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March 25, 1625: England's King James I dies. In 1604, at the Hampton Court Conference, James authorized the translation project that produced the 1611 King James (Authorized) Version of the Bible (see issue 43: How We Got Our Bible).
March 25, 1797: Social reformer John Winebrenner, founder of the Church of God (now known as the Churches of God, General Conference), is born in Maryland.
March 26, 655: Deusdedit becomes the first English-born Archbishop of Canterbury. He served until 664.
March 26, 752: Stephen III assumes the papacy after Stephen II dies. But Stephen III is sometimes called Stephen II, since the realStephen II hardly counts: he died a mere four days after his election!
March 26, 1831: Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the first black bishop in America, dies at age 71 (see issue 62: Bound for Canaan).
March 27, 1378: Gregory XI, the last French (Avignonese) pope, dies. Arguments over who would replace him led to what is called "The Great Schism," when the creation of antipopes divided Western Christianity (see issue 68: Jan Hus; for information on the other "Great Schism," between Eastern and Western Churches in 1054, see issue 54: Eastern Orthodoxy).
March 27, 1536: Swiss Protestants sign the First Helvetic Confession, the first uniform confession of faith for all German-speaking Switzerland and an important Reformation document.
March 27, 1667: English poet John Milton publishes Paradise Lost, an epic of humankind's creation and fall.
March 28, 1515: Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila, founder of a reformed Carmelite order, is born. Though her contemporaries noted her practicality and administrative skills, her legacy stems from her mysticism, evidenced in her Autobiography, Way of Perfection, Book of Foundations, and Interior Castle.
March 28, 1592: Czech theologian Jan Comenius, educator of the Bohemian (or Moravian) Brethren, is born in Nivnice, Czechoslovakia. As today, the region was tormented by warfare, and Comenius believed the only way to bring peace was through education. He designed a plan for educating every province and country, which he presented in The Great Didactic(1632). Education, he believed, should be more than just learning facts and languages (as was the case in his day), it should mold Christian character and should be marked by observing the physical world. He is called "the father of modern education" (see issue 13: Jan Amos Comenius).
 March 28, 1661: Scottish Parliament passes the Rescissory Act, repealing all church-state legislation created since 1633 (Charles I's reign). In essence, the act restored the Anglican episcopacy to Scotland and quashed Presbyterianism, which had been the national church since 1638. In 1690 Parliament again established the Church of Scotland as Presbyterian (see issue 46: John Knox).
March 28, 1937: Billy Graham gets his first opportunity to preach when his teacher John Minder unexpectedly assigns him the Easter evening sermon. Graham tried to get out of it, saying he was unprepared, but Minder persisted. Desperately nervous, Graham raced through four memorized sermons, originally 45 minutes each, in eight minutes (see issue 65: The Ten Most Influential Christians of the Twentieth Century).
March 29, 1139: In the bull "Omne Datum Optimum," Pope Innocent II grants the Templars "every best gift" and makes them an independent unit within the church. Created to protect pilgrims from bandits in the Holy Land, the Templars rose in influence and wealth and eventually earned the jealousy of other Christians (see issue 40: The Crusades).
March 30, 1533: Thomas Cranmer is consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, England's highest religious post. Believing himself subject to the king, Henry VIII, he granted the monarch's annulment ending his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. This touched off the English Reformation, and Cranmer became its chief architect. He is also known for writing the first Book of Common Prayer(see issue 48: Thomas Cranmer).
March 30, 1820: The first Protestant missionaries arrive at the Sandwich Islands, now known as Hawaii, and are welcomed by King Kamehameha II.
March 30, 1858: Episcopal minister Dudley Tyne, burdened for the salvation of husbands and fathers, speaks to a rally of 5,000 men in Philadelphia. "I would rather this right arm were amputated at the trunk than that I should come short of my duty to you in delivering God's message," he said. Over 1,000 men were converted. Two weeks later, Tyne lost his right arm in a farming accident, and he died soon after. His last words, "Stand up for Jesus, father, and tell my brethren of the ministry to stand up for Jesus," inspired the hymn "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.
March 31, 1146: French monastic reformer and theologian Bernard of Clairvaux preaches for the Second Crusade at Vezelay, France. He urged his audience to "take the sign of the cross," and so many responded that he ran out of cloth crosses to pass out (he ended up tearing pieces from his own habit to stitch on the shirts of would-be crusaders). When the crusade proved to be a failure, people were shocked that a venture supported by such a powerful man of God could go wrong (see issue 40: The Crusades).
March 31, 1492: After the Inquisition failed to convert Spain's Jews, monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella sign an edict giving them three months to leave the country. An estimated 150,000 Jews fled, the last reportedly leaving August 2, the traditional anniversary of the destruction of the first and second temples. The next day, August 3, Christopher Columbus sailed for America.
March 31, 1596: French philosopher Rene Descartes is born. Though more famous for his saying, "Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am), he followed that statement with a logical argument for the existence of God. In essence, he argued that the idea of God, a perfect being, could only be caused by that perfect God. Though fellow philosopher-mathematician-scientist Blaise Pascal (an avid Christian) considered Descartes a mere Deist, "letting [God] give a tap to set the world in motion," Descartes repeatedly wrote about his devotion to Roman Catholicism.
March 31, 1732: Franz Joseph Haydn, mentor to both Beethoven and Mozart, is born in Austria. His greatest contribution to church music is probably his 1798 oratorio The Creation.
March 31, 1816: Pioneer Methodist bishop Francis Asbury dies at age 71. During his 45-year ministry in America, he traveled on horseback or in carriage an estimated 300,000 miles, delivering some 16,500 sermons (see issue 45: Camp Meetings and Circuit Riders).
March 31, 1879: Father John Veniaminov, missionary to Alaska, dies. Known as St. Innocent of Alaska, Veniaminov pioneered Russian Orthodox church plants in the Alaskan islands, and located his archdiocese in Sitka.
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