Today in Christian History
Thursday, January 9
710
Death of St. Adrian (or Hadrian) of Canterbury, an African. Well-educated, he had made Canterbury a center of learning for the British isles.
1522
Cardinals elect the Dutchman Adrian Dedel to be pope. He takes the name Adrian VI and will be the last non-Italian pope until St. John Paul II in the twentieth-century.
1569
St. Philip of Moscow, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, was murdered by Czar Ivan IV (“Ivan the Terrible”).
1765
Samuel Stillman is installed at the First Baptist Church, Boston. He will promote separation of church and state in the United States.
1777
Pioneer American Methodist bishop Francis Asbury wrote in his journal: ‘My soul lives constantly as in the presence of God, and enjoys much of His divine favor. His love is better than life!’
1836
The first Roman Catholic college to be founded in the Deep South, Spring Hill College was established in Spring Hill, Arkansas.
1890
Death of obscure hymnwriter Florence Catherine Armstrong. Her first hymn had appeared in the British Herald during February 1865. One of her best-known was “Oh to Be Over Yonder.”
1921
Soviets arrest the Orthodox priest Nilus Matveyevich Matveyev in the Tver province, charging him with “counter-revolutionary agitation.” Owing to an amnesty he is released, but six years later he is arrested again and exiled for three years.
1922
Death in New York City of Julia Chester Emery, who had served forty years as Secretary of the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Board of Missions in the Episcopal Church, continually urging expansion of missions and church education.
1924
Death of British Armenian scholar F. C. Conybeare, 68. His researches did much to relate the Armenian language and culture to the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint).
1947
Japan’s Christian Layman’s Association is formed under Dr. S. Uzawa, a former president of the Japanese bar association, and Dr. T. Yamamoto, a prominent scientist.
1970
After 140 years of unofficial racial discrimination, the Mormons issued an official statement declaring that blacks were not yet to receive the priesthood “for reasons which we believe are known to God, but which He has not made fully known to man.”
