Advancing the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God.
August 21, 1874: Henry Ward Beecher, a popular Congregational clergyman from Connecticut, is accused of adultery. Sued for $100,000 by the alleged adulteress's husband, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe (and son of evangelical leader Lyman Beecher) would eventually be exonerated by his congregation and the jury (which voted 9-3 in favor of Beecher).
August 20, 1153: Bernard of Clairvaux, French theologian, monastic reformer, and hymn writer (“O Sacred Head Now Wounded”), dies. His motto was “To Know Jesus and Jesus Crucified” (see issue 24: Bernard of Clairvaux).
August 20, 1745: Francis Asbury, one of the two first Methodist bishops in America (the other was Thomas Coke), is born in Birmingham, England (see issue 45: Camp Meetings and Circuit Riders).
August 20, 1912: William Booth, founder and first General of the Salvation Army, dies (see issue 26: William and Catherine Booth).
August 19, 1099: Three years after setting out, the First Crusade armies defeat the Saracens at the Battle of Ascalon, a Palestinian city. For more than a century afterwards, Christians controlled the Holy Land (see issue 40: The Crusades).
August 19, 1662: Blaise Pascal, French scientist, polemicist, and Christian apologist, dies at the age of 39 after an extended illness. In 1654, he experienced his “definitive conversion” where he discovered the “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and not of the philosophers and men of science” (see issue 76: Christian Face of the Scientific Revolution).
August 19, 1843: C.I. Scofield, dispensationalist creator of the Scofield Reference Bible, is born near Clinton, Michigan (see issue 61: The End of the World).
August 19, 1886: Richard G. Spurling, a Baptist minister, founds the Christian Union in Tennessee. In 1923 the organization took the name the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, a Pentecostal denomination that now has hundreds of thousands of members.
August 18, 1688: John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress preaches his last sermon, in London (see issue 11: John Bunyan).
August 18, 1732: In an emotional farewell service, Moravian Christians at Herrnhut sing 100 hymns and commission Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann as missionaries to slaves in the West Indies. Herrnhut, a community of only 600 members sent more than 70 missionaries between 1732 and 1742 (see issue 1: Nicolaus Zinzendorf).
August 17, 1635: Richard Mather arrives in Boston. He began the "Mather Dynasty" in New England Puritanism that also included his son, Cotton, and grandson, Increase (see issue 41: American Puritans).
August 17, 1761: William Carey, who would become a tremendously influential and effective Baptist missionary to India, is born in Northamptonshire, England (see issue 36: William Carey).
August 16, 1773: Pope Clement XIV dissolves the Jesuit Order, fearing its growing power. Pius VIII restored the order 41 years later.
August 16, 1875: American evangelist Charles Grandison Finney, the leading revivalist of the nineteenth century, dies (See issue 20: Charles G. Finney).
August 15, 1096: The First Crusade sets out from Europe to "rescue" Jerusalem from the Muslim Turks (see issue 40: The Crusades).
August 15, 1195: Anthony of Padua is born in Lisbon, Portugal. The most popular and effective preacher of his day (he had studied under Francis of Assisi), attracting crowds of up to 30,000, Anthony earned the title "hammer of the heretics" for converting so many of the dualistic Cathari. "He is truly the Ark of the Covenant and the treasury of Holy Scripture," said Pope Gregory, who added that if all the Bibles of the world were lost, Anthony could surely rewrite them.
August 15, 1534: Ignatius of Loyola founds "the company of Jesus," which he described as similar to a group of fur traders, only focused on God's will. In 1540 they gained the approval of the pope, who named them the Society of Jesus. The vision and disciplines of the "Jesuits," as they came to be called, caught the imagination of Europe. Soon Jesuits flocked to Europe's major cities as well as the new world: Goa, Mexico City, Quebec, Buenos Aires, and Bogota. They opened hospices for the dying, sought financial support for the poor, founded orphanages, and opened schools.
August 15, 1549: Spanish Jesuits led by Francis Xavier become the first Christian missionaries in Japan. Xavier went to Japan hoping to eventually reach China. He figured once he evangelized China, Japan's conversion would be much easier because, he believed, Japan looked to China for wisdom.
August 15, 1846: Addressing rumors that he mocked Christianity, Abraham Lincoln publishes a broadside on his religion: "That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular . . . " (see issue 33: Christianity and the Civil War).
August 14, 1248: Construction of the Cologne Cathedral begins. Workers completed it on the same date in 1880.
August 13, 523: John I is consecrated pope. Shortly after his appointment, John became the first pope to leave Italy—with unfortunate results. He traveled to Constantinople, the center of Eastern Christianity, but on his return was imprisoned by the Arian king of Italy, Theodoric, who suspected John of conspiring with the king’s Byzantine antagonists.
August 13, 662: Maximus Confessor, the Eastern leader in the fight against Monothelitism (the heresy that Christ had divine, but no human, will), dies after being tortured for his beliefs.
August 13, 1587: Members of Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to Roanoke baptises Manko, the first American Indian convert to Protestantism.
August 13, 1667: Jeremy Taylor, English scholar, theologian, and author of Holy Living and Holy Dying, dies at 54.
August 13, 1727: Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, at age 27, organizes Bohemian Protestant refugees into the Moravian community of “Unitas Fratrum” (united brotherhood) (see issue 1: Nicolaus Zinzendorf).
August 13, 1908: Ira D. Sankey, best known as the music leader in D.L. Moody’s evangelistic crusades, dies (see issue 25: Dwight L. Moody).
August 12, 304: Euplius, a Christian deacon from Sicily, is martyred for owning the Scriptures and proclaiming himself a Christian (loudly and repeatedly). Martyrdom was so common under Emperor Diocletian that many Christians expected it and some, like Euplius, actively sought it out (see issue 27: Persecution in the Early Church).
August 12, 1553: Pope Julius III orders all copies of the Talmud to be confiscated and burned.
August 12, 1942: William Cameron Townsend and Rev. L.L. Legters incorporate the Wycliffe Bible Translators in California.