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April 1, 1548: Parliament orders the publication of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). Though Thomas Cranmer is rightly credited with the final form of the BCP, he worked with a committee of scholars, including Reformer Martin Bucer, to shape his famous liturgy (see Issue 48: Thomas Cranmer
April 1, 1745: David Brainerd begins his missionary work among the Native Americans of New Jersey, having previously worked in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. The New Jersey natives showed more interest than most, but Brainerd died of tuberculosis only two years into his work there. Still, his diary, published by Jonathan Edwards, became a major force in promoting missions work, inspiring missionaries like William Carey, Henry Martyn, and Thomas Coke (see issue 77: Jonathan Edwards).
 April 2, 742: Charlemagne (Charles the Great) is born. When Pope Leo III crowned him "Emperor of the Romans" on Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne announced, "Our task [as secular ruler] is externally, with God's help, to defend with our arms the holy Church of Christ against attacks by the heathen from any side and against devastation by the infidels and, internally, to strengthen the Church by the recognition of the Catholic faith." Indeed, within his kingdom he was far more influential in church affairs than the pope. Charles appointed and deposed bishops, directed a revision of the text of the Bible, instituted changes to the liturgy, set rules for life in the monasteries, and sent investigators to dismiss priests with insufficient learning or piety.
April 2, 1877: Fundamentalist Baptist evangelist Mordecai Ham is born in Allen County, Kentucky. At the end of his ministry, he claimed one million converts—including Billy Graham, who made a declaration of faith at a 1934 Ham meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina (see issue 65: The Ten Most Influential Christians of the Twentieth Century).
April 2, 1914: Three hundred Pentecostals meet at the Grand Opera House in Hot Springs, Arkansas, for a ten-day conference. Though originally intended merely to organize annual conferences, by its close, the conference had birthed the Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism's largest denomination (see issue 58: Pentecostalism).
April 3, 1593: George Herbert, one of England's greatest religious poets, is born in Montgomery Castle. After shocking the country by quitting his skyrocketing political life to become rector of rural Bremerton (a post he held for three years), "Holy Mr. Herbert" died of tuberculosis. But he gained great fame after his death for two posthumous books: The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, and A Priest to the Temple, or the Country Parson.
April 3, 1897: German pianist and composer Johannes Brahms dies at age 63. Though not employed in a official ecclesiastic position, the devout Lutheran wrote extensively for the church. His German Requiem (1868) is considered by some to be the greatest major sacred choral work of his century.
April 4, 397: Ambrose of Milan, the most talented bishop of the early church, dies. Biblical exegete, political theorist, master of Latin eloquence, musician, and teacher, he brought Roman Emperor Theodosius I to his knees in repentance after the emperor ordered a masscare of his citizens (This marked the first time the state submitted to the church). But he is perhaps best known for teaching his most famous pupil,Augustine of Hippo (see issue 15:Augustine and issue 67:Augustine).
April 4, 636: Isidore, spanish scholar and archbishop of Seville dies. His most extensive and famous work was his Etymologiae (Etymologies), an extensive encyclopedia of early medieval knowledge that, unlike other such works, used liberal arts and secular learning as the foundation of Christian education. (Isidore did remark, however, that it would be better to be without the knowledge of heretics than to be misled by their comments.)
April 4, 1507: Martin Luther is ordained a priest in Erfurt, Germany (see issue 34: Luther's Early Years).
April 4, 1541: Spanish ascetic and theologian Ignatius of Loyola is elected the first General of the Jesuit Order (or the Society of Jesus), which he had founded the previous year.
April 4, 1687: James II issues a Declaration of Indulgence allowing full liberty of worship in England. The government allowed Nonconformists to meet (though justices of the peace had to be notified), forgave penalties for ecclesiastical offenses and no longer required oaths of supremacy and allegiance for those in royal service. Thus the declaration severely threatened Anglican control of church and state.
April 4, 1742: Charles Wesley preaches his famous sermon, "Awake, thou that sleepest," to the University of Oxford. The sermon soon became Methodism's most popular tract (see issue 2: John Wesley, issue 69: The Wesleys and issue 31: Golden Age of Hymns).
April 4, 1968: Civil rights leader and Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
April 5, 1524: Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli marries Anna Reinhart for the second time—this time in public. In 1522, Zwingli (and 10 other priests) appealed to the bishop of Constance for permission to marry. When the bishop refused the petition, Zwingli married secretly and, later that year, resigned from the priesthood (see issue 4: Ulrich Zwingli).
April 5, 1649: John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay, dies. Profoundly religious, Winthrop, who left England because of its persecution of Puritans, believed New England to be "a city upon a hill" for the world to see and emulate (see issue 41: The American Puritans).
April 5, 1811: Robert Raikes, founder of English Sunday schools in 1780, dies. Raikes built his Sunday schools not for respectable and well-mannered children of believers, but for (in one woman's description) "multitudes of wretches who, released on that day from employment, spend their day in noise and riot." In 4 years, 250,000 students were attending the schools, by Raikes's death, 500,000, and by 1831, 1.25 million(see issue 53: William Wilberforce).
April 6, 1249: Muslims take King Louis IX of France prisoner during the seventh crusade, which was supposed to overcome the Muslim political center in Egypt. After showing bravery in the face of torture, he was allowed to buy his freedom for a huge sum in gold—and the city of Damietta (see issue 40: The Crusades and issue 74: Christians & Muslims).
April 6, 1528: Albrecht Durer, German painter, engraver, and designer of woodcuts, dies. Famous for his religious scenes, he may have been so influenced by Luther (whom he called "the great Christian man who has helped me out of great anxieties") that he converted to Protestantism. His most popular work is "Praying Hands.
April 6, 1801: The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church recognizes the new African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Blacks who were denied membership and/or recognition within white Methodist churches, particularly in Philadelphia and New York, formed the original AME (see issue 62: Bound for Canaan).
April 6, 1932: Eric Liddell, the Olympic athlete featured in the film Chariots of Fire, makes his evangelistic debut by sharing his testimony to a group of men in Armadale, Scotland. Liddell later returned to the mission field in China, where he was born, and ministered in an internment camp following the Japanese invasion. He died in 1945 from a massive brain tumor.
April 7, 1199: England's King Richard I, the "Lionhearted," dies at age 41. Richard, as one of the three leaders of the Third Crusade, negotiated Christian access to Jerusalem (see issue 40: The Crusades).
April 7, 1498: Franciscan friars arrange an "ordeal by fire" in Florence to settle the dispute between reforming preacher Jerome Savonarola and Pope Alexander VI. Alexander had excommunicated Savonarola for preaching against papal corruption; Savonarola responded by calling for the pope to step down. If Savonarola's friend Fra Domenico could walk safely between two walls of fire, God was supposedly on the Florentine city-manager's side. But Savonarola never sent Domenico out. The crowd rioted, Savonarola's power crumbled, and he was soon arrested, tortured, and executed.
April 7, 1541: On his thirty-fifth birthday, Francis Xavier, cofounder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, for Goa, India. The first Roman Catholic missionary there, he also traveled to Japan, Sri Lanka, and other countries in Asia. It is hard to say how many people Xavier, the Roman Catholic patron saint of all missions, converted; the figure goes as high as 1 million, but modern scholars peg the number around 30,000. Jesuits claim 700,000.
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