June 20
404: Archbishop John Chrysostom of Constantnople, falsely accused of heresy and cruelty to empress Eudoxia (because he criticized her luxury and pomp) is banished and sent in exile for a second time. He died in exile and was later declared a doctor of the church.
1529: Pope Clement VII and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sign the Peace of Barcelona to end attacks on Rome by the Lutheran armies.
1530: The first meeting of the Diet of Augsburg begins, at which The Augsburg Confession was presented.
1542: Martin Luther consecrates Nicolaus von Amsdorf as bishop for Naumburg, although Luther was not a bishop and had no apostolic succession which was required for the same. Elector John Frederick had ousted the regularly appointed Roman Catholic bishop, Julius von Pflug before that.
1599: The Synod of Diamper brings in reconciliation between the St. Thomas Christians of Kerala, India with the European missionaries, after an intervention by Rome. The Portuguese missionaries were surprised to see a church with an apostolic tradition in south Indian Kerala, and started accusing the church of pagan practices, because their cultural practices were strange for the Europeans. They wanted to “purify” the Christians in India, who revolted against the attempts of the missionaries to Europeanize their church. Rome sent a delegation and mediated between the two fronts. The Syro-Malabar church then decided to remain with Rome while keeping their cultural practices, while a group broke away with Rome and formed an orthodox church.
1734: The Schwenkfelders, a protestant religious group, leave Europe to escape persecution and set on a hard voyage to America. Schwenkfelders are the followers of Kaspar Schwenkfeld a reformer from Silesia who believed in the working of the Holy Spirit, and in conversion and rejected the sacraments.
1837: The eighteen-year-old Princess Victoria, a Christian, is called upon by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain at five in the morning, to be informed that she is now the Queen of England and the Empress of its vast empire.
1880: Repose of Samuel R. Brown, missionary from the Dutch Reformed Church, a famous educator in China and Bible translator in Japan.
1885: A group of Moravian missionaries land on the shores of Alaska and found the Bethel Mission. During the first year of their mission work among the Eskimos, they had to live in makeshift houses at minus 50 degrees celsius!
1907: Conferring of DD on Robert A. Torrey at Wheaton. He later became a prominent evangelical leader and wrote the popular work What the Bible Teaches.
1966: Passing away of Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and mathematician, who had been one of the first to recognize that Einstein’s equations required an expanding universe with a beginning at a measurable time in the past. Such ideas also contributed to the development of the so-called “Big Bang” theory.
1989: Demise of Traian Dorz, a Romanian poet who led the Orthodox revival movement known as The Lord’s Army and had to suffer imprisonment, harassment, and restriction from the government and church authorities.
1992: Militant Muslims shoot down two Christian businessmen at Dairut, Assiut, and kill two police officers who interfered.
1999: The Christian communions who share control of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem decide to install a new exit door for the church, after a huge number of Christian pilgrims had been trampled to death as fire broke out in the church 150 years ago.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org