CBC YOUTH MINISTRY
SPECIAL EASTER EDITION: 2017
Easter Week in Real Time
Russ Ramsey (TGC)
As we enter Holy Week—that sacred span from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday—here is a day-by-day breakdown of what Scripture tells us happened on each day.
Use this guide to lead you through Scripture reading this week.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/easter-week-in-real-time
Easter: Quarter of UK Christians do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, survey reveals
However, five per cent of people who regarded themselves as "active" Christians did not believe the Bible claim was true, according to the Com Res survey of 2,010 people.
Opinion on whether there is life after death was split across the country, with 46 per cent believing there was, 46 per cent saying the opposition, and 8 per cent unsure.
More than a tenth of "active" Christians said they did not believe there was an afterlife
Was Easter Borrowed from a Pagan Holiday?
Anyone encountering anti-Christian polemics will quickly come up against the accusation that a major festival practiced by Christians across the globe—namely, Easter—was actually borrowed or rather usurped from a pagan celebration. It is important to note, however, that in most other European languages, the name for the Christian celebration is derived from the Greek word Pascha, which comes from pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover. Easter is the Christian Passover festival.
Christians around the world have sought to redeem the local culture for Christ while purging it of practices antithetical to biblical norms.
A celebration with ancient roots:
The usual argument for the pagan origins of Easter is based on a comment made by the Venerable Bede (673-735), an English monk who wrote the first history of Christianity in England, and who is one of our main sources of knowledge about early Anglo-Saxon culture.
What's in a name?
The second question is whether the name of the holiday "Easter" comes from the blurring of the Christian celebration with the worship of a purported pagan fertility goddess named "Eostre" in English and Germanic cultures. There are several problems with the passage in Bede. In his book, The Stations of the Sun, Professor Ronald Hutton (a well-known historian of British paganism and occultism) critiques Bede's sketchy knowledge of other pagan festivals, and argues that the same is true for the statement about Eostre: "It falls into a category of interpretations which Bede admitted to be his own, rather than generally agreed or proven fact."
Spring holiday
So why, then, do English-speaking Christians call their holiday "Easter"?
Read the full article: http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2009/april/was-easter-borrowed-from-pagan-holiday.html