JUNE 2
Days of Violence, Dozens of Deaths in the Gordon Riots (1780)
“Your words and promises are very fair, but they are new to us and of uncertain import, and I cannot approve of them so far as to forsake that which I...”
Source of text: Bede. Ecclesiastical History of England. London: George Bell and Sons, 1907. Source of date: Wace, Henry. A Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D., with an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresies. London: John Murray, 1911.
God Keeps Us in His Own Hands (1880)
In faithfulness you have afflicted me —Psalm 119:75 (ESV). The Lord will trust no one to keep his people but himse...
Events
304
Syrian Bishop St. Erasmus (also known as St. Elmo) is disemboweled in Formia, Italy, during the savage persecution of Diocletian.
Authority for the date: Harper, Howard V. Days and Customs of All Faiths. New York: Fleet Publishing, 1957.828
(or 829) Death in Contantinople, of Nicephorus, formerly Patriarch of Constantinople. He had defended the use of icons in worship against Leo III, the icon-denying Emperor. Leo had removed Nicephorus from office and restricted him to a monastery.
Authority for the date: http://orthodoxwiki.org/Nicephorus_I_of_Constantinople1070
Hereward the Wake (ie: the wary) and his followers, a resistance movement against William the Conqueror, attack and loot Peterborough Abbey, supposedly to keep its wealth from passing under Norman control because a Norman abbot had been appointed.
Authority for the date: June 1070 confirmed at http://www.timeref.com/hpl629.htm1537
Pope Paul III issues the bull Sublimis Deus declaring that American Indians have souls and are to be treated with human dignity.
Authority for the date: A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America1811
Baptism of Abdool Musseeh (Sheikh Salih) who had been an ardent Muslim but had begun to seek Christ after seeing his Muslim military supervisor assassinate another Muslim while vowing friendship. Shortly afterward, Husseeh heard the missionary Henry Martyn speak and was drawn by his words. Then while binding copies of Martyn’s Hindustani translation of the New Testament, he had read the contents and become convinced of the truth of Christianity. He will become a strong witness among Muslims and open a Christian school, becoming a catechist for new Christians and eventually an ordained Lutheran pastor. At one point he will have to flee to escape assassination by Muslims angry at his defection from their religion; but by the time of his death he will be respected wherever he goes.
Authority for the date: Oriental Christian Biography.1895
Death of Christian educator Zeng Laishun in Tianjin. He had served the church both in China and the United States, as well as serving in business and administrative posts in China.
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity.1901
Death in Formosa (Taiwan) of Canadian Presbyterian missionary George Leslie Mackay from throat cancer. He had been the first foreign missionary commissioned by Canada’s Presbyterian church. On Taiwan his close identification with the Taiwanese had prompted him to take the unusual step of marrying a Chinese woman. Over a century later, he would be the subject of an opera.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.2012
Opening of a Conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on “Theological Perspectives on Diakonia in the 21st Century.”
Authority for the date: Stephanie Dietrich, “‘For Thus Says the Lord’: Prophetic Diakonia as Advocacy and Fight f