January 25
1077: Emperor Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire submits to Pope Gregory VII at Canossa castle in Italy and pleads His Holiness to revoke his excommunication.
1164: Council of Clarendon assembles as Thomas Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury. King Henry II of England threatens the bishops with death if they do not yield him more jurisdictions over crimes by clergy. Archbishop Thomas Becket was martyred as a result.
1366: Death of Henry Suso, a fanatical ascetic and mystic in Ulm, Germany. Suso practiced austerities and tortured himself as penance for twenty-two years.
1534: German Reformer Martin Luther elucidates his idea of ‘conversion’ in a sermon. He said, “To be converted to God means to believe in Christ, to believe that He is our Mediator and that we have eternal life through Him.”
1720: Auxentius of Constantinople is beheaded by Muslims while he refused to convert to Islam despite being beaten with an iron bar.
1841: The Oxford Movement in England reaches its zenith with the appearance of John Henry Newman’s Tract No. 90, in which he argued that the ecclesial identity of the Church of England was catholic and not protestant. The controversy which followed led to the abrupt ending of the series. Later, Newman left the Anglican Church and converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845.
1861: C.F.W. Walther, the founder of Missouri Synod Lutheran, states in a letter: “The church, as a fellowship…of those who are born again… corresponds to the nature of living Christianity, whereas…the church as a fellowship of the orthodox, whether converted or unconverted, will necessarily lead to a dead Christianity.”
1944: Florence Tim-Oi Lee of Macao was ordained a priest in the Anglican Diocese of Hong Kong and South China. It was an emergency measure during the wartime, as there was scarcity for male priests in Macao. Nevertheless it made Florence Tim-Oi Lee the first-ever ordained female Anglican clergyperson.
1959: Pope John XXIII announces his intention to hold an ecumenical church council, barely 90 days after his election.
1963: Emmanuel Abraham is elected president of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus. He remained in office for twenty-two years. During his tenure, he served often as a leading diplomat for Emperor Haile Sellassie and the Ethiopian government.
1980: Retirement of the Archbishop of Canterbury Frederick Donald Coggan, who was involved in the translation of the New English Bible and was an ardent supporter of the ordination of women.
1986: Death of Oswald J. Smith, the founder of the People’s Church in Toronto who also raised millions of dollars to support missions. He was famous as the author of thirty-five books which had been translated into one-hundred-and-twenty-eight languages.
2008: United Christian Women gets approval as a non-profit organization in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to encourage young women to remain strong in faith.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil mcbs
Courtesy: www.studylight.org