Jump directly to the Content

Christian History

Today in Christian History

March 22

March 22, 1638: Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson is expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony. Questioned about her teachings on grace, she insisted she had received divine revelations. When her examiners asked how she knew these came from God, she replied, "How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son, being a breach of the Sixth Commandment?" Although Hutchinson repented of her "errors," her questioners decided she was lying and banished her from the colony (see issue 41: American Puritans).

March 22, 1758: Jonathan Edwards, America's greatest theologian, dies from the effects of a smallpox vaccination after arriving in New Jersey to accept the presidency of what is now Princeton University (see issue 8: Jonathan Edwards and issue 77: Jonathan Edwards).

Read These Next

April 24, 387: On this day, Augustine of Hippo writes in his autobiographical Confessions, "We were baptized and all anxiety for our past life vanished away." The 33-year-old had been a teacher of rhetoric and pagan philosophies at some of the Roman Empire's finest schools, but after great influence by his mother, Monica, and the famous bishop Ambrose, he turned to Christianity. His baptism by Ambrose, on Easter Sunday, marked his entrance into the church (see issue 15: Augustine and ...

More from April 24
close