Today in Christian History
MELETIUS WENT FROM ONE LEADING CHURCH POSITION TO ANOTHER (1921)
“By the mercy of God, an entire version of the books of the Old and New Testaments into the Chinese language was this day brought to a conclusion.”
Creegan, Charles C. Pioneer Missionaries and the Church. New York: American Tract Society, 1903.
Calculate your spiritual gains and losses (1803)
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain—Philippians 1:21 (KJV). Oh happy, happy soul, who can say with Pau...
Events
450
Empress Pulcheria marries General Marcian in Constantinople on the stipulation he keep her virginity inviolate.
Authority for the date: Christian Women in the Patristic World.1491
Boabdil, the Unlucky, capitulates to Christian rulers Ferdinand and Isabella, yielding Granada and ending the last Moorish toehold in Spain.
Authority for the date: Malachi Martin. The Jesuits. Linden Press, 1987.1535
The Order of Ursuline Nuns is founded for the education of girls and the care of the sick and needy.
Authority for the date: Wikipedia.1554
Martin Chemnitz, who will be called “the Second Martin” because of his influence in the Lutheran church, is ordained by Johannes Bugenhagen at Wittenberg.
Authority for the date: The Northwest Lutheran.1748
Death at Stoke Newington, England, of Isaac Watts, who wrote close to 600 hymns, including “At the Cross,” “Come, We That Love the Lord, “ “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun,” “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” and “Joy to the World.”
Authority for the date: Encyclopedia Americana, 1956.1841
Tsar Nicholas I grants Evangelical Lutherans in his empire’s German enclaves independence from the Lutheran consistory at St. Petersburg. These pietistic groups wanted to select their own ministers and make spiritual decisions free from interference by more formal Lutherans.
Authority for the date: Anar Alizade, Christianity in Azerbaijan1854
Death of John Kitto who raised standards for Bible encyclopedias by adding images and combining articles on relevant topics such as New Testament archeology. Although deaf, he had traveled and taught in the Middle East, laying the foundation for his biblical knowledge. He had also founded and edited the Journal of Sacred Literature.
Authority for the date: Encyclopedia Americana, 1956.1877
Ahmed Fahm, an Egyptian Muslim, having converted to Christianity, is baptized. When he refuses to return to Islam, his relatives kidnap him and show him weapons intended to kill him. He will gain his release and travel to Scotland to obtain a theological education, returning to Egypt to work with a mission and found a clinic.
Authority for the date: Dictionary of African Christian Biography.1884
James Otis Sargent Huntington, who has been working among the poor and immigrants at Holy Cross Mission in New York City, takes a life vow consecrating himself to this vocation. Because of his insistence on the social witness of the Church, he will increase Episcopal Church commitment to social ministries.
Authority for the date: Episcopal Church. Holy Women, Holy Men.1884
Death in Clifton, England, of Susanna Winkworth, who had translated German religious works into English. Among her more notable works were translations of the fourteenth-century Theologia Germanica and a life and some sermons of the mystic Johann Tauler. Her sister, Catherine Winkworth, was also a translator, especially of German hymns.
Authority for the date: Dictionary of National Biography1899
Death of Robert Lowry, Baptist clergyman who wrote many beloved hymn tunes, including the music to “All the Way My Savior Leads Me,” “I Need Thee Every Hour,” “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus,” and “Marching to Zion.”
Authority for the date: http://www.hymnary.org/person/Lowry_Robert.1900
Death of Willibald Beyschlag, a German theologian and church leader, editor, and founder of the Protestant League. Although a pietist and an evangelical, he had rejected the formula developed by the Council of Chalcedon (which stated that Christ has two natures coming together to form one person) and the rationalism of David Strauss and Ernest Renan that denied the divinity of Christ. He was also a strong proponent of separation of church and state.
Authority for the date: www.lutheranhistory.org.1921
Meletius Metaxakis becomes ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church as Meletius IV. In his extraordinary life, he will be the only man successively to lead three autocephalous (independent) Orthodox Churches. He will found metropolitan sees of the Greek Orthodox Church in America and as ecumenical patriarch will reach out to the Anglican Church.
Authority for the date: Betz, Hans Dieter, et al. Religion Past and Present.1935
Sun Chu Kil, who had been at the heart of Korean revival and resistance to Japanese occupation, collapses while preaching at a Bible conference. He dies the next day.
Authority for the date: Noll, Mark and Carolyn Nystrom. Clouds of Witnesses.1954
Death in Lakeville, Connecticut, of Presbyterian minister Henry Sloane Coffin, a leader in liberal evangelicalism in the United States, and for nineteen years president of Union Theological Seminary.
Authority for the date: Britannica.