Orthodox Churches to Mark Easter

Thousands of Eastern Orthodox parishioners will circle their churches tonight before midnight, remembering the biblical accounts of Jesus’ followers making their way to his tomb.

Then, entering the darkened church interiors with lighted candles in hand, worshipers will gradually illuminate the buildings and the Resurrection will be celebrated in ancient Easter liturgies that remain remarkably similar today--despite derivations from various eastern Mediterranean and Slavic countries.

“Christ is risen!” and “Indeed, he is risen!” will be the greetings and responses exchanged by Orthodox Christians for 40 days, starting on Easter.

One of the largest Southland crowds tonight--about 2,000 people--will be at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 1324 S. Normandie Ave., Los Angeles, with Father John S. Bakas, dean of the cathedral, presiding. Services will begin at 11 p.m., and the 90-minute Resurrection service will start at midnight. (213) 737-2424.

Local bishops will preside over liturgies at four other Orthodox cathedrals.

* At St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, Bishop Joseph will preside over his first Easter liturgy since becoming the resident auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles. The New Jersey-based archdiocese for North America primarily serves parishioners with Syrian roots. The services, starting at 11 p.m., will be the last for the dean, Father Paul Romley, who has served 35 years at St. Nicholas, 2300 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles. Father Michel Najim will become the new cathedral dean, effective in May. (213) 382-6269.

* Also presiding over his first Easter liturgy in Los Angeles tonight will be Bishop Serapion at the Holy Virgin Mary Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Highland Park. Pope Shenouda III of the Egyptian-based church body appointed him bishop of Los Angeles late last year. Services at the church, 4900 Cleland Ave., will start at 10 p.m. (213) 258-5555.

* Bishop Tikhon will preside over Easter liturgies tonight at Holy Virgin Mary Cathedral, 650 Micheltorena St., Los Angeles. The cathedral is part of the Russian-heritage Orthodox Church in America, but welcomes Orthodox Christians of any ethnic background. Bishop Tikhon will be assisted in the 11:30 p.m. services by Father Joseph, newly appointed as parish priest. (213) 666-4977.

* At the hilltop St. Steven’s Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in Alhambra, Bishop Jovan of Los Angeles will preside at the Matins Service with Divine Liturgy, starting at midnight. (818) 284-9100.

“This is the feast of feasts--the reason why Christianity and the churches exist,” said Phillip Tamoush, the Southern California leader of the nationwide Orthodox People Together, a network of clergy and laity that encourages pan-Orthodox unity and social service.

During daylight hours Sunday, Orthodox churches will have Agape services (10 a.m. at St. Sophia Cathedral, for example) when a Gospel story of the Resurrection is read in many languages.

“In St. Matthew Antiochian Orthodox Church in Torrance, we will read it in eight or nine languages,” Tamoush said.

Because of different calculations used to determine the day of Easter by Western and Eastern Christianity, the dates only occasionally coincide. Last year, this year and in 1998, for example, the Orthodox Easter follows the Catholic and Protestant Easter by one week. Next year, however, Easter will be March 30 in Western churches and April 27 in Eastern Orthodoxy--nearly a month apart.

CONFERENCES

Comparisons of religious and scientific viewpoints on preserving the natural world will be featured Sunday at the first of four seminars on science and the environment at First United Methodist Church of Reseda, 18120 Saticoy St. The Reseda-based Environmental Ministries and an arm of the Union of Concerned Scientists are principal sponsors of the two-hour meeting, which will start at 2:30 p.m. (818) 344-7870.

* Mimi Haddad, a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., will address the first public meeting of the Los Angeles chapter of the evangelical-oriented Christians for Biblical Equality. Haddad’s talk, “Confronting Inequities: A Historical Discourse on Women in the Christian Church,” will begin at 10 a.m. at the Los Angeles First Church of the Nazarene, 3401 W. 3rd St. (818) 244-1387.

* The Jewish Reconstructionist movement--a fourth wing of Judaism smaller than Orthodox, Conservative or Reform--will hold a conference on spiritual quests Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Stephen S. Wise Temple, located off Mulholland Drive east of the San Diego Freeway. The conference fee is $36, which includes a preview tour of the nearby Skirball Cultural Center. (818) 915-5132.

* The four-day Southern California District meeting of the Assemblies of God will open Monday at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel with an address by Supt. T. Ray Rachels. The Rev. John Holland, president of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, will speak at the Tuesday luncheon. (714) 252-8400.

MUSIC

More than 200 churches--from Washington’s National Cathedral and Salt Lake City’s Mormon Tabernacle to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove--will begin simultaneous organ recitals at 3 p.m. PDT with the opening notes of J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. The American Guild of Organists calls it the world’s largest organ recital, with the rest of the musical selections subject to local choices. Other Southern California churches taking part include Los Altos United Methodist Church, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Los Angeles and La Sierra University Seventh-day Adventist Church.

* Soprano Melissa Boettner, the sister of pop singer Toni Tennille of Captain and Tennille, will perform works by Mozart and Schubert as well as selections from her new compact disc, “Al Amor, Love Songs From the Spanish Heart,” at 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 600 St. Andrew’s Road, Newport Beach. (714) 644-8879.

* The music of Johannes Brahms will be performed by pianists and soloists at 4 p.m. Sunday in the Fireside Room of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. The “Salon in the Viennese Style” will feature coffee and Viennese pastries in an event patterned after a sold-out musical salon last April at the church that featured the music of Franz Schubert. A $5 donation is requested. (213) 389-3191.

* The Winans, the Grammy-winning quartet of brothers from a gospel-singing family, will perform next Saturday during the second day of the huge, all-male Promise Keepers gathering at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that begins Friday.

DATES

A blessing of the animals ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. today at St. Michael (Antiochian) Orthodox Church, 3333 Workman Mill Road, Whittier. (310) 692-6121.

* Saran Kirschbaum, editor of Earth Letter, will discuss Judaism and the environment at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Society for Humanistic Judaism’s first monthly meeting in a new location at 1526 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles. The meetings, which had been held at Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills, are open to the public. (213) 891-4303.

* The Rev. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, former dean of the chapel at Stanford University, will lecture Thursday at the University of Redlands’ Orton Center on recent terrorist and extremist acts and government responses “in light of the positive message of the [biblical] Book of Revelation,” said a university spokeswoman. Admission to the 5:30 p.m. lecture is $10 and includes dinner. (909) 335-4006.

PEOPLE

The Dalai Lama, the self-exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, will return to the Los Angeles area July 30, teaching and leading ceremonies for three days at the Pasadena City Auditorium. He will lead the Tibetan Buddhist Long-Life Ceremony and Thousand-Arms Avaloketsvara Initiation, says the Arcadia-based Compassion and Wisdom Buddhist Assn. Admission fees range up to $300. (818) 445-2508.

The Dalai Lama’s 1991 visit to Southern California will be commemorated by UCLA Extension with a daylong seminar next Saturday by world religions expert Huston Smith, who is the subject of a PBS documentary series being shown on Tuesday nights. Smith and a panel of scholars will discuss, among other things, how Western and Eastern thought may be integrated. The seminar fee is $60. (310) 825-2301.

* Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating and his wife, Cathy, will discuss with the Rev. Robert H. Schuller last year’s bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in the 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. services Sunday at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. The April 19 explosion claimed 168 lives. Eight-year-old Mikaila Enriquez, whose church was damaged in the blast, and recording artist CeCe Winans will sing in the services at the Garden Grove church. (714) 971-4000.

* Jack Miles, who won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for biography this week for his “God: A Biography,” will lecture on the singular nature of God on April 25 at Claremont Graduate School, where he was named director of the school’s Humanities Center last year. A former Jesuit seminarian and former Los Angeles Times book editor, Miles will take exception to hypotheses that “God” in the Bible is several distinct deities and described in biblical books of unequal authority and importance. The free public talk will be at 7:30 p.m. in Honnold Library, 8th Street and Dartmouth Avenue in Claremont. (909) 621-8066.