Christian History Today
Christian History Today
December 3, 1154 – Pope Adrian IV Elected
Guess how many popes were English? A grand total of one: Pope Adrian IV who was elected on December 3, 1154. He was born Nicholas Breakspear in St. Albans, England (pictured here) and issued a Papal order (called a bull) telling the King of England to invade Ireland...
December 2, 1697 – St. Paul’s Cathedral Dedicated
St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, dedicated on December 2, 1697, has been an icon for the Church of England. Designed by England’s most celebrated architect Christopher Wren (who is buried there), it has been the site of the funerals of both Winston Churchill and...
December 1, 1521 – Pope Leo X Dies
When Martin Luther decided to nail those 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, he was doing much more than coming up with some thoughts on how the church was being run. One thing he did was get in big-time trouble with Pope Leo X,...
November 30, 1170 – Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket Assassinated
When Henry II was king of England in the 1100s, he began to curb the clergy's power and pull away from the Pope's influence and Rome's. He held a conference called the Constitutions of Clarendon on 16 articles that set forth these restrictions on the church. He got...
November 29, 1530 – Cardinal Thomas Wolsey Dies
King Henry VIII's desire for a divorce can't be overstated when we discuss how the Bible was put together and how the Protestant Reformation came about in England. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was very powerful in King Henry's court and held influential government offices...
November 28, 1858 – First Baptist Church in Poland Organized
Baptist Churches in the US seem plentiful, but the first one organized in Poland happened on November 28, 1858. William Weist baptized eight people in the town of Stolzenberg (now called Rozanki) in what at that time was in Prussia, which is in Poland today. Don't...
November 27, 1095 – Crusades Begin in Clermont, France
History has shown us one of the best ways to cure rivalries is to have a common enemy. As the papacy's influence grew in the Middle Ages, and as kings and emperors sought/fought for power, Christianity had a great deal of infighting. But on November 27, 1095, Pope...
November 26, 1883 – Sojourner Truth Dies
Isabella Van Wagener is not generally recognized unless we know her more famous name, Sojourner Truth. When she died on November 26, 1883, in Battle Creek, Michigan, she had become world-famous for her evangelism and women's rights efforts. She had a quick tongue...
November 25, 1748 – Issac Watts Died
Cambridge and Oxford are two of the most recognized universities in the world, but from 1660 to the mid-1800s, the only people allowed to enroll were members of the Church of England. Those who were "non-conformists" attended what were known as dissenting academies;...
November 24, 1880 – Rev. W.W. Colley and the Baptist Foreign Missions Commission
On November 24, 1880, the Rev. W.W. Colley led 150 fellow African Americans to form the Baptist Foreign Missions Commission at a convention in Montgomery, Alabama. In 2013, the Southern Baptist Convention's International Missions Board named its International...
November 23, 1654 – Blaise Pascal Becomes a Christian
Mathematics genius Blaise Pascal created a calculating machine in 1652. He was brilliant in not only mathematics but also physics and literature. On November 23, 1654, he became a Christian and wrote in his journal after reading the longest chapter in the Bible,...
November 22, 1963 – C.S. Lewis Dies
The world most likely remembers November 22, 1963, as the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. However, two very different British writers died the same day: Aldus Huxley and C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis' journey was from atheist to one of the greatest...