Historical Writings

Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, meets Emperor Constantine outside Constantinople. Constantine flies into a rage when someone accuses Athanasius of holding up grain shipments from Egypt.

Thirteen years after Lutheran ministers came to bring spiritual renewal to its people, Denmark adopted Lutheranism as its official state religion.

Death in Strasburg, Germany, of Jacob Sturm. He had been an ardent champion of Lutherans and had signed the protest presented to the Diet of Spires from which Protestants got their name.

English founder of Methodism John Wesley explained in a letter: 'By a "Christian," I mean one who so believes in Christ as that sin hath no more dominion over him.'

The Wesley Chapel on John Street in New York City was dedicated. It was the first Methodist church building to be erected in the American colonies, and was restored in 1817, and again in 1840.

Christian poet and former slave Phillis Wheatley publishes a notice in the Evening Post and General Advisor of Boston requesting subscriptions for a new book of poems.

Baptist minister and escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and jailed in Jerusalem, Virginia.

Consecration in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, of James Roosevelt Bayley to be the first Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Newark. He later became Archbishop of Baltimore.

William H. Miles professes a hope in Christ. He will become one of the early bishops of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.

A Council of Protestant missionaries in Tokyo undertakes translation of the Old Testament into Japanese.

Well-known Congregationalist minister and publisher Lyman Abbott delivers an address in New York at the funeral of economist Henry George, who had proposed that the economic rent of land should be shared by society rather than being owned privately.

Pope Leo XIII published the apostolic letter "Vigilantiae," which officially established the Pontifical Commission of Biblical Studies. Created to safeguard the authority of Scripture from outside secular criticism, in 1904 the Commission was empowered to confer academic degrees.

Dr. Joseph H. Evans was elected president of the United Church of Christ. It made him the first African-American leader of this predominantly white denomination.

The body of Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, abducted eleven days earlier by the Polish secret police, is found with marks of torture.