Today in the year 654 the first general council of the Anglo-Saxon Church opened. It was convened in Hertford, by Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury. The Venerable Bede is the historical source for this council, as he included its text in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The council was attended by five bishops from across Anglo-Saxon England. Bede also records royal attendance, as King Ecgfrith of Northumbria was present and it was a milestone in

Today in 1860 we remember the Death from cholera of the Russian theologian Alexei Khomiakov, while treating peasants during an epidemic. The Cofounder of the Slavophile movement : was a multi-talented man, theologian, philosopher, poet and amateur artist. Even though he had been subject to censorship during his life, but he became a significant influence on Fyodor Dostoevsky. Khomiakov developed the idea of sobornost to underline the need for co-operation between people, at t

Today in 2000 we travel to Hyderabad, India where a quarter of a million Christians clogged the streets, to pay their final respects to the evangelist Bakht Singh who was being buried. Inching along the funeral route, they hold aloft Bibles and Scripture banners, singing and praising God. It was one of the largest funerals in the history of Hyderabad, but not in India, when compared to other historical figures, He was known as Brother Bakht Singh and was one of the most well-

Today in 1701 Thomas Bayes was born into a prominent nonconformist family from Sheffield. He would be known for formulating: Bayes' theorem which describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. He wrote his findings on probability in “Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances” (1763), but it was only published posthumously in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. That work became

Today in 1884 we remember how Dr. Horace Newton Allen arrived in Chemulpo, Korea, praying for an opportunity to evangelize Korea, where the introduction of Christianity was illegal. A rebellion in Seoul led to the prince, a nephew of the king, suffering seven sword thrusts. Refusing to flee with other westerners, Allen tended the prince, who recovered. Recognizing that western medicine is an outgrowth of Christianity, the grateful king removes restrictions on Christianity. Th

Today in 1630 the Welsh-born poet, George Herbert was ordained a priest in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter, just outside Salisbury. He had been a student at Trinity College, Cambridge and moved smoothly through the typical stages of academic success: earning a BA and then an MA; obtaining a Minor fellowship then a Major fellowship & increasing responsibility as a tutor and lecturer; until he was ma

Today we remember the death in 1905 of the Scottish clergyman George MacDonald who wrote novels to support himself. He is best remembered for his allegorical fairy stories, which have continued to delight both children and adults. His influence and legacy is wide ranging – a mentor of Lewis Carroll and prominent authors including J. M. Barrie, Mark Twain, G.K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Neil Gaiman and J. R. R. Tolkien have cited him as a major influence on them. C. S. Lewis (

Today we remember the death of the Swiss doctor and mystic Adrienne von Speyr. Born and raised during the early twentieth century in a respected upper-class family in Protestant Switzerland, in spite of the prognosis of terminal tuberculosis as a teen she became one of the first female medical doctors in the country and she had a thriving practice, where she saw between sixty and eighty patients a day and cared for the poor free of charge.to attain her chosen career as a phy

Today in 1440, Gilles de Rais, one of the earliest known serial killers, was taken into custody upon an accusation brought against him by the Bishop of Nantes. He had kidnapped a cleric during a dispute and the investigation that followed uncovered evidence of multiple murders. When the Bishop released his findings he obtained the prosecutorial cooperation of Rais' former protector, John VI, Duke of Brittany. Gilles de Rais was a knight and lord from Brittany, a leader in the

Today in 1530 a supposed 'miraculous' portrait of Saint Dominic appeared in Calabria, in the South of Italy. The image has garnered intense local devotion with many miracles attached to it. It has itself been painted many times and today we look at the story of Dominic and his life, and the mysterious circumstances of the arrival of the painting Dominic Guzman had born in old Castile, Spain, in the 12th century and became a canon of the cathedral at Osma, where there was

Today in 1715 the Benedictine monk and cellar Master Dom Pierre Perignon died at the age of 77. He did not invent the sparkling white wine known as Champagne as popular mythology supposes but he did make important contributions to the production and quality of Champagne wine in an era when the region's wines were predominantly still red. The importance of his work is acknowledged by the winery Moët & Chandon, who named their most famous Champagne Dom Pérignon in his memory.

Today in Christian History we go back to year 1874 and travel to Russia where today the writer Fyodor Doestoevsky finished the first draft for his final novel the Brothers Karamazov. An absorbing mixture of the story of three brothers , a murder mystery and discussion of the validity of religion. It was originally called ‘The Life of a Great Sinner’, the text was altered by a personal tragedy: in May 1878, Dostoevsky's 3-year-old son Alyosha died of epilepsy, a condition inh

Richard Challoner would become the leading figure of English Catholicism for the greater part of the eighteenth century. He was bright but not exceptionally so & had a well-grounded piety that was infectious, and was hard working coupled with an integrity to his life that meant that he was trusted by the traumatised Catholic community which was still semi-underground. As a Bishop, he grew in stature as an effective leader. His integrity and the trust that he had built meant t

Today in the Spanish priest and fierce defender of indigenous peoples Bartolome de la casas ended his term as bishop of Chiapas in Mexico. His extensive writings, the most famous being A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies chronicle the first decades of colonization of the West Indies. He described the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples. Casas became one of the most influential thinkers of his day. His views on slavery and the r

Today at Yale University, Carl Jung’s Terry lectures on Psychology and Religion were published. He had delivered the lectures in 1938 and had covered three themes in his lectures – The Autonomy of the Unconscious Mind, Dogma and Symbols and the History and Psychology of a Natural Symbol. In his lectures he describes what he regards as the authentic religious function of the unconscious mind. Using a wealth of material from ancient and medieval gnostic, alchemistic, and occu

Michael Novak would become the author of more than forty books on the philosophy and theology of culture, and was most famous for the 1982 publication The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. He was born today in 1933 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Developing a theology of Capitalism, he challenged Max Weber's idea of the Protestant Work Ethic. He wrote “Democratic capitalism is neither the Kingdom of God nor without sin. Yet all other known systems of political economy are worse.

Today in 1989 the journal Science published the results of the work of Francis Collins who identified the gene which explained cystic fibrosis. Collins led the Human Genome project and then set up the BioLogos foundation to promote understanding between science and faith. In his bestselling book The Language of God: he wrote that scientific discoveries were an "opportunity to worship" The quest to understand cystic fibrosis had made slow Progress until 1985 when Lap-Chee Ts

Today we travel to central Nigeria where in the city of Jos terrible riots began today between Christians and Muslims. They were to last nearly two weeks, killing more than a 1000 people. The riots were triggered by the appointment of a Muslim politician, Alhaji Mukhtar Mohammed, as the local coordinator of the federal poverty alleviation program. The fighting quickly spread through various Jos neighbourhoods and to surrounding communities. Religious tensions had simmered in

Today in 1657 the Vatican placed Blaise Pascal’s Provincial Letters on the Index of Prohibited Books. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("List of Prohibited Books") was a list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality. The Letters defended Jansenism, which was an extreme version of St Augustine's theology which the Vatican had concluded was not very different from Calvinism. Pascals style of writing was very skilful and therefore the book was very popular. Pasca

Today in 1942 the Czech priest Joseph Beran was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. He was given number 25844 after the Nazis had targeted him for "subversive and dangerous" behaviour. He would survive the death camp and he was freed in 1945 upon Allied liberation and Pope Pius XII nominated him to head the Prague archdiocese. Following the Communist coup in 1948 in then-Czechoslovakia, Beran publicly opposed the new regime and was put under house arrest and moved