March 20, 687: Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne and a vocal supporter of Celtic practices over Roman ones, dies. Shortly thereafter the Lindisfarne monks created the Lindisfarne Gospels in his honor (see issue 60: How the Irish Were Saved).

March 20, 1747: Severely ill with tuberculosis, Presbyterian missionary David Brainerd ends his work among the Native Americans of Delaware (see issue 77: Jonathan Edwards).

March 20, 1852: Abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of famous Congregational minister Lyman Beecher, publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin (which had been serialized in an antislavery newspaper). The book sold one million copies and was so influential in arousing antislavery sentiment that Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said upon meeting Stowe in 1863: "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!" (see issue 33: Christianity and the Civil War).

March 19, 1229: Having negotiated a treaty with Muslims for Christian access to Jerusalem, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (a reluctant participant in the sixth crusade) enters the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and crowns himself king. But his peace treaty was denounced by members of both faiths, and the same day the Catholic patriarch of Jerusalem pronounced an interdict on the city. Frederick was later excommunicated for making peace instead of war (see issue 40: The Crusades).

March 19, 1684: Jean Astruc, the founder of modern Pentateuchal criticism, is born in France. In 1753 he published an anonymous treatise positing that Moses used two earlier documents—called "Yahweh" and "Elohim" to designate which name for God was used in each—when he wrote the Pentateuch. The theory, which was first met with ridicule, was later expanded by J.G. Eichhorn.

March 19, 1813: Missionary-explorer David Livingstone is born in Blantyre, Scotland. Though he made only one African convert (who later backslid), he became Britain's missionary hero of the day and always considered himself a missionary more than an explorer (see issue 56: David Livingstone).

March 19, 1860: William Jennings Bryan, the best-known fundamentalist in America from the Civil War to the Great Depression, is born in Salem, Illinois. A three-time presidential candidate, he was Wilson's secretary of state and the prosecuting attorney in the famous Scopes Trial in Tennessee (see issue 55: The Monkey Trial and the Rise of Fundamentalism).

March 19, 1928: Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung is born in Germany. Appointed a theological assistant (peritus) of the Vatican II Ecumenical Council, he was later denied permission to teach as a Catholic theologian when his views began to challenge many traditional doctrines (like papal infallibility).

March 18, 386: Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem from 315, dies. Best known for his series of discourses given during Lent for those to be baptized on Easter, he early on advocated the veneration of relics and argued for transubstantiation—the doctrine that the bread and wine of Communion become the actual body and blood of Christ.

March 18, 1123: The First Lateran Council opens in Rome. Convoked by Callistus II, it repeated and confirmed earlier decrees. The Western church, however, remembers its importance as being the first “ecumenical council” held in the West.

March 18, 1314: Thirty-nine Knights Templar are burned at the stake in Paris. Though few others besides Dante championed the innocence of the oft-maligned military order, most scholars now agree with him. Created to protect pilgrims going to the Holy Land, had become wealthy after the crusades. Perhaps because of jealously, they were accused of sodomy, blasphemy, and heresy (see issue 40: The Crusades).

March 18, 1861: London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle, the sanctuary of English Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon, opens. Spurgeon had insisted that the enormous building employ Greek architecture because the New Testament was written in Greek—a decision that influenced church architecture throughout the world (see issue 29: Charles Spurgeon).

March 18, 1885: The “Cambridge Seven,” young aristocrats who decided to become missionaries to China—and thus became celebrities back home—arrive in Shanghai (see issue 52: Hudson Taylor).

March 17, 461 (traditional date): Patrick, missionary to Ireland and that country’s patron saint, dies. Irish raiders captured Patrick, a Romanized Briton, and enslaved him as a youth. He escaped to Gaul (modern France) but returned to Ireland after experiencing a vision calling him back to preach. Patrick enjoyed great success there as a missionary, and only the far south remained predominantly pagan when he died (see issue 60: How the Irish Were Saved).

March 17, 1780: Thomas Chalmers, pastor, social reformer, and one of the founders of the Free Church of Scotland (FCS), is born. By his death in 1847, he had started missions in hundreds of poor urban settings, and he led a third of the Scottish clergy and a half of the laity of the church of Scotland into FCS in 1843. His chief concern throughout his life was the evangelization of the urban poor.

March 16, 1072: Adalbert, Archbishop of Bremen-Hamburg, dies. He energetically promoted missionary activities in Scandanavia, Iceland, Greenland, and the Orkneys, but he seems to have been largely unsuccessful. He did, however, gain considerable influence as tutor of the young Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and for a time was virtual ruler of the empire.

March 15, 1517: Needing money to rebuild St. Peter's basilica, Pope Leo X announces a special sale of indulgences. A Dominican named Johann Tetzel led the way in promoting the sale in Germany and erroneously declared that indulgences would cover future sins (Leo's forgave all past sins). The teaching angered monk Martin Luther, who soon posted his 95 Theses in response (see issue 34: Luther's Early Years).

March 15, 1672: Charles II issues his first declaration of indulgence, suspending Parliament's legislation against Catholic and Protestant dissenters. He was soon forced to rescind the declaration, however, and the following year issued the Test Act, which drove Catholics out of public office.

March 15, 1953: Billy Graham holds his first integrated revival in Chattanooga, TN. Up to this point Graham accommodated southern whites by holding segregated revivals when in the South.