Today’s Thanksgiving feast has its origins in an English Reformation tradition carried on by the pilgrims who arrived at Plymouth in 1620. In an affront to the Catholic liturgical calendar, Puritans celebrated days of fasting and days of feasting—notably the day of feasting at the end of the fall harvest—in gratitude for God’s provision. In an age where consumption of food is often far removed from fields where it is produced, a growing number of evangelicals have reinterpreted the holiday as a time not only to thank God for abundance, but to examine where abundance comes from and the ethics of food, hunger, and environment.
July 15, 1015: Vladimir, the grand prince of Russia who made Orthodox Christianity the national religion, dies at age 59 (see issue 18: Russian Christianity).
July 15, 1099: The First Crusade captures Jerusalem, massacring thousands. "The city was filled with corpses and blood," wrote one chronicler (see issue 40: The Crusades).
July 15, 1606: Dutch Painter Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn is born to a wealthy family in Leyden. Personal tragedies seemed to deepen the spiritual dimensions of his art, and ...
