CHURCH HISTORY TODAY

What happened in the church today.

October

October 1
1878
The Regions Beyond Mission, an evangelical Baptist organization, opens Harley College in Ireland. The school has since trained hundreds of missionaries.

1931
In a letter testifying to his recent religious conversion, British literary scholar C. S. Lewis writes,"! have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity."

October 2
1846
Birth of Samuel R. Driver, English Semitic language scholar. Driver was Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford and coedited the Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1891-1905), known in scholarly circles as Brown-Driver-Briggs.

1930 The International Lutheran Hour debuts on a network of thirty-six American radio stations, with Dr. Walter A. Maier as speaker.

October 3
1690
Death of Robert Barclay, Scottish Quaker theologian. He published An Apology for the True Christian's Divinity, an important statement of Quaker doctrine.

1852
In New York City the Reverend Thomas Gallaudet, an Episcopal priest, holds the first church service for deaf worshippers in a small chapel at New York University. Gallaudet held spoken worship services in the morning, and services using American Sign Language in the afternoon.

October 4
1880
Birth of Homer A. Rodeheaver. American song evangelist and hymnbook publisher. An associate of Billy Sunday's for twenty years, Rodeheaver composed many gospel choruses and also established the Winona Lake Summer School of Music.

1965
Pope Paul VI arrives in New York City, making him the first pope to visit America. On the first day of his visit, he celebrates Mass at Yankee Stadium and addresses the United Nations on the need for world peace.

October 5
1703
Birth of Jonathan Edwards, considered by some the greatest theologian of American Puritanism. Edwards is widely remembered for his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which he delivered in Enfield, Connecticut, in 1741.

1744
David Brainerd begins missionary work among the Indians along New Jersey's Susquehanna River.

October 6
1520
German reformer Martin Luther publishes his famous Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which attacks the sacramental system of the Catholic Church.

1816
Birth of William B. Bradbury, American music teacher, editor, and publisher. Bradbury composed the music for several popular hymns, including "He Leadeth Me," "Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us," "My Hope Is Built," and "Sweet Hour of Prayer."

October 7
1810
Birth of Henry Alford. Anglican clergyman and biblical philologist. He published a famous edition of the Greek New Testament (1849-61) and wrote the hymn "Come. Ye Thankful People, Come."

1873
Baptist missionary Charlotte "Lottie" Moon arrives in China. Though born into wealth, Moon gave her whole life to missions and said, "If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for the women of China."

October 8
451
The Council of Chalcedon opens near Istanbul (Byzantium) in Asia Minor. Attended by more than five hundred bishops (the largest attendance of the early councils), the council produced a statement of faith, known afterward as the Chalcedonian Definition.

1927
Birth of Jim Elliot. American Plymouth Brethren missionary to Ecuador. In 1956, during an attempt to make contact with a hostile tribe. Jim and four fellow missionaries were killed by the very people they were attempting to evangelize. The story was published the following year by Elliot's widow, Elisabeth, in Through Gates of Splendor.

October 9
1974
Death of Czech-born German businessman Oskar Schindler, who is credited with saving more than two thousand Jews during the Holocaust. Although a strong Catholic, Schindler, at his own request, was buried in Jerusalem.

1976
Delegates to the American Lutheran Church convention in Washington DC agree to delete most references to gender in official church documents.

October 10
1560
Birth of Dutch Reformed clergyman James (Jacob) Arminius. As a professor at Leiden (1603-09),Arminius could not accept the strict Calvinist teaching on predestination, and instead developed a doctrine of universal redemption and conditional predestination. Arminian theology is evident today in Methodist doctrine.

1821
Twenty-nine-year-old American law student Charles Finney is dramatically converted in the woods near his home. He immediately abandoned his law career and went on to become one of America's great revivalists, credited with the conversion of five hundred thousand souls.

October 11
1954
American Presbyterian missionary and apologist Francis Schaeffer writes in a letter, "Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important, but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship—and not as ends in themselves."

1998
Pope John Paul II decrees the first Jewish-born saint of the modern era, Edith Stein (1891-1942). A German Carmelite nun and spiritual writer, Stein was arrested by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry. She was murdered at Auschwitz on August 10, 1942.

October 12
1762
The Association of Philadelphia Baptists votes to establish a college in Warren, Rhode Island. Incorporated in 1764 as Rhode Island College, the campus moved to Providence in 1770. In 1804 it became Brown University.

1895
Death of Cecil Frances Alexander, Irish poet, hymn writer, and wife of William Alexander, an Irish clergyman who became primate of Ireland in 1893. During her life, Alexander published several volumes of verse, and three of her poems later became popular hymns: "All Things Bright and Beautiful," "Jesus Calls Us," and "There Is a Green Hill Far Away."

October 13
1605
Death of Theodore Beza. John Calvin's successor in Geneva as the head of the Swiss Reformation.

1877
English devotional poet Frances Ridley Havergal pens the words to the hymn "Who Is on the Lord's Side?" based on 1 Chronicles 12:1-8.

October 14
1876
Birth of Henry A. (Harry) Ironside. Canadian-born American clergyman and Bible teacher. Called the "archbishop of Fundamentalism," Ironside pastored Chicago's Moody Memorial Church from 1930 to 1948.

1922
In Detroit the Evangelical Association and the United Evangelical Church merge to form the Evangelical Church, with a combined membership of 260,000.

October 15
1886
On the twenty-second anniversary of the death of his wife, Isabella, Scottish clergyman and biographer Andrew Bonar reflects in his diary, "I have learned.. .that the Lord can fill the soul with Himself, when He takes away what seemed indispensable to our happiness on earth."

1932
Gladys Aylward sails from Liverpool, England, for Asia in an effort to bring the gospel to China. In 1958 her biography, The Small Woman, was made into an award-winning film: Inn of the Sixth Happiness.

October 16
1701
In Saybrook, Connecticut, the Reverend John Pierpont gains a charter to establish the Collegiate School under the auspices of a group of Congregationalists who were dissatisfied with the growing liberalism at Harvard. (The school later changed its name to Yale University.)

1812
Death of Henry Martyn, Anglican missionary to India and Persia. During his brief ministry, Martyn translated the New Testament into Urdu and Persian.

October 17
1912
Birth of Albino Luciani, Italian Catholic cardinal, who became Pope John Paul I for thirty-four days, before his death in 1978.

1979
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Mother Teresa (Agnes Bojaxhiu), the Albanian Catholic nun who founded the Society of the Missionaries of Charity.

October 18
1469
Isabella of Castille marries Ferdinand II of Aragon, effectively uniting nearly all the Christian areas of Spain under one monarchy.

1595
Birth of Edward Winslow, English-born separatist and American Pilgrim leader. A passenger on the Mayflower, Winslow later served three terms as governor of the Plymouth Colony (1633, 1636, 1644).

October 19
1656
Massachusetts passes a law prohibiting the further immigration of Quakers into the Puritan colony. This prohibition led indirectly to the later establishment of the colony of Pennsylvania.

1720
Birth of John Woolman, American Quaker preacher and abolitionist. In 1758 Woolman's inspired appeal led the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends to abandon and condemn slave holdings. Woolman's Journal (first published in 1774) is recognized as one of the classics of the inner life.

October 20
1632
Birth of Christopher Wren, English church architect and astronomer, who proposed the plan for rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666 In all, Wren designed more than fifty London churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral.

1870
With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, the Vatican I Ecumenical Council in Rome ends before all the business at hand can be completed. When Italian troops took Rome, the council was suspended but never formally brought to a close.

October 21
1555
English Catholic Queen Mary Tudor begins a series of fierce persecutions against Protestantism, in which more than two hundred men, women, and children were put to death for their faith. Mary was startled to discover that the martyrdoms only intensified Protestant zeal.

1981
Dutch-born Catholic priest and educator Henri J. M. Nouwen notes in Gracias.A Latin American Journal," A true spirituality cannot be constructed, built, or put together; it has to be recognized in the daily life of people who search together to do God's will in the world."

October 22
1697
Birth of Katharina von Schlegel, German Lutheran sacred poet. One of her poems was translated into English by Jane L. Borthwick and became the hymn "Be Still, My Soul."

1746
An evangelical group within the Presbyterian Church establishes the College of New Jersey in Elizabethtown. The school moved to Princeton in 1752, and in 1896 changed its name to Princeton University.

October 23
1871
Birth of American New Testament scholar Edgar J. Goodspeed. He taught at the University of Chicago (1915-37), helped prepare the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament (1946), and co-edited the renowned Smith and Goodspeed translation of the Bible (The Complete Bible: An American Translation)

1819
Pioneer missionaries Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston set sail, becoming the first Protestant missionaries to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). They were sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

October 24
1781
In Philadelphia, after a dispatch from General George Washington reporting his victory at Yorktown is read to Congress, the members adjourn to a nearby Dutch Lutheran church to offer up prayers of thanksgiving.

1826
Death of Ann (Hasseltine) Judson, American pioneer missionary. In 1812 she and Harriet Newell became the first two U.S. women commissioned to serve as overseas missionaries.

October 25
1811
Birth of Carl F. W. Walther, who organized the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in the United States. He was also cofounder and president of Concordia Theological Seminary (1854-87) and authored The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel.

1941
The first Youth for Christ rally is held, at Bryant's Alliance Tabernacle in Manhattan.

October 26
312
Two days before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Roman emperor Constantine has a vision of the cross of Christ. The vision ultimately turned him into a believer and a supporter of Christianity.

1822
Birth of Richard F. Weymouth. English Baptist philologist and New Testament scholar. His best-known work is The New Testament in Modern Speech (1903).

October 27
1469
Birth of Desidenus Erasmus, Dutch Christian humanist, philosopher, and scholar. Regarded as the leader of the Renaissance in northern Europe, Erasmus's writings paved the way for the Reformation.

1771
Francis Asbury lands in Philadelphia to oversee America's few hundred Methodists. During his forty-five-year ministry in America, Asbury traveled an estimated three hundred thousand miles and delivered more than sixteen thousand sermons. By the time of his death in 1816, there were more than two hundred thousand Methodists in the United States.

October 28
1871
At Ujiji, in modern Tanzania's Kigoma province, Henry Morton Stanley locates "missing" British missionary and explorer Dr. David Livingstone. Stanley's first words: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

1949
Jim Elliot. American missionary and martyr, records in his journal, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

October 29
1885
Death of James Hannington, Anglican missionary prelate, who in 1884 was appointed as the first bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa. Hannington was speared to death in Mombassa.

1889
American clergyman Albert B. Simpson merges the Missionary Union (1883) and the Christian Alliance (1887) to form the Christian and Missionary Alliance, an ardent missions-centered denomination.

October 30
1738
English founder of Methodism John Wesley explains in a letter. "By a 'Christian' I mean one who so believes in Christ as that sin hath no more dominion over him."

1976
Dr. Joseph H. Evans is elected president of the United Church of Christ, thereby becoming the first African-American leader of a predominantly white denomination

October 31
1517
German reformer Martin Luther nails his "Ninety-five Theses.. .for the Purpose of Eliciting Truth" to the door of the Wittenberg Palace Church. His action symbolically touches off what would grow to become the Protestant Reformation. By 1522 Protestant public worship was being celebrated in Wittenberg for the first time.

1896
Birth of Ethel Waters, African-American singer and actress Waters was active in Billy Graham's evangelistic crusades during the 1950s and was known for singing "His Eye Is on the Sparrow."