June 29
1073: Consecration of Gregory VII (Hildebrand) as Pope, whose reign was often disturbed due to continual clashes with Holy Roman Emperor Henry II.
1315: (traditional date) Raymond Lull, mystic and missionary, is stoned to death in Bougie, North Africa (Tunisia). In order to accomplish his mission of converting the Muslims, he studied Islamic culture and founded a school to train men for his mission.
1629: Samuel Skelton and Francis Higginson, two Presbyterian clergymen, arrive in Massachusetts, as the first missionaries from their church to the (later) United States.
1794: The dedication of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by Richard Allen and fellow African-Americans, after they were separated from white worshipers in St. George’s Church, Philadelphia.
1810:Â The first U.S. missionary society organized in Bradford, Massachusetts: the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
1861: Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning breathes her last – said to be in a state of ecstasy – uttering “It is beautiful.”
1864: Samuel Adjai Crowther consecrated as the first African bishop of the Church of England at the Canterbury Cathedral.
1875: The first ‘holiness’ conference opens at Keswick, England, which stresses a non- charismatic, ‘crisis’ form of sanctification, in contrast to the older traditional view of Christian sanctification as being a lifelong ‘process.’
1881: Muhammad Ahmad, a Sufi Muslim in Kordofan (then a province of Sudan), considering himself to be the long-awaited Mahdi, begins to imprison Christian missionaries; in 1885 he massacred many Christians in Khartoum.
1900: Pastor Meng is seized and beheaded at Pao ting Fu, because he refused to flee, as he wanted to support the foreign missionaries whose lives were in danger.
1908: Birth of Cyrus H. Gordon, American Jewish archaeological scholar, who taught Assyriology and Egyptology at Dropsie College in Philadelphia and authored many books including the Ugaritic Handbook (1947).
1931: Founding of the Unevangelized Fields Mission (UFM) in England. Its members work primarily in Latin America, Europe and Africa, as well as in Haiti and Indonesia.
1958: Passing away of Edward Scribner Ames, a religious pragmatist, who had studied the psychology and sociology of religion. His book The Divinity of Christ tries to elaborate Jesus as divine in the sense that he revealed divinity, and in the sense that all men share something of the divine.
1979: Demise of Archbishop Andrew of New Diveyevo Monastery in Jordanville, New York. He was forced to leave his homeland Ukraine due to Soviet persecution, and migrated to the United States where he established an Orthodox monastery. People thronged to him, impressed by his deep spirituality.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy:Â www.studylight.org