Historical Writings

English clergyman Roger Williams first arrived in America. He soon began questioning Massachusetts' religious policies which fused church and state matters. Williams was banished to Rhode Island five years later, where at Providence he established the first Baptist church in America.

Death in Berlin of German theologian and clergyman Philipp Spener, author of Pia desideria. He had been known as the “Father of Pietism.”

The English Wesley brothers, John (32) and Charles (28) first arrived in America at Savannah, GA. They had been invited by Georgia governor James Oglethorpe as missionaries to the American Indians.

American missionary Adoniram Judson, 23, married schoolteacher Ann Hasseltine, 22. Two weeks later the couple set sail for India under sponsorship of the American [Congregational] Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Twelve American Congregationalist missionaries first see Africa from the deck of a ship through a mist. Among them is Daniel Lindley who will win renown educating Africans and pleading with the Dutch-descended Boers to ease their inflexible racism.

Death in Hackney, of Congregationalist John Pye-Smith who had shown ways of reconciling geology and Scripture and been active on social issues such as the corn laws and slavery.

Fanny Crosby writes her first verses for composer William Bradbury, "A Home Beyond the Tide," the beginning of a long and fruitful hymnwriting relationship.

The Chicago Evangelization Society was organized by evangelist D. L. Moody, 50. Two years later, the Society established the Bible Institute for Home and Foreign Missions. Moody died in 1899, and in 1900 the school was renamed Moody Bible Institute.

Death of Pandit Kharah Singh. He had wandered India preaching Christ.

Russia's Communists issue a Decree on the Separation of Church and State that strips the church of legal rights and the power to hold property.

German theologian and Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter from prison: 'Much that worries us beforehand can afterwards, quite unexpectedly, have a happy and simple solution... Things really are in a better hand than ours.'