Jump directly to the Content

Christian History

Today in Christian History

March 5

March 5, 1179: Alexander III convokes the Third Lateran Council. Attended by 300 bishops, it gave the college of cardinals the exclusive right to elect the pope (by a two-thirds majority) and enacted measures against the Waldensians and Albigensians.

March 5, 1409: The college of cardinals convokes the Council of Pisa to end the Great Schism, which had divided Western Christendom in 1378 by the election of rival popes. Unfortunately, all the Council of Pisa did was to produce another candidate for the papacy (see issue 68: Jan Hus).

March 5, 1743:The Christian History, America's first religious magazine, is published in Boston in the midst of the Great Awakening. The weekly publication, "containing accounts of the propagation and revival of religion," is not to be confused with our magazine—though we're proud to carry on the name.

March 5, 1797: The three-masted ship Duff arrives in Tahiti's Matavai Bay, completing a 207-day voyage from London. The ship, commanded by Captain John Wilson, had aboard 37 artisans and pastors of the London Missionary Society (L.M.S.) and their families, who were to be resettled in the South Pacific on the islands of Tahiti, Tonga and the Marquesas.

March 5, 1899: Alcoholic-turned-evangelist Sam Jones begins a crusade in Toledo, Ohio, where the mayor was also named Sam Jones. Mayor Jones at first welcomed the publicity, but he worried when evangelist Jones decried the city's immorality (if the Devil were mayor of Toledo, the preacher said, he wouldn't change a thing). Nonetheless, the mayor was reelected the next month by a huge margin.

July 26, 1603: James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England. Among his many acts affecting English religious life (it is he for whom the King James Version is named) was the issuing of the Book of Sports, approving sports on Sunday.

July 26, 1833: Having abolished the slave trade in 1807, Britain's House of Commons bans slavery itself. When William Wilberforce, who had spent most of his life crusading against slavery, heard the news, he said, "Thank God I have lived to witness [this] ...

More from July 26
close