December 2
1381: Repose of Jan Van Ruysbroek, the mystic, known as “the Ecstatic Doctor”. He is known for the work The Spiritual Espousals (1350), a commentary on Matthew 25:6: “Behold, the bridegroom comes”.
1697: Dedication of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, built at the site of a cathedral that had burned in the Great Fire of 1666. The new cathedral was designed by Christopher Wren.
1751: A Consistory of the Dutch Reformed Church in Ceylon, Sri Lanka, complaints with frustration, about the rapid growth of Roman Catholicism, despite severe persecutions at the hands of the Dutch governors there.
1763: Touro Synagogue, the first major centre of Jewish culture in America, opened in Newport, RI. It was sponsored by the Sephardic Jews in Jamaica, Surinam, London and Amsterdam.
1831: Birth of Francis N. Peloubet, who later became an American Congregational clergyman and a great promoter of the Sunday School. His collection “Peloubet’s Notes”, comprising 44 annual volumes of “Select Notes on the International Sunday School Lessons” made him famous.
1873: A group of 8 clergymen and 20 laymen break away from the Protestant Episcopal Church over a debate regarding proper church ritual and form The Reformed Episcopal Church in New York City.
1906: Paulo Mwamribwa, who had founded the first indigenous Protestant mission school in the Gombero area in Tanzania, baptizes his disciples in Digoland.
1908: Formation of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ, an ecumenical organization, in Philadelphia, America. It was renamed the National Council of Churches in 1950.
1910: Demise of Bishop Channing Moore Williams in Richmond, Virginia; he had served as an Episcopal missionary in the Far East and founded a divinity school in Japan.
1946: Foundation of the European Christian Orphanage and Mission Society by Rev. E.V. Steele in Alberta, Canada. It was renamed as World Missions Fellowship in 1953 with its headquarters in Grants Pass. OR.
1947: Repose of Father Alexis Kabaliuk, known as the Apostle of Carpatho-Russia. He had played a major role in reviving the Orthodox Church in Transcarpathia in Ukraine in the 20th century in spite of the persecution by Austrian-Hungarian authorities.
1948: The Official Gazette #281 of Romania makes a decree public, transferring Uniate church property to the Romanian State without compensation.
1994: Demise of Sir James Norman Dalrymple Anderson, a scholar in law and a missionary to Islamic regions.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: https://studylight.org