A 19th century poet who wrote a poem in memory of Constantine’s conversion.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Constantine, history, Matthew-Arnold[/tags]

One of the first "superintendents" of the newly formed Methodist Church in America. Appointed Superintendent with Dr. Thomas Coke at the Christmas Conference meeting at Baltimore in 1784.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Francis-Asbury, history, Methodist, Thomas[/tags]

The doctrine that through self-torture, or self-denial, one can discipline himself to reach a high state, spiritually or intellectually.

[tags]Asceticism, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

Bishop of Alexandria. The first to introduce monasticism to the West. In 335, when he was banished to Trier (in modern Germany) he was accompanied by two monks. He wrote The Life of Saint Anthony and its circulation spread the idea in the West. In A.D. 367 he wrote an Easter letter containing a list of books he included in the N.T. canon. This list was accepted and authorized by the Hippo and Carthage councils. As an advisor to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria during the Nicean council in A.D.325, he first battled the Arian heresy. At 33, he succeeded Alexander as bishop of Alexandria and for the next 50 years waged a perpetual war against Arianism. During these decades Athanasius was banned 5 times and returned to Alexandria each time after a change in emperors, or a change in religious maneuvering in the palace.Finally, Athanasius and his supporters quenched the Arian heresy, and he died at 75 a peaceful man and secure in his office as bishop of Alexandria.

[tags]Alexander, Anthony, Athanasius, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Arianism[/tags]

A Christian philosopher at Athens. One of the first Christian Apologists to counter the accusations of the enemies of Christianity and point out the weaknesses of paganism.

[tags]Apologists, Athenagoras, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

Called the "Scourge of God". Marched up the Danube river and in June 452 he advanced on Rome with his cavalry and well-armed foot-soldiers from Asia. There he met with Bishop Leo, an emissary from Rome, to negotiate for peace. He agreed to spare Rome, and he withdrew from Italy.

[tags]Attila-the-Hun, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

By 1530, when a summit conference of Reformation convened in Augsburg to draw up a common statement of faith, leadership of the movement had begun to pass out of Luther’s hands. The reformer was still an outlaw and unable to attend. The task of presenting Lutheranism fell to a young professor of Greek at Wittenberg — Philip Melanchthon. The young scholar drafted the Augsburg Confession signed by Lutheran princes and theologians.

[tags]Augsburg-Confession, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Lutheranism, Philip, Reformation[/tags]

(354-430)

Bishop of Hippo, near Carthage in N. Africa. During the decades-long debate over the Arian heresy, he used the psychological analogy to explain the Trinity of God. God is like the memory, intelligence, and will in the mind of a man, thus, we may think of one person when we think of God. A supporter of monasticism, he wrote the first western monastic rule for monks at Tagaste and Hippo. After the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, Bishop Augustine pursued the philosophical question of why Rome fell, and eventually wrote The City of God. One of the first major formulators of Christian doctrine.

[tags]Augustine, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

As a farm boy in Connecticut was affected by the Great Awakening and repented while mowing a field without emotion or ecstasy, but with great clarity. Soon after joined the ranks of the revivalists and eventually formed the First Baptist Church of Middlesborough, Massachusetts.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Great-Awakening, history, Isaac-Backus[/tags]

A biographer who wrote of Luther that he was "an irascible old man, petulant, peevish, unrestrained and at times positively coarse."

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Roland-Bainton[/tags]

In October 1792 Carey, Fuller, and eleven Baptist colleagues formed the Baptist Missionary Society and within a year Carey and his family were on their way to India.

[tags]Baptist-Missionary-Society, 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 former congregation. They formed the first General or Arminian Baptist congregation in England at Spitalfields, London, in 1612.

By 1638 at the latest there were also congregations holding a Calvinistic theology in London who practiced believers’ baptism ("Particular Baptists"). These Baptists grew out of the first congregation of English Independents; although it is not know exactly when they adopted full Baptist views. A radical look at church principles, in the Puritan manner, led first to the understanding of the church as a gathered community, and then to a realization that only the baptism of believers fitted such a view.

Early Baptist’s links with the Dutch Mennonites in the very earliest days are clear. But it is equally clear that the English Baptist movement came out of a conscientious search among the English Separatists for the pattern of apostolic churches. They believed this could be discovered from the pages of the New Testament, and that it was the only pattern of church organization for all succeeding generations.

These youthful Baptist churches were hurled into the current debate about the relationship between Church and State. They championed their own particular answers to that controversy at great personal cost. They soon also became involved, to varying degrees, in the millenarian speculation of the mid-seventeenth century. Like many others, the Baptists eagerly thumbed through the pages of Daniel and Revelation, seeking the signs of the times and looking for guidance about their proper Christian obedience.

At the same time parliamentary opposition to King Charles I hardened and led on relentlessly to the outbreak of the Civil War, or "English Revolution". Cromwell’s victorious New Model Army held religious opinions which differed from the State-Presbyterianism of Parliament. Independents and Baptists were dominant in the army’s leadership and amongst the rank and file. Cromwell allowed an established church to continue but allowed Baptists, Independents, Presbyterians and non-royalists Anglicans to act as ministers in it. Those who wanted to worship apart from a state church were permitted to continue a separate existence as long as they did not disturb the peace. Some Baptists accepted office in the state church, but the majority chose to continue independently.

[tags]Baptists, BlogRodent, Charles-I, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, James, John-Smyth, Mennonites, Presbyterians, Thomas[/tags]

Barbarians were Europeans who spoke no Greek nor Latin who eventually mastered Europe as the Roman Empire deteriorated. For the most part they were tribes from the north, originally in or near Scandinavia — Vandals, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Goths, Lombards, Burgundians and others. In the third century they were at a cultural stage midway between a pastoral and an agricultural economy. The engaged in so little commerce that cattle, rather than money, marked the man of wealth and power. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, the Germans were notoriously heavy drinkers and gamblers. On the other hand, Tacitus praised their courage, respect for women, and freedom from many Roman vices.

[tags]Barbarians, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

A Jew from Cyprus who was among the earliest Jerusalem converts. He traveled to Antioch in Syria to help evangelize Gentiles. Was joined by Saul of Tarsus around A.D. 44.

[tags]Apostle-Barnabas, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

(1886-1968)

Swiss theologian and writer. Greatly influenced the World Council’s General Secretary «Willem Adolph Visser’t Hooft». Rejected his liberal training and returned to a study of the Bible. He published his Romans commentary in 1919, considered the beginning of neo-orthodoxy. Barth taught that the Bible becomes the Word of God only as the reader enters the experience of the biblical writers. He denied general revelation but was perhaps the most conservative of neo-orthodox theologians.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Karl-Barth[/tags]

(?-379)

Designer of the Rule of discipline under which the monasticism of Greek Orthodoxy is organized to this day.

[tags]Basil, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

Presbyterian and Congregational minister in New England, preached a sermon in 1835 entitled A Plea for the West. Believed that a vast new empire was opening in the American wilderness and that Christians should seize the opportunity and shape the religious and political destiny of the nation by preaching, distributing Bibles, planting churches, establishing schools and reforming American moral.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Lyman-Beecher[/tags]

Provided the constitution for Western monasticism. Born in Norsia, NE of Rome, became an ascetic and went into hermitage in a cave south of Rome. As an abbot at a nearby monastery, his discipline nearly earned his death by resentful monks. In 529 he began the most famous monastery in Europe, the mother-house of the Benedictine order. Here he wrote his Rule, taught, preached, and lived a pattern of monastic piety until his death in 542.

[tags]Benedict-of-Norsia, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

In 1147, this mystic called for the Second Crusade while the kingdom of Jerusalem faced its first crisis. As one of Christendom’s most influential churchmen and abbot he pursued Peter Abelard as devoutly as he preached the Second Crusade. Felt that faith brooked no dispute and worked to have Abelard condemned at a church council at Sens in 1140.

[tags]Abelard, Bernard, Bernard-of-Clairvaux, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Peter[/tags]

An Oxford Scholar who wrote that in Gnosticism, there is a Supreme God, under whom there are lesser gods, emanations, until at the very bottom of the chain is a god who, "while powerful enough to create is silly enough not to see that creation is wrong."

[tags]BlogRodent, Charles-Bigg, church-history, ChurchRodent, Gnosticism, history[/tags]

Dismayed at the hundreds of divisions within Protestantism, in 1960, as chief executive officer of the United Presbyterian Church in USA, and later General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, he proposed that the Protestant Episcopal Church and Northern Presbyterians jointly invite the Methodists and the United Church of Christ to form a new Christian Church. This would have created a denomination of about 19 million members.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Eugene-Carson-Blake, history, Presbyterians, Protestantism, World-Council-of-Churches[/tags]

On 21 January 1525, at a secret meeting at the house of Felix Manz, Reformation leaders met to counter attempts to dictate church policy by the City Council of Zurich. There George Blaurock, a former priest, requested Conrad Grebel to baptize him in the apostolic fashion — upon confession of personal faith in Jesus Christ — instead of in the Catholic fashion of only one baptism in infancy. Grebel baptized him and Blaurock proceeded to baptize the others present, thus was born the Anabaptist movement.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Conrad-Grebel, Felix-Manz, George-Blaurock, history, Jesus, Reformation[/tags]

The teachings and dissent of John Wycliffe found greater support in Bohemia because it was joined to a strong national party led by John Hus. The Czech reformer came from peasant parents in southern Bohemia, a small town called Husinetz. When Hus was burned on 6 July 1415 the Bohemian rebellion, as it came to be called, refused to die with him. It developed a moderate and a militant wing. The moderates were called Utraquists, a term from Latin for "both" since their primary protest called for freedom to receive Communion in both the bread and the cup. The militants were called Taborites after the city in Bohemia that served as their chief stronghold. These followers of Hus struggled against the Roman Church and the German Empire until several wars reduced their number and influence. Yet despite the best efforts of the papacy to bring an end to the Bohemian heresy an independent church survived know as the Unitas Fratrum, or Unity of the Brotherhood. Until the coming of Luther, it remained a root in dry ground.

[tags]BlogRodent, Bohemian-Rebellion, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, John-Hus, Reformation, John-Wycliffe, Wycliffe[/tags]

Became Queen of England June 1533 through a secret marriage to King Henry VIII. His earlier marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void by an English church court upon Henry’s insistence. The explicit reason given was because that she was the widow of Henry’s brother and was thus supposedly the recipient of a Levitical curse and thus bore Henry no male children. Upon Henry’s marriage to Boleyn in January 1533 and the subsequent annulment of his former marriage to Catherine, Pope Clement VII excommunicated King Henry. In response Henry ordered English clergy to stop all relations with the roman Pope and declared the Act of Supremacy in 1534, making himself the head of the Anglican Church, thereby completely separating himself from Rome. The September following their marriage Anne bore him a daughter, Elizabeth. Henry later executed Boleyn on charges of adultery and then married Jane Seymour.

[tags]Anne-Boleyn, BlogRodent, Catherine-of-Aragon, church-history, ChurchRodent, Henry-VIII, history, Jane-Seymour, Pope-Clement-VII[/tags]

The French general who ascended to power in France after a period of confusion ending with a coup d’etat. Forged the Concordat of 1801 to give the Catholic Church a special place in France. His empire collapsed in 1815 and he was banished to an island in the Atlantic.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Concordat, history, Napoleon-Bonaparte[/tags]