AUGUST 23
THE DARING AND DISGRACE OF CARL GÜTZLAFF (1828)
“There are Five hundred and five Adult Persons of Indians within the Limits of our Township, unto whom these many years past, I have from time to time...”
Sibley, John Langdon, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University. Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1881.
Be perfect after the pattern of the Son (1897)
All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure —1 John 3:3 (NIV). God is now aiming to reprod...
Events
1712
Addison’s hymn “The Spacious Firmament on High” appears in the Spectator at the end of an essay on faith.
Authority for the date: Price, Carl Fowler. One Hundred and One Hymn Stories. Abingdon, 1923.1723
Death of Increase Mather, one of America’s most famous eighteenth-century clergymen, a president of Harvard College, and the father of Cotton Mather. Mather had published many books, including Cases of Conscience Concerning Witchcraft which helped end executions for witchcraft in New England.
Authority for the date: law2.umkc.edu.1828
Carl Gutzlaff and Jacob Tomlin become the first Protestant missionaries to set foot in Thailand.
Authority for the date: www.acts.edu/oldmissions/Thaihist.htm1838
Death of Gideon Blackburn who had been a missionary to the Cherokee and an evangelist and church planter in other frontier states, including Tennessee. Blackburn Theological Seminary (later renamed Blackburn College) will be named in honor of him.
Authority for the date: www.centre.edu.1838
The first class graduates from Mt. Holyoke Seminary, the first American college for women, founded by the Christian educator Mary Lyon.
Authority for the date: www.mtholyoke.edu.1888
Huang Su’e marries Episcopal missionary Francis Lister Hawks Pott, a leader and educator with the Chinese Anglican Church. Huang will evangelize, teach, and found an orphanage.
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity.1901
Six hundred American teachers arrive in the Philippines to staff schools and begin mass education of Filipinos. With them comes Protestantism, which will eventually make up about 7% of the island nation’s population as compared to 80% Catholic.
Authority for the date: Tuggy. The Philippine Church1918
Soviets execute Ephraim, the Orthodox bishop of Selenginsk. He had been a fiery preacher, beloved of his people, and had converted Mongols, Buryats, and Koreans to Christianity.
Authority for the date: Moss, Vladimir. Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia.1928
Death in Catonsville, Maryland, of Russell Kelso Carter. A Methodist preacher, he had authored the hymn “Standing on the Promises.”
Authority for the date: Cyberhymnal.1952
Death of Frederick Kenyon, biblical archeologist and author of Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts. He had had a knack for making his findings intelligible to lay people.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1966
Red Guards smash the windows of Moore Memorial Church, burn its books, burn its cross, and confine church leader Sun Yanli and his family in the building where they interrogate and whip them. Later, when they are released, the guards will shave Sun’s head and make him sweep and clean the church buildings.
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity.2008
A rampage against Christians begins in Orissa State, India, following the assassination of a Hindu leader which is blamed on Christians. Hindu mobs will kill forty Christians and burn thousands of homes, hundreds of churches, and thirteen schools. They will also rape many Christian women and sell dozens into sexual slavery. Tens of thousands of Christians will flee from the violence.
Authority for the date: Persecuted: the global assault on Christians.