The Current Week in 2009:

November 15, 1280: German theologian Albertus Magnus, teacher of Thomas Aquinas and defender of his theology (as well as a brilliant writer on Aristotelian thought), dies at age 87. Declared a doctor of the church in 1931 by Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII proclaimed him the patron of natural scientists in 1941 (see issue 73: Thomas Aquinas).

November 15, 1397: Thomas Parentuchelli, who would later take the name Nicholas V and is considered the best of the Renaissance popes, is born. As pope he led a blameless personal life, loved the new studies in arts and sciences, restored many ruined churches, and founded the Vatican Library.

November 15, 1630: German mathematician and astronomer Johann Kepler, famous for his laws of planetary motion, dies at 58. As a Christian, he believed the universe to be an expression of God's being rather than God's creation (see issue 76: Christian Face of the Scientific Revolution).

November 15, 1885: Mwanga, ruler of Buganda (now part of Uganda), beheads recent Anglican convert and royal family member Joseph Mukasa. Mukasa opposed the massacring of Anglican missionary bishop James Hannington and his colleagues in October. The bloodbath continued through January 1887 as the ruler killed Mukasa's Christian pages and other Anglican and Catholic leaders. Collectively, the martyrs of Uganda were canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1964.

November 15, 1917: Oswald Chambers dies while serving as chaplain to British troops in Egypt during World War I. His widow, Gertrude, spent the rest of her life compiling his notes, lectures, and sermons into books, including the bestselling My Utmost for His Highest.

November 16, 1621: The Papal Chancery adopts January as the beginning of the calendar year, instead of March.

November 16, 1855: Scottish missionary-explorer David Livingstone first sees and names Victoria Falls (in modern Zimbabwe) during his first missionary journey though Africa (see issue 56: David Livingstone).

November 17, 3 B.C.: According to early church father Clement of Alexandria (c.155-c.220), Jesus was born on this date (issue 59: Jesus of Nazareth).

November 17, 270 (traditional date): Gregory Thaumaturgus ("The Wonder Worker"), a well-loved bishop in Pontus and the author of the first Christian biography (on Origen) dies. A legend, from a generation later, about the Virgin Mary visiting him is the first account of a Marian apparition (see issue 57: Converting the Empire).

November 17, 1558: Elizabeth I's accession to the English throne leads to the re-establishment of the Church of England.

November 17, 1961: Charles H. Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ, dies. His was the first major denomination to emerge from the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, where Mason received the baptism of the Holy Spirit (see issue 58: Pentecostalism).

November 18, 1095: Pope Urban II opens the Council of Clermont to reform the Church and to plan the First Crusade. The 200 bishops attending the council decreed that those traveling to Jerusalem would be granted a plenary indulgence (see issue 40: The Crusades).

November 18, 1302: Pope Boniface VIII publishes "Unam Sanctam," declaring there is "One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" outside of which there is "neither salvation nor remission of sins." Emphasizing the pope's position as Supreme Head of the Church, it also demanded that temporal powers subjugate themselves to spiritual ones (see issue 70: Dante Alighieri).

November 18, 1874: The Women's Christian Temperance Union is founded in Cleveland. Claiming the power of the Holy Spirit, Protestant members would march into saloons and demand they be closed. It was the largest temperance organization and the largest women's organization in the U.S. before 1900.

November 19, 1861: At the suggestion of her minister, abolitionist Julia Ward Howe wrote "some good words to that tune" of the popular song "John Brown's Body." InFebruary, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was published in the Atlantic Monthly and became very popular, especially after the Civil War (see issue 33: Christianity and the Civil War).

November 19, 1862: Baseball player-turned-revivalist William (Billy) Sunday is born in Iowa. An estimated 100 million people attended his 300 revivals, and he claimed that at least one million of them "hit the sawdust trail" to come forward and profess their conversion to Christ as a result of his preaching.

November 20, 1541: In Switzerland, French reformer John Calvin, 32, established a theocratic government at Geneva, thereby creating a home base for emergent Protestantism throughout Europe (see issue 12: John Calvin).

November 20, 1572: The first Presbyterian meeting house in England is established at Wandsworth, Surrey.

November 20, 1620: Peregrine White, son of William and Susanna White, is the first child born on the Mayflower (see issue 41: The American Puritans).

November 20, 1806: Baptist preacher Isaac Backus, an influential voice in arguing for religious liberty in Massachusetts and later the United States, dies (see issue 6: Baptists).

November 21, 235 (traditional date): Anterus is elected pope, a position he would hold for only a few weeks. According to the Liber pontificalis, he was martyred for ordering the "acts of the martyrs" to be written down and put in the church library.

November 21, 1620: Pilgrims sign the Mayflower Compact, a typical church covenant of the time (see issue 41: The American Puritans).

November 21, 1638: A General Assembly at Glasgow abolishes the episcopal form of church government and establishes presbyterianism, creating the Church of Scotland (see issue 46: John Knox).

November 21, 1768: Friedrich E.D. Schleiermacher, a hugely influential, liberal, German theologian and philosopher, is born in Breslau. The author of On Religion and The Christian Faith, he placed a strong emphasis on feeling as the basis of religion.

November 21, 1964: The third session of Vatican II closes with the approval of three documents. One of these, the "Decree on Ecumenism," declared both Catholics and Protestants to blame for past divisions and called for dialogue, not derision, in the future.

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