June 26, 1097: The armies of the First Crusade gain control of Nicea, now modern day Iznik, Turkey (see issue 40: Crusades).

June 26, 1892: Pearl S. Buck, Presbyterian missionary to China and author of the bestselling The Good Earth (1931), is born.

June 26, 1932: Francis Schaeffer attends a Presbyterian church meeting where a Unitarian spoke out against the truth of the Bible and its teachings. A young lady named Edith had prepared a rebuttal, but before she could speak, Francis stood up and shredded the speaker's arguments. Edith was impressed, and after she read her remarks, Francis was impressed as well. He walked her home—the beginning of their lifelong relationship and ministry together.

June 25, 1115: St. Bernard founds a monastery at Clairvaux, France, that would soon become the center of the Cistercian religious order. The order had been established 17 years earlier to restore Benedictine monasticism to a more primitive and austere state, but it is Bernard who is most closely associated with it. He founded 70 Cistercian monasteries, which in turn founded another 100 in his lifetime (see issue 24: Bernard of Clairvaux).

June 25, 1530: Lutherans present their summary of faith, known as Confession of Augsburg, to Emperor Charles V. Philipp Melanchthon did most of the work preparing it, but it was not presented until it received Martin Luther’s approval (see issue 39: Luther’s Later Years).

June 25, 1580: On the fiftieth anniversary of the Confession ofAugsburg, Lutherans publish the Book of Concord, which contains all the official confessions of the Lutheran Church, in German.

June 25, 1744: The first Methodist conference convenes in London. Leaders set standards for doctrine, liturgy, and discipline, giving an organizational framework to the “Evangelical Revival” touched off by John Wesley and George Whitfield in 1739 (see issue 2: John Wesley and issue 69: Charles and John Wesley).

June 25, 1865: English missionary J. Hudson Taylor forms the China Inland Mission. Its missionaries would have no guaranteed salaries, nor could they appeal for funds; they would simply trust God to supply their needs. Furthermore, its missionaries would adopt Chinese dress and press the gospel into the China interior (see issue 52: Hudson Taylor).

June 24, 64: Roman Emperor Nero begins persecuting Christians (see issue 27: Persecution in the Early Church).

June 24, 1178: Five Canterbury monks report something exploding on the moon, the only recorded time an asteroidal impact has been observed with the naked eye.

June 24, 1519: Theodore Beza, one of the great statesmen of the Reformation and John Calvin’s successor at Geneva, is born in Vezelay, France (see issue 12: John Calvin).

June 24, 1542: Roman Catholic reformer, mystic, and poet John of the Cross is born in Spain. A student of Teresa of Avila, he attained fame for his poems “The Dark Night [of the Soul]” and “Spiritual Canticle.

June 24, 1813: Henry Ward Beecher, abolitionist and Congregational clergyman, is born in Litchfield, Connecticut (see issue 33: Christianity and the Civil War).

June 23, 1683: English Quaker William Penn, an advocate of peace and religious toleration, signs a treaty with the American Indians of Pennsylvania. Voltaire said the agreement was the only treaty never sworn to and never broken.

June 23, 1780: American troops, using hymnal pages from the First Presbyterian Church for gun wadding, stops the British advance on Springfield, New Jersey (see issue 50: American Revolution).

June 22, 431: The Third Ecumenical Council opens in Ephesus to condemn Nestorianism, which holds that Christ was two separate persons rather than one person with two natures (see issue 51: Heresy in the Early Church).

June 22, 1714: Matthew Henry, English Presbyterian pastor and Bible commentator, dies. His work is still published as Matthew Henry’s Commentary.

June 22, 1750: Colonial preacher Jonathan Edwards is dismissed from his Massachusetts pastorate for pursuing tests for church membership (see issue 8: Jonathan Edwards and issue 77: Jonathan Edwards).

June 21, 1607: English settlers found the first Anglican (later Episcopalian) parish in America at Jamestown, Virginia.

June 21, 1892: Reinhold Niebuhr, American neo-orthodox theologian and ethicist, is born. He rejected some of the optimism of Christian liberalism, arguing for origional sin and for a prophetic, culture-challenging Christianity, but his liberal views on politics, the Bible, and the nature of Christ (he believed Jesus was a moral exemplar, but not fully God) distanced him from conservatives.