The monastic movement took a significant step forward when, around the year 320, a former soldier named Pachomius instituted the first Christian monastery. Instead of permitting the monks to live singly or in groups of hermits, each a law to himself, Pachomius established a regulated common life, in which the…

A Jewish celebration occurring about 7 weeks after Passover. It was on Pentecost that the Lord gave his Holy Spirit in Baptism to believers. [tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Passover, Pentecost[/tags]  

The Spanish Conquistador who treacherously murdered Atahualpa, the monarch of the Incas in 1533 and brought the once mighty empire to its knees. [tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Francisco-Pizarro, history[/tags]  

An instrument the evangelicals used to subdue the frontier wilderness was the revival. The Second Great Awakening provided the next generation with skilled and dedicated leaders for the western crusade. The great western frontier revival took place in newly settled regions between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi and centered in…

In the early 1500’s, surviving as bands of outlaws in Switzerland, Moravia and the Netherlands, the Anabaptist groups had little opportunity to coordinate their evangelistic efforts or to give united expression to their beliefs. On one important occasion, however, in 1527 they did attempt to agree upon a common basis…

(1866-1931) Lutheran Archbishop of Uppsala in Sweden. Was the founder and chief promoter of the Life and Work Movement. When the King of Sweden unexpectedly appointed him archbishop in 1914, conservatives within the church questioned his orthodoxy. Soderblom rejected faith in the divine and human nature of Christ because he…

(1618-1648) A war waged in the early 17th century that involved France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and numerous states of Germany. The causes of the war were rooted in national rivalries and in conflict between Roman Catholics and Protestants. For all the bloodshed, there was no decisive winner or loser;…

(1870) This council represented the culmination of a movement called "ultramontanism," standing for devotion to Rome (across the mountains, the Alps. Go figure.). The council opened in Rome on 8 December 1869. The question of the definition of papal infallibility the item on the agenda. The Catholics had little doubt…

(1642-1649) Held in 1642 through 1649 at Westminster, London, England, the majority voice at the Assembly held to Presbyterian principles and expressed these convictions classically in the Westminster Confession of Faith and in the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms. [tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Westminster-Assembly, Westminster-Confession-of-Faith[/tags]  

(Reformation) Lutheran warrior, King of Sweden. He entered Germany as the new leader of the Protestant cause. A series of victories carried him south as far as Munich. The "Lion of the north" died at the Battle of Lutzen in 1632, southwest of Leipzig, although his Swedish army won the…

One of the first of the Christian apologists who arose near the end of the second century to counter critic’s claims that Christianity could only manage appeal to the ignorant and the low. [tags]Aristides, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]  

In 1608, John Smyth baptized himself in Amsterdam. He had been a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, but as a Separatist fled from the harsh rule of James I’s England. After his death one of his associates, Thomas Helwys, led back to England a group that had split from Smyth’s…

During King Edward VI’s brief years England saw the Six Articles repealed, priests allowed to marry, and the old Latin service of worship replaced by Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer in English. Under King Charles I and with the assistance of the Anglican Archbishop William Laud, the King insisted…

(See "Albigenses") [tags]Albigenses, BlogRodent, Cathari, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]  

Church organization developed in two important ways: the authority of church councils and the authority of certain bishops over other bishops. Councils arose when churches in various areas began sending their pastors (or bishops) to meetings to discuss common problems. As the fourth century began, the catholic churches were establishing…

The real architects of the denominational theory of the church were the seventeenth century Independents (Congregationalists) who represented the minority voice at the Westminster Assembly (1642-49). The majority at the Assembly held to Presbyterian principles and expressed these convictions classically in the Westminster Confession of Faith and in The Westminster…

A Cambridge graduate and reformer, a contemporary of Tyndale. During Tyndale’s months of imprisonment Coverdale published the first edition of Tyndale’s complete translation of the Bible. He is given credit for having translated the first complete English Bible in 1535. [tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, English-Bible, history, Miles-Coverdale, Reformation, Tyndale[/tags]  

Novelist, quoted as describing King Henry VIII as "a most intolerable ruffian and a blot of blood and grease on the history of England", and was also quoted describing a typical English factory town in the early nineteenth century from his novel Hard Times. [tags]BlogRodent, Charles-Dickens, church-history, ChurchRodent, Henry-VIII, history[/tags]…

Ecumenical means world-wide or universal. Applied to Christian churches, it implies the oneness of Christians in the faith, wherever they may be found. This unity can be either a spiritual reality apart from organizations of men or an effort to create some federations of churches or some merger of denominations.…

The spiritual leader of a monastery near Constantinople. He defended monophysitism. [tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Eutyches, history, Constantinople[/tags]  

Collected the vivid reports of the martyrdoms under Queen Mary in his Book of Martyrs (1571) and incited the English people to a longstanding horror of Catholicism. He succeeded in giving Mary the name by which history still remembers her, "Bloody Mary." [tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, John-Foxe, martyr[/tags]  

A Bible translation which was the work of several English exiles in Geneva during the reign of the Catholic, Queen Mary. Miles Coverdale, who had translated the first complete Bible into English in 1535, was in this group. Once printed during the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, the Geneva Bible’s…

When Billy Graham led a group of evangelicals to launch a new periodical in 1956 called Christianity Today, Henry left his teaching post at Fuller Theological Seminary to serve as editor. [tags]Billy-Graham, BlogRodent, Carl-F.-H.-Henry, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]  

Held at Edinburgh in 1910. It drew over 1,000 delegates from all over the world to consider the problems of world missions in the non-Roman Catholic world. In discussing missions the delegates discovered a great sense of unity. Called the "peak of modern ecumenical history." [tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, International-Missionary-Conference[/tags]…

One of Jesus’ twelve disciples. Was paid thirty pieces of silver to lead the temple authorities to Jesus. Later, he committed suicide. [tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Jesus, Judas-Iscariot[/tags]