is now widely known.
Easter
.
The Christian feast of the
resurrection
of
Christ
. According to
Bede
, the name is connected with an Anglo-Saxon spring goddess ‘Eostre’. The derivation is uncertain, but some Easter customs, e.g. the giving of eggs as gifts, are certainly pre-Christian.
The primitive Christian feast known in the 2nd–3rd cents. as the Pasch (Aramaic,
pas
a
, ‘
Passover
’) formed the Christian counterpart to the Jewish festival.
Since the Council of
Nicaea
(325) Easter has been fixed for the Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox. However, there is still a divergence between E. and W. Churches, mainly because almost all Orthodox Churches, even those who otherwise use the Gregorian
calendar
, use the Julian date for the equinox. Thus the date of ‘Orthodox Easter’ sometimes coincides with the W. date, but it is usually one, four, or five weeks later.
Eastern Catholic Churches
:
Eastern Orthodox (Church).
Those Christians who belong to the Churches which accepted the
Chalcedon
definition of two natures in the one person of
Christ
, and did not depart in the
great schism
between E. and W. They are consequently
dyophysite
as opposed to
monophysite
. The term thus covers much more than the Greek Orthodox Church (for which it is nevertheless sometimes used as a synonym), and slightly less than all E. Christians. See further
ORTHODOX CHURCH
.

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