January 23
1589 The Moscow Patriarchate was created by Jeremias II, the Patriarch of Constantinople. Peter I (Peter the Great) cancelled this in 1700; the All Russian Local Council restored the patriarchate in 1917.
1656 French scientist Blaise Pascal published the first of his 18 “Provincial Lettres,” at the age of 33. Most of these letters were set apart to attack the Jesuit theories of grace and moral theology.
1714 Lutheran missionary Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg engages in a dialogue with the Tamil-speaking Hindus at Tranquebar (today’s Tharangambadi) in Tamilnadu, India about religion. They argued that all religions are from God, since He created the world; and so, all of them are valid paths to Him. Ziegenbalg countered their view and said that since the religions contradict each other, only one of them can be from God.
1789 Father John Carroll starts Georgetown College in Washington, D.C., the first Roman Catholic college established in America.
1821 Lott Carey, a Baptist, sails with 28 colleagues from Norfolk, Virginia, to Sierra Leone and thus becomes the first African-American missionary to Africa.
1848 Charles Perry arrives in Australia; later he became the first Anglican bishop of Melbourne.
1893 Death of Phillips Brooks, a clergyman and an educator, who also was a strong opponent of slavery. He is the author of the Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
1908 Representatives of a number of Protestant men’s movements meet in Chicago to found an informal coalition for mutual information and for co-operation. This can be viewed as an early example of para-church activity. Among the participating organizations were the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, as well as Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Congregational brotherhoods.
1935 British biblical scholar Arthur W. Pink wrote: ‘Growth in grace is like the growth of a cow’s tail – the more it truly grows, the closer to the ground it is brought.’
1943 The New Tribes Mission was incorporated in Los Angeles by its founder Paul W. Fleming. NTM is engaged today in missionary aviation, Bible translation, church planting and the production and distribution of Christian literature.
1945 Nazis hanged Helmuth James von Moltke, saying “the only trouble with you is you are a Christian.”
1950 Polish Communists confiscate the offices of Caritas, a Roman Catholic humanitarian agency, hoping to minimise the influence of the Roman Catholic Church.
1984 Funeral of Spetume Florence Njangali, a woman priest in Uganda’s Anglican Church, who had struggled long to obtain priestly ordination for women.
1999 Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons are burned to death in their jeep by Hindu extremists, pushing them back into the burning vehicle when they tried to escape the flames.
2006 A Turkish higher court reserves its orders in the case of alleged “insult of Turkishness” against novelist Orhan Pamuk. He had criticised, “Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.” The Armenians are the descendants of early Christians.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil mcbs
Courtesy: www.studylight.org