NewsDesk
Cornwall's Big Shout
A crowd of several hundred gathered at the Royal Cornwall Showground in Wadebridge on Saturday 27th March for the Big Shout. The twelve hour event hosted by Big Blue Box combined prayer, worship and Bible teaching. The Shout was the vision of Viv Viol of the Cornwall Prayer Initiative who was delighted to see it come to fruition.
The event culminated in an evening of worship featuring Narrowpath, the Cornish surf rock band. The shout itself was led by Ronnie Fernilough of the Big Blue Box when the audience, two thirds of whom were under 40, raised the roof shouting the name of Jesus. See the highlights in our exclusive Kernowyouth video recorded at the event on a mobile phone!
Christians hit the streets at Easter
Numerous walks of witness have taken place in Cornish towns across the Easter weekend. Many have been organised by Churches Together or similar inter church groupings, and taken place under the banner of various Easter outreaches. Many included Christians who were determined that the public face of Christianity is not lost in the UK.
In St Austell Christians from Anglican, Baptist, Brethren, Light & Life, Methodist, Salvation Army, and charismatic churches walked through the town as part of "The Easter X Factor" event. Just under 200 people made shoppers and shopkeepers stop and watch as they quietly passed by before gathering in Alymer Square for a short service of readings and a hymn.
See our exclusive Kernowyouth video of this event recorded on a mobile phone!
BBC's Nicky Campbell says Christians in Britain are persecuted
Christians in Britain are feeling persecuted because of “paradoxical” human rights laws and the ignorance of local councils, according to a major BBC documentary to be broadcast on Easter Sunday.
Nicky Campbell, the presenter of the corporation’s flagship programme for Holy Week, argues that Labour’s anti-discrimination legislation has led to clashes between religious conscience and equality for homosexuals.
He blames local authorities for rebranding Christmas celebrations as winter festivals because of a misguided belief that they are standing up for minority faiths. Campbell, the Radio 5 Live presenter, also highlights the French and Russian revolutions as examples of what can happen when religion is pushed out of public life. He concludes that although Christians do not face violence and suppression in Britain as they do abroad, their treatment can seem unfair in a modern democracy.
Campbell says: “So, are Christians being persecuted? No they’re not being tortured or killed like Christians in Pakistan and the Sudan. But a minority believes they are being sidelined and victimised. By the standards of a liberal society that can feel like persecution.” However he adds that this may be a “source of strength” for churchgoers, who thrived in ancient Rome in the face of persecution.
The hour-long programme, called Are Christians Being Persecuted?, looks into widespread claims that the faith is being driven out of public life in Britain while its followers are being treated less fairly than minority groups. Campbell looks at town halls such as Rochdale that have added references to Eid, Diwali and Hanukkah to their high street Christmas light displays, or replaced them with generic “winter events” as happened in Dundee last year. He says viewers may see this as “political correctness gone mad” or “zealous councils following multi-cultural diktats from above”.
Campbell believes council leaders are scrapping traditional Christmas celebrations because they have no understanding of what followers of any religion want. “If councils perhaps did more to find out what minority faiths actually thought about Christian festivals, it would reduce much of the resentment some Christians feel,” he says.
The documentary considers the cases of public sector workers whose adherence to Bible teaching has led them to be suspended or even sacked. These includes Caroline Petrie, the nurse who offered to pray for an elderly patient, and Lillian Ladele, the registrar who refused to carry out civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Campbell interviews trainee teachers who say they are “nervous” about discussing their faith with pupils as their conservative views on sexuality “could get me into trouble”. Describing the anti-discrimination laws brought in “to make Britain a more tolerant society” by protecting religious believers as well as homosexuals, the presenter claims: “The paradox is that these same laws that have left some Christians feeling like a persecuted minority.
“The problem is the legislation never made clear what would happen in the event of a clash. Whose human right would take priority over the other?”
Campbell cites the terror and totalitarianism that sprung up in France and Russia after their revolutions abolished religion and says: “The guiding principle of ‘liberalism’ - a commitment to tolerance ... to live and let live, has an inherent flaw.
“It’s less inclined to argue against strong competing ideologies – religious or otherwise.”
He interviews prominent figures from all sides of the debate about the place of religion in modern Britain, although Trevor Phillips, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said he was “too busy” to take part. A survey of 1,000 people commissioned to accompany the programme found that 44 per cent believed Britain is becoming less tolerant of religion.
Are Christians Being Persecuted? is on BBC One at 10.50pm on Easter Sunday.
Biblical plagues did happen say Scientists
Researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based. But rather than explaining them as the wrathful act of a vengeful God, the scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and environmental disasters that happened hundreds of miles away.
They have compiled compelling evidence that offers new explanations for the Biblical plagues, which will be outlined in a new series to be broadcast on the National Geographical Channel on Easter Sunday.
Archaeologists now widely believe the plagues occurred at an ancient city of Pi-Rameses on the Nile Delta, which was the capital of Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Rameses the Second, who ruled between 1279BC and 1213BC. The city appears to have been abandoned around 3,000 years ago and scientists claim the plagues could offer an explanation.
Climatologists studying the ancient climate at the time have discovered a dramatic shift in the climate in the area occurred towards the end of Rameses the Second's reign. By studying stalagmites in Egyptian caves they have been able to rebuild a record of the weather patterns using traces of radioactive elements contained within the rock. They found that Rameses reign coincided with a warm, wet climate, but then the climate switched to a dry period.
Professor Augusto Magini, a paleoclimatologist at Heidelberg University's institute for environmental physics, said: "Pharaoh Rameses II reigned during a very favourable climatic period. There was plenty of rain and his country flourished. However, this wet period only lasted a few decades. After Rameses' reign, the climate curve goes sharply downwards. There is a dry period which would certainly have had serious consequences."
The scientists believe this switch in the climate was the trigger for the first of the plagues. The rising temperatures could have caused the river Nile to dry up, turning the fast flowing river that was Egypt's lifeline into a slow moving and muddy watercourse. These conditions would have been perfect for the arrival of the first plague, which in the Bible is described as the Nile turning to blood.
Dr Stephan Pflugmacher, a biologist at the Leibniz Institute for Water Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin, believes this description could have been the result of a toxic fresh water algae. He said the bacterium, known as Burgundy Blood algae or Oscillatoria rubescens, is known to have existed 3,000 years ago and still causes similar effects today. He said: "It multiplies massively in slow-moving warm waters with high levels of nutrition. And as it dies, it stains the water red."
The scientists also claim the arrival of this algae set in motion the events that led to the second, third and forth plagues – frogs, lice and flies.
Frogs development from tadpoles into fully formed adults is governed by hormones that can speed up their development in times of stress. The arrival of the toxic algae would have triggered such a transformation and forced the frogs to leave the water where they lived. But as the frogs died, it would have meant that mosquitoes, flies and other insects would have flourished without the predators to keep their numbers under control. This, according to the scientists, could have led in turn to the fifth and sixth plagues – diseased livestock and boils. Professor Werner Kloas, a biologist at the Leibniz Institute, said: "We know insects often carry diseases like malaria, so the next step in the chain reaction is the outbreak of epidemics, causing the human population to fall ill."
Another major natural disaster more than 400 miles away is now also thought to be responsible for triggering the seventh, eighth and ninth plagues that bring hail, locusts and darkness to Egypt.
One of the biggest volcanic eruptions in human history occurred when Thera, a volcano that was part of the Mediterranean islands of Santorini, just north of Crete, exploded around 3,500 year ago, spewing billions of tons of volcanic ash into the atmosphere. Nadine von Blohm, from the Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Germany, has been conducting experiments on how hailstorms form and believes that the volcanic ash could have clashed with thunderstorms above Egypt to produce dramatic hail storms.
Dr Siro Trevisanato, a Canadian biologist who has written a book about the plagues, said the locusts could also be explained by the volcanic fall out from the ash. He said: "The ash fall out caused weather anomalies, which translates into higher precipitations, higher humidity. And that's exactly what fosters the presence of the locusts." The volcanic ash could also have blocked out the sunlight causing the stories of a plague of darkness. Scientists have found pumice, stone made from cooled volcanic lava, during excavations of Egyptian ruins despite there not being any volcanoes in Egypt. Analysis of the rock shows that it came from the Santorini volcano, providing physical evidence that the ash fallout from the eruption at Santorini reached Egyptian shores.
The cause of the final plague, the death of the first borns of Egypt, has been suggested as being caused by a fungus that may have poisoned the grain supplies, of which male first born would have had first pickings and so been first to fall victim. But Dr Robert Miller, associate professor of the Old Testament, from the Catholic University of America, said: "I'm reluctant to come up with natural causes for all of the plagues. The problem with the naturalistic explanations, is that they lose the whole point. And the whole point was that you didn't come out of Egypt by natural causes, you came out by the hand of God."
In Brief
* The Cornwall Light & Life Churches are to hold their 2010 festival "Wellspring" at the Royal Cornwall Showground from 2nd to 6th August. The family based event comes under the umbrella of the International Free Methodist Church.
* The next Space SW youth event is to be held in Holsworthy, just over the border in Devon. It will feature music from 29th Chapter and Philippa Hanna. See the What's On Guide for full details.
If you or your youth group have a news story for Kernowyouth, then email it to phil@kernowyouth.co.uk
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