Phoebe’s miraculous memory wins national bible contest
Tuesday 15th March 2011, 3:38PM GMT.
A Shropshire teenager has walked away with first prize in an unusual national contest.
Phoebe Griffith, 17, from Shrewsbury, won the senior section of this year’s Cranmer Awards for reciting, from memory, prayers and bible readings.
The teenager, who attends Moreton Hall School in Oswestry, represented the Church of England’s Lichfield diocese along with Charlotte Eyre, from Cound, near Shrewsbury, and juniors Fabioloa Keowig, 11, and 14 year-old Laura Cook.
They were among scores of young people from across the country to battle it out in London earlier this month in the annual Cranmer Awards contest. Each had been the victor of a regional heat and fought for the coveted national title at Charterhouse.
Organised by the Prayer Book Society, it sees 11-18 year-olds reciting, from memory, their favourite passage from Cranmer’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Anglican church’s founding liturgy, which the charity works hard to defend and promote.
The Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, presented the prizes, saying how special it is to memorise prayers and scripture.
The chairman of the judging panel, the Rev Fred Arvidsson, chaplain to King’s School in Canterbury, congratulated all the finalists on the high quality they achieved, saying they showed clarity, differentiation, pace, projection and tone in performances.
The contest was the brainchild of veteran journalist Charles Moore, then editor of The Spectator magazine who went on to edit The Daily Telegraph, and is now in its 22nd successful year.
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congrats,but would’nt her brain be of better use memorizing educational books instead of fictional ones.
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Phoebe has not only a wonderful brain, she is also very beautiful.
What a wonderful prize to win. With such knowledge she will surely grow wiser by the day.
It reminds me of a rather shameful episode in my young life, when a little bit younger, I was a member of a Shrewsbury boys bible club called the Crusaders. We went camping in Cromer in Norfolk. We also went for a bible reading competition in Sunbury, London. I was the chosen reader! Much to my disgrace now, I lost my nerve and like Tommy the Tank Engine, I went off the rails. To where I cannot now recall. My punishment was fair, I was put to peeling the potatoes for the rest of our stay. I still thoroughly respect the Bible as a history book and love Christian architecture and music.
I am not a Christian now preferring to worship Nature as God.
It goes almost without saying that Sir David Attenborough is my Prophet. I hug trees, I kiss flowers, I look in awe, through my eyeglass at insects, and I smile every time I hear a bird sing.
However, I also lie in bed on Sunday night, with headphones on listening joyfully to our ABC religious program, “For The God who sings”. I love that also.
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