Shrewsbury is about to host a significant cultural and spiritual festival this spring to commemorate 1,700 years because the First Council of Nicaea, a foundational event in Christian history.
Running under the banner ‘Nicaea 2025’, the festival brings together art, music, talks, and pilgrimage in recognition of the Nicene Creed – a declaration of religion shared across Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and major Protestant traditions worldwide. The creed, formulated at the unique council in 325AD, affirms belief within the Trinitarian God and stays central to Christian worship to this present day.
The festival is being organised by Shrewsbury Orthodox Church and can serve because the national centre of celebration for Orthodox Christians in Britain. The town’s Orthodox community was chosen to host the event by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain, as its church is believed to be the just one in Western Europe dedicated to the ‘318 Holy Fathers of Nicaea’.
Public events begin with a two-week exhibition of sacred iconography at St Julian’s Church, Wyle Cop, from 24 May to six June. The exhibition will feature works from leading Western contemporary icon painters and goals to spotlight the deep theological significance of the Incarnation, a key issue addressed by the Council of Nicaea.
Shrewsbury Orthodox priest Father Panteleimon Maxfield said: “We are delighted to host this public festival of celebration to which all visitors are welcome.
“The Council of Nicaea was a defining moment for the Christian Church and the primary major event after the legalisation of Christianity.
“Many of those present had suffered torture under Roman persecution and were disfigured in an appalling way, with eyes and limbs missing. They were ‘confessors’, living witnesses of the religion.”
He added: “The Council refuted the heresy of Arianism and established the Creed to affirm the teaching of the Apostles, that Christ was fully God and fully man. The icon exhibition is a key a part of our celebrations because iconography, in itself, is a celebration of the incarnation of God which is central to the Christian faith and the Council’s deliberations.”
Other festival highlights include a concert of ancient sacred music from world wide at Shrewsbury Cathedral on 25 May, an open day on the historic Thirteenth-century church in Sutton on 31 May, and a theological symposium on 21 June. The latter will feature Rev Professor John Behr, a outstanding scholar of early Christianity and the formation of Christian doctrine.
The Council of Nicaea, convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine shortly after Christianity was legalised, brought together 318 bishops from across the Roman Empire. It was convened to deal with major theological disputes, most notably Arianism – a controversial teaching which claimed that Christ was created and never fully divine.
These debates, which stirred passionate divisions amongst Christians and even spilled into the streets in the shape of public unrest, were resolved with the adoption of the Nicene Creed, affirming Christ as “fully God and fully man”.
 Shrewsbury is about to host a significant cultural and spiritual festival this spring to commemorate 1,700 years because the First Council of Nicaea,...){kind=link}