This Day in Christian History Revisited
By Jennifer Woodruff Tait
So, as you know, every day on our website we feature “Today in Christian History.” We have stories, quotes, and this year have introduced inspiring devotionals keyed to the Christian year. Then, for each day, we have a list of notable events that happened in church history on that day. These also go out by email every morning. They are all compiled and written by Christian History’s seemingly tireless layout editor, Dan Graves.
Earlier this year, we started a huge project to fact-check all the notable events. They have been collected over a number of years from a number of different places and we’re making sure that the dates are right, the facts are right, the style is consistent, and any typos vanish. I have personally checked on every single story from February through July, and I find it absolutely fascinating to see what occurred on what day.
Did you know, for example, that Johann Sebastian Bach died 210 years to the day after Thomas Cromwell was executed? Or that the famed World Missionary Conference of 1910 was called to order on the same day William Carey had sailed for India in 1793, which was also the same day Phillip William Otterbein was ordained and Martin and Katie Luther got married? Or that the same day saw the death of founder of Missionary Aviation Fellowship Betty Green, the arrest of Watchman Nee, the first public performance of Brahms’s Requiem, and Nestorius becoming patriarch of Constantiople and sparking one of early Christianity’s great theological debates?
The range of events is compelling, too: births, deaths, famous books, missionary journeys, arrests, debates, ordinations, excommunications, churches consecrated, revivals, popes becoming popes, and kings becoming kings. It brings home to me how much we live our daily lives of faith and don’t always see how they all fit into the bigger picture.
Anyway, check it out. I’m off to go start looking at the stories for August.