8th century British missionary, also known as Winfred. Commissioned by Pope Gregory II in 729 to evangelize Germany. Later became Archbishop of Mainz.

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

A Pope (1294-1303) who declared, on February 22, 1300 a Jubilee — a Holy Year — to celebrate the new centenary of Christ’s birth granting pardon for all the sins of those who reverently visited the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul during the Holy Year. He had a noted flair for pomp and circumstance. In 1296 Boniface had issued a "Clericis laicos," a document threatening excommunication for any lay ruler who taxed the clergy and any churchman who paid those taxes without papal consent. Boniface eventually backed down due to the resistance of Kings Edward and Phillip. He later earned even greater opposition from the king of France when he issued the "Unam Sanctum," a decree stating that all men were ultimately subject to the Roman pontiff. This adversarial relationship eventually led to his death at 86 when he was severely humiliated by French troops in his own hometown.

[tags]BlogRodent, Boniface, Boniface-VIII, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Peter[/tags]

During King Edward VI’s brief years England saw the Six Articles repealed, priests allowed to marry, and the old Latin service of worship replaced by Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer in English.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 that worship in England be conducted according to the Prayer Book and no other. When Charles tried to force his brand of high-church on the Scots, John Milton called The Book of Common Prayer "the skeleton of a Mass-book."

[tags]BlogRodent, Book-of-Common-Prayer, Charles-I, church-history, ChurchRodent, Edward-VI, history, Thomas, William-Laud[/tags]

(1829-1912)

The most outstanding example of ministry to the dispossessed was the work of a pietistic evangelical William Booth. He started his ministry with the Methodist New Connection but soon withdrew to work with London’s poor. His street preaching in London’s East End in 1864 met with phenomenal success. Within eleven years he had thirty-two stations promoting evangelism and social service among London’s destitute. His workers, organized like a military unit, were soon called the Salvation Army. Evangelist Booth became General Booth.

By 1888 the General had established 1,000 British corps and had dispatched patrols to many other nations. His book In Darkest England and the Way Out appeared in 1890 graphically comparing the social darkness in England to Africa’s darkness pictured by David Livingstone. In London, in one year, he reported 2,157 people had been found dead, 2,297 had committed suicide, 30,000 were living in prostitution, 160,000 had been convicted of drunkenness, and more than 900,000 were classed as paupers. Booth went on to describe the Army’s enormous rescue efforts. The whole picture was one of dire need. But no such ministry came from the Church of England.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, Church-of-England, ChurchRodent, David-Livingstone, history, Methodist, Salvation-Army, William-Booth[/tags]

(1862-1929)

A Canadian Anglican who served as a missionary to the Philippine Islands. He was conscious of the doctrinal differences that separated the churches. He saw Anglicanism as the bridge that might span these differences. On his urging the Edinburgh conference appointed a committee to invite "all churches which accept Jesus Christ as God and Savior to join in conferences following the general method of the World’s Missionary Conference, for the consideration of all questions pertaining to Faith and Order of the Church of Christ." Brent believed that cooperation among churches was possible only on the basis of agreement on essentials of the faith. Disunity, he said, is fundamentally creedal.

[tags]BlogRodent, Charles-Brent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Jesus[/tags]

The virtual ruler of India since 1763. They refused Carey permission to live in Calcutta.

[tags]BlogRodent, British-East-India-Company, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

The persecution of the Anabaptists forced them to flee to the north. Many of them found refuge on the lands of some exceptionally tolerant princes in Moravia. There they founded a long-lasting form of economic community called the Bruderhof, a Christian commune. In part they aimed to follow the pattern of the early apostolic community. But they sought community for practical reasons too — as a means of group survival under persecution. Their communities attempted to show that in the kingdom of God brotherhood comes before self. Consolidated under the leadership of Jakob Hutter, who died in 1536, these groups came to be known as "Hutterites".

[tags]Anabaptists, BlogRodent, Bruderhof, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Hutterites, Jakob-Hutter[/tags]

(1860-1925)

As leader of the Progressive cause in the Democratic party, three-time candidate for President of the United States, and Secretary of State in the cabinet of President Woodrow Wilson, Bryan was sustained by his faith in the "democracy of the heart." He was devoted to peace and arbitrated treaties with 30 countries under Wilson, but eventually resigned his position as Secretary of State for Wilson and his cabinet opposed treaties. He then threw himself into Prohibition, and his last crusade was the one that drew him directly into the fundamentalist movement, the effort to outlaw the teaching of evolution on the public schools of America.

Bitter opposition to the teaching of evolution in public schools brought about the Scopes trial in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. Bryan was the prosecuting lawyer, and Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) defended John T. Scopes. Scopes lost the case, and several Southern legislatures passed laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. Five days after the trial Bryan passed away in his sleep.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Clarence-Darrow, history, Prohibition, William-Jennings-Bryan, Woodrow-Wilson[/tags]

(1491-1551)

A supporter of the Zwinglian type of reformation. From Strassburg, Germany, he was surpassed in influence throughout Germany only by Luther and his associate Melanchthon and was inclined to sympathize with Zwingli rather than Luther.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Martin-Bucer[/tags]

Controversy between the Protestant and Catholic cantons in Switzerland led, on 11 October 1531, to a battle at Kappel between Zurich and its Catholic neighbors. In the course of the battle Zwingli lost his life. Thus, the leadership of the reformation in Zurich fell to Heinrich Bullinger.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Heinrich-Bullinger, history[/tags]

(1889-1996)

A pioneer in neo-orthodoxy, Brunner emphasized the subjective encounter in meeting God while denying the inspiration of Scripture and the historicity of Adam. In accepting general revelation, he disagreed with Barth.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Rudolf-Bultmann[/tags]

During the early stages of the Renaissance, when intellectuals (for example, Voltaire) aimed their critical disregard at the Church, several men wrote effectively against deism. Yet none of them proved more effective than Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752). His monumental work, The Analogy of Religion, virtually ended the debate for thinking people. Skirmishes continued for years, but after Butler it was clear that all the fundamental issues had been settled.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Joseph-Butler, Renaissance, Voltaire[/tags]

A former slave, who later became the Bishop of Rome (217-222). He was the first to accept repentant sinners as a matter of policy. He argued that the church is like Noah’s ark. In it unclean as well as clean beasts can be found. He defended his actions by insisting that the Church of Rome was heir to Peter and that the Lord had given keys to Peter to bind and to loose the sins of men. This marks the first time a bishop of Rome claimed this special authority.

[tags]BlogRodent, Callistus, church-history, Church-of-Rome, ChurchRodent, history, Peter[/tags]

(1509-1564)

John Calvin (aka. Jean Cauvin) played an important role in the Protestant Reformation—perhaps second only to Martin Luther in importance.

Calvin wrote the deeply influential Institutes of the Christian Religion (published in 1536, see also the Britannica summary), developed the “presbyterian” model of church government, and has been called the “organizer of Protestantism” because of his pastoral work organizing churches in Strassburg and Geneva.

He was born on July 10, 1509 in the city of Noyon in Picardy, France (where his childhood home is now a museum), was raised with children of the aristocracy, adopted the Latin “Calvin” as a young scholar. His father was the Bishop’s secretary serving the cathedral in Noyon, and he ensured that Calvin was well educated. At age 14, Calvin enrolled at the University of Paris and later attended the College de Montaigu there. Calvin studied theology and in the midst of the war between Renaissance education and Scholasticism, he became strongly attracted to the new thinking. Here Calvin was influenced by the church reform movement led by Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples (1455-1536) and was exposed to Luther’s writings and ideas circulating around Paris. In 1528, however, Calvin’s father had a falling-out with the church officials in Nyon, and he sent for his son to abandon theology for the study of law. Calvin complied and left for study at Orleans, Bourges, and Paris.

Calvin’s father died in 1531, leaving Calvin to pursue a scholarly career in Paris. Though he had earned his doctorate and a license to practice law, he preferred more academic pursuits. Sometime between 1532-34, Calvin was converted to Protestantism. He fled Paris when the charge of heresy was brought against his university rector for supporting the lutheran reform. He eventually resigned his position at the university and left France when king Francis I (1515-1547) began persecuting Protestant Christians.

When Calvin published Institutes in 1536, he lost the ability to live the quiet, anonymous, scholar’s life. This, he said, “God thrust me into the fray.” Despite the publication of this book, outlining reformation theology, and dedicated to the King, Calvin remained a refugee from France. Later that year, Calvin had hoped to settle in Strassburg but while on his way he stopped overnight at Geneva and was persuaded by William Farel (1849-1565) to accept the responsibility of helping him lead the Geneva church.

Then, from 1538-1541, Calvin spent his time studying peacefully in Strassburg. While there, he associated with Martin Bucer (1491-1551), pastored a congregation of French Protestant refugees, compiled a liturgy and a psalm book, represented Strassburg in the religious colloquies at Worms and Regensberg between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

When one of Calvin’s Anabaptist converts died in 1539, he married his convert’s widow, Idelette de Bure. In 1542 Calvin and De Bure conceived a son, who died shortly after birth. At her death in 1549, Calvin wrote, “Truly mine is no common grief. I have been bereaved of the best friend of my life.”

In 1541, urged by Ami Perrin, commissioner for Geneva, Calvin reluctantly returned to Geneva to pastor the churches there once more (the previous leaders had all fallen from good graces simultaneously). It was here that Calvin found his life’s work, continuing to reform the Protestant church, and further exercising his influence into foreign affairs, law, economics, trade and public policy. Geneva became the center of the Protestant movement, and Protestant refugees flocked there. When Calvin died 23 years later (May 27, 1564), the entire city turned out to honor him. He was granted citizenship only five years before his death.

(Some controversy, however, surrounds Calvin’s time at Geneva. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the last years of Calvin’s life at Geneva were given over to despotic theocratic rule wherein Calvin’s Institutes had the weight of state-enforced religion: "In November, 1552, the Council declared that Calvin’s Institutes were a ‘holy doctrine which no man might speak against." and also, "Within five years fifty-eight sentences of death and seventy-six of exile, besides numerous committals of the most eminent citizens to prison, took place in Geneva. The iron yoke could not be shaken off. In 1555, under Ami Perrin, a sort of revolt was attempted. No blood was shed, but Perrin lost the day, and Calvin’s theocracy triumphed." The capstone to this time is the conviction, sentencing, and execution of Michael Served y Reves (Servetus), all laid at the feet of Calvin.)

At the heart of Calvin’s theology is the idea that God created human beings for fellowship with himself. This led Calvin to stress that all wisdom comes from knowledge of God and of ourselves—in knowing God, we know ourselves and in knowing ourselves we know God. Calvin also stressed that what we know about God is strictly limited to what God explicitly revealed, so our chief role is not to spend our time embroiled in theological speculation, but rather in moral edification.

For further study:

• A Defense of Calvinism by C. H. Spurgeon
  http://www.reformed.org/calvinism/Spurgeon-Calvinism.html
• Encyclopedia Britannica: John Calvin
  http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/
  article/6/0,5716,108736+1,00.html
• Calvin Studies Society
  http://www.calvinstudiessociety.org/
• Calvin’s Preface to the Psalter
  http://www.fpcr.org/blue_banner_articles/calvinps.htm
• Catholic Encyclopedia: John Calvin
  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03195b.htm
• Columbia Encyclopedia: John Calvin
  http://www.bartleby.com/65/ca/Calvin-J.html
• John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion
  http://www.smartlink.net/~douglas/calvin/
  http://www.reformed.org/books/institutes/
• Reformation: John Calvin
  http://www.wsu.edu:8000/~dee/REFORM/CALVIN.HTM
• The Calvin Institute (Theology)
  http://capo.org/calvin/ccalvin.html
• The Five Points of Calvinism, by R. L. Dabney (1820-1898)
  http://www.reformed.org/calvinism/5Points_Dabney.html
• The Necessity of Reforming the Church (1543)
  http://www.swrb.ab.ca/newslett/actualnls/NRC_ch00.htm
• Why Calvin Was a Calvinist: Rediscovering the Geneva Reformer in his long-lost catechism.
  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/8t7/8t7055.html

Thanks to Bob J. (covenantpc (at) cp-tel.net) for alerting me to errata in this article

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Francis-I, history, John-Calvin, Martin-Bucer, Martin-Luther, Protestantism, Reformation, Renaissance, Scholasticism, William-Farel[/tags]

Perhaps the first one was held by McGready in July 1800 at the Gasper River Church in Logan County, Kentucky. A "camp meeting" is a religious service of several days’ length held outdoors, for people who had traveled a distance to attend. They camped on the spot.

[tags]BlogRodent, Camp-Meetings, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

Canon law served the church just as civil law supported a secular government. It defined the rights, duties and powers of all people and priests within the church. It was the law administered in all ecclesiastical courts, from those of the bishop up to that of the pope.

Sometime around 1140 Gratian, a monk of the monastery of St. Felix at Bologna, published a Harmony of Discordant Canons which tried to coordinate all previous collections of church law. Since he arranged his quotations of authorities subject by subject, his Harmony soon emerged as the sole manual for teachers and for judges in the church. But it also directed man’s most intimate relationships. By virtue of its concern with baptism it established standards for all births — and all that led to births. The first inviting smile between man and woman brought the couple under its watchful shadow. It directed penance for fornication and adultery; it laid down the conditions in which a marriage could exist.

Canon law, in short, reached not only to every priest, but to every layman, plowman or prince. And it professed to declare, not only the necessary path to salvation, but the very nature of the most intimate organs of men and women.

Canon law gave to the papacy a rational legal basis, something the medieval state did not yet possess. As a result the papacy rose to preeminent power in the public life of Europe and achieved an international prestige that far outweighed that of any feudal kingdom.

[tags]BlogRodent, Canon, Canon-Law, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

The first Protestants to attempt to reach distant peoples with the gospel were the Pietists. Moravian concern, however, was focused on individuals in some European colony, perishing without the knowledge of Christ. The Christian groups created by Pietists were tiny islands in the surrounding sea of "heathenism."

William Carey introduced Christians to missions on a grander scale. He thought in terms of the evangelization of whole countries, and of what happens when whole populations become Christian. He held that the foreign missionary can never make more than a small contribution to the accomplishment of the work that has to be done, and that therefore the development of the local ministry is the first and greatest of all missionary considerations. Above all, he saw that Christianity must be firmly rooted in the culture and traditions of the land in which it is planted. For all these reasons and more Carey gained the title, "Father of Modern Missions."

In 1792 Carey published An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen. It created an epoch. In it Carey took up the five objections that people raised against missions to "heathen" lands: their distance, their barbarism, the danger that would be incurred, the difficulties of support, and the unintelligible languages. One by one he answered these. The same obstacles had not prevented the merchants from going to distant shores. "It only requires," he wrote, "that we should have as much love to the souls of our fellow-creatures, and fellow sinners, as they have for the profits arising from a few otter skins, and all these difficulties could be easily surmounted." He ended his appeal with practical proposals for the preaching of the gospel throughout the world.

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, Pietists, William-Carey[/tags]

During the 1976 Presidential campaign in the United States, Jimmy Carter’s evangelical faith arose as one of the major issues. The Watergate scandal had toppled the Nixon administration a short time before, and many Americans felt that morality in government was of supreme importance. Others, however, warned that religion could divide the nation and had no place in an American political campaign.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Jimmy-Carter[/tags]

(See "Albigenses")

[tags]Albigenses, BlogRodent, Cathari, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

Daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. First wife of King Henry VIII, she bore five children, but only one survived infancy, Mary. Catherine was previously the wife of King Henry’s deceased brother, Arthur. Because she bore Henry no male children, he persuaded the English courts to annul their marriage. Her daughter eventually ascended the throne.

[tags]BlogRodent, Catherine-of-Aragon, church-history, ChurchRodent, Henry-VIII, history[/tags]

In 1521 Martin Luther stood before the Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms. In that same year Ignatius Loyala entered convalescence from an injury and soon had a spiritual conversion of sorts. Loyola subsequently formed the Society of Jesus, the greatest single force in Catholicism’s campaign to recapture the spiritual domains seized by Protestantism.

While the Catholic Church did not immediately respond to the Protestant challenge, when it finally did it called upon its spiritual warriors, the Jesuits. It convened a new, militant council; and it reformed the machinery of the papal office. Faced by the rebellion of almost half of Europe, Catholicism rolled back the tide of Protestantism until by the end of the sixteenth century Protestantism was limited roughly to the northern third of Europe, as it is today.

Some historians have interpreted the Catholic Reformation as a counterattack against Protestantism; others have described it as a genuine revival of Catholic piety with a few thoughts of Protestantism. The truth is that the movement was both a Counter Reformation, as Protestants insist, and a Catholic Reformation, as Catholics argue. Its roots run back to forces before Luther’s time, but the form it took was largely determined by the Protestant attack.

[tags]BlogRodent, Catholic-Reformation, Charles-V, church-history, ChurchRodent, Diet-of-Worms, history, Ignatius, Jesuits, Jesus, Martin-Luther, Protestantism, Reformation[/tags]

Catholic and Anglican priests, as well as early Protestant ministers, undertook vows of celibacy in the belief that they must follow in the footsteps of Christ, who was celibate, and avoid marriage at all costs, abstaining from any sexual relationships while serving God as a minister. Sexual drives were widely seen as evidence of man’s fallen state, and were thus sinful. Finally, in 1522, Martin Luther took himself a wife and transformed the image of ministry — the married pastor living like any other man with his own family.

[tags]BlogRodent, Celibacy, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Martin-Luther[/tags]

An outspoken critic of Christianity who noted: "Far from us, say the Christians, be any man possessed of any culture or wisdom or judgment; their aim is to convince only worthless and contemptible people, idiots, slaves, poor women, and children. … These are the only ones whom they manage to turn into believers."

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

The Irish were Celtic people and their conversion is traced to Patrick of England, early in the fifth century. Their culture was agriculturally based. The Irish, or Celts, were then called Scots.

[tags]BlogRodent, Celts, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Patrick[/tags]

A Gnostic teacher (about A.D. 140) who believed that the God of the Old Testament was different from the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. The God of the Old Testament, he said, was unknowable, the Christian God had been revealed. The Old Testament God was sheer justice; whereas the God of the New Covenant was loving and gracious. This man greatly influenced Marcion.

[tags]BlogRodent, Cerdo, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Jesus, Marcion[/tags]