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The Pearl

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Aug 30 The Rev Chambers, Everton & Liverpool

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 30, 2021
4 min

Aug 30 The Rev Chambers, Everton & Liverpool

Today we travel to Yorkshire in the north of England where Ben Swift Chambers was born in 1845. He would become a Methodist minister and the founder of St Domingo’s football club which is now known as Everton and has an estimated worth of £2.8bn. In his teenage years, Chambers served as an apprentice to an engraver in Huddersfield – and showed so much potential that he was offered a partnership in the business. It must have been a quite tempting offer as it was a viable busi

Aug 29 Faraday discovers Electricity

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 30, 2021
4 min

Aug 29 Faraday discovers Electricity

Today the great experimentalist Michael Faraday induced the first electrical current. Faraday would later use the principles he had discovered to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators and the electric motor. His achievements were all the more notable as he had received little formal education, but he became one of the most influential scientists in history. The son of an English blacksmith, he was apprenticed at the age of 14 to a bookseller

Aug 28 Medellin & Liberation Theology

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 30, 2021
3 min

Aug 28 Medellin & Liberation Theology

Today we go back to year 1968 and travel to Medellin in Colombia, were the Second Latin American bishops' conference opened as a follow-up to the Second Vatican Council. The challenge was to adapted the insights of Vatican 2 in a creative way to the Latin American context. It took as the theme for its 16 documents “The Church in the Present Transformation of Latin America in the Light of the Council", with a focus on the poor and oppressed in society. The challenge at the

Aug 27 The first businessman to be declared a saint?

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 29, 2021
3 min

Aug 27 The first businessman to be declared a saint?

Today it's 1962 and we travel to Argentina where Enrique Ernesto Shaw, the Founder of the Christian Association of Business Executives was to die of cancer in Buenos Aires. Five years earlier when he was dying of cancer, 260 workers came to the hospital to give blood for a life-sustaining transfusion, a sign of the esteem that he was held in. This was as a result of his lifelong concern about improving the status of workers in Argentina. His status as a Christian entrepreneur

Aug 26 Nietzsche and the 'murder' of God

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 29, 2021
8 min

Aug 26 Nietzsche and the 'murder' of God

Today in 1900 the great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche died. The last ten years of his life had been filled with unhappiness and suffering after he had suffered a mental breakdown whilst in Northern Italy. Two policemen had approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What actually triggered this remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale from shortly after his death states that Nietzsche witnessed the flogging of a horse at the o

Apr 25 Ivan the Terrible's Monk

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 28, 2021
3 min

Apr 25 Ivan the Terrible's Monk

Today in 1549, Adrian of Ondrusov, an Orthodox monk died after being killed by robbers. Now venerated by the Orthodox church as a saint, Adrian was supported by Ivan Vasilyevich the grand prince of Moscow from and the first tsar of all Russia. Adrian founded a monastic community with an endowment from Ivan and agreed to become the godfather to his daughter. This was a complicated association for a saint – as the Tsar was commonly known in English as Ivan the Terrible. Conte

Aug 24 Start of Non-conformism

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 28, 2021
3 min

Aug 24 Start of Non-conformism

On Aug 24th in 1662 the deadline arrived for all Christian Ministers to assent to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. 2000 Puritans abandoned their pulpits and became known for the first time as non-conformists. It was an important moment in the establishment of the Church of England and the 1662 Prayer Book was printed two years after the restoration of the monarchy. The short-lived Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell had been celebrated as a victory of Puritanism, with the e

Aug 23 The Violent death of Brother Roger of Taizé

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 27, 2021
4 min

Aug 23 The Violent death of Brother Roger of Taizé

Today we travel to Taizé in France where today in 2005 the founder of the world famous ecumenical community was buried days after he had been stabbed to death by a 36-year-old Romanian woman in front of 2,500 worshippers during night prayer. The woman had slipped into the middle of the choir of brothers and walked towards him plunging the knife into his neck, he died 15 minutes later. Police who attended the crime scene, later that night would advise the Brothers to ring the

Aug 22 De Lubac & Spiritual Worldliness

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 27, 2021
6 min

Aug 22 De Lubac & Spiritual Worldliness

Today we travel to Lyon where the French Jesuit, Henri De Lubac was ordained a priest in 1927. Earlie in his training, the French novitiate had temporarily relocated to St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex because of anti-Church laws in France and de Lubac studied on the Southern English Coast before being drafted to the French army in 1914 due to the outbreak of the Great War. He received a head wound at Les Éparges on All Saints Day three years later which deeply traumatised h

Aug 21 Adam Gifford and the Gifford Lectures

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 27, 2021
3 min

Aug 21 Adam Gifford and the Gifford Lectures

Its 1885, we are in Scotland, where today Lord Adam Giffords’ will was finalised. A large part of his substantial fortune made from a lucrative private practice in law. A substantial part of his last testament and will bequeathed an endowment of the four Gifford Lectureships on natural theology in connection with each of the four universities in Scotland then in existence (Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews). The Lectures were to given as a series, with the intent o

August 20 Bultmann and Demythologisation

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 27, 2021
3 min

August 20 Bultmann and Demythologisation

Today we travel to Germany where the influential Lutheran theologian Rudolf Karl Bultmann was born in 1884. One of the pioneers of the ‘historical Jesus’ research and did important work in attempting to reconcile faith and reason in a modern context. His program to “demythologize” the New Testament was influenced by existentialist philosophy, but now it is widely discredited by scholars. His legacy is disputed, he was a deeply influential figure in liberal Christian theology

Aug 19 The Moabite Stone & the Exodus

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 20, 2021
3 min

Aug 19 The Moabite Stone & the Exodus

Its 1868 and we are in Jordan where late in the afternoon during a coffee break, the sheikh of the Banî Hamîdi tribe informed the German Anglican missionary Frederick Klein of a massive inscribed basalt stone lying on a nearby mound called Tell Dhiban. Although time was too short for a thorough inspection of the stone, Klein told Julius Henry Petermann, German consul and orientalist at Jerusalem, about the sensational discovery. Klein and Petermann’s attempt to keep the find

Aug 18 Filming the Exorcist

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 20, 2021
4 min

Aug 18 Filming the Exorcist

Today in Washington the principal photography for The Exorcist began. The film would win two Oscars and become the first horror film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and has had a significant influence on popular culture. Based on the fictional novel by William Blatty, he later admitted it was inspired by a 1949 exorcism performed on an anonymous young boy known as "Roland Doe" by the Jesuit priest Fr. William S. Bowdern. The novel changed several deta

Aug 17 Excavating Armageddon

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 20, 2021
4 min

Aug 17 Excavating Armageddon

Today we travel to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where Clarence Stanley Fisher was born in 1876. He would devote his life to Near Eastern archaeology and oversee one of the most evocative sites in the Levant – the plane and tell of Megido – known in Greek as Armageddon. During World War I, Fisher was assigned to Egypt, where he worked under George Reisner there before he travelled to Palestine under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania where he took on the role as Dire

Aug 16 Operation Baptism

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 17, 2021
3 min

Aug 16 Operation Baptism

Today we got to 1944 Hungary where a dispatch from Angelo Roncalli to the papal nuncio in Hungary illustrated the intensity of "Operation Baptism". This was the secret effort by the Vatican to get Jews out of the hands of the Nazi regime and smuggle them to safe houses across Europe. This was all done with the support of Pope Pius XII, who since the 1960’s has been unfairly vilified as being Hitlers Pope. Only recently the historical record has been corrected. Angello Roncal

Aug 15 Cologne Cathedral - 632 years in the making

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 17, 2021
3 min

Aug 15 Cologne Cathedral - 632 years in the making

Today in 1880 Cologne Cathedral was finished. It was Germany's largest cathedral and for four years it was the tallest building in the world until the completion of the Washington Monument. It is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day. Today’s completion was celebrated as a national, 632 years after construction had begun At 157 m (515 ft), the cathedral is currently the tallest twin-spired church in the world, the second tallest church

Aug 14 Maximillian Kolbe

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 14, 2021
4 min

Aug 14 Maximillian Kolbe

Today in Poland, the Franciscan Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz. He had been arrested in Poland in February of 1941, and in May sent to what was effectively a death camp. According to some estimates, between 1.1 million to 1.5 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, died at Auschwitz during its years of operation. An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Poles perished at the camp, along with 19,000 to 20,0

Aug 13 James Joyce, Faith and Ulysees

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 14, 2021
4 min

Aug 13 James Joyce, Faith and Ulysees

We travel to 1903 Dublin , Ireland were the Irish novelist and poet, James Joyce returned to Ireland from studies in Paris when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Fearing for her son’s “impiety”, his mother tried unsuccessfully to get Joyce to make his confession and to take communion. She finally passed into a coma and died on August 13. Joyce refused to kneel with other members of the family praying at her bedside. Joyce is now considered to be one of the most influentia

Aug 12 Golden Roses & Aparecida

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 12, 2021
3 min

Aug 12 Golden Roses & Aparecida

Today in 1967 Pope Paul VI granted a Golden rose to Aparecida Cathedral in Brazil. The Golden Rose is an ornament, which popes have traditionally blessed on the fourth Sunday of Lent, Lætare Sunday (also known as Rose Sunday), when rose-coloured vestments and draperies substitute the penitential purple, symbolizing hope and joy in the midst of Lenten season. Golden Roses have been awarded to people – men, women, and one married couple - as well as to states and churches. R

Aug 11 Deep Ethics Cosmology - George Ellis

Pearl of Great Price

Aug 11, 2021
4 min

Aug 11 Deep Ethics Cosmology - George Ellis

Today in 1939 George Francis Rayner Ellis was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is now the emeritus distinguished professor of complex systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and is considered one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology. A Cosmologist and Quaker, he was the inaugural president of the International Society for Science and Religion & has been awarded the $1.1 million dollar Templ