Posts with the category “peaceweavers”

Baptist pastors Isaac Backus and John Leland were part of a Christian struggle for religious freedom that began in England and later flourished in North America. By way of background, from time out of memory, kings and queens had demanded total allegiance, based upon the notion of "Divine Right of Kings." This claim said a monarch could not be questioned on any matter, and all people must show abs...  Read More

Klaus-Dieter grew up in Wiesbaden, Germany, the fourth child in a Baptist family. His father and mother were committed Christians. Klaus' father was a baker and, from his earliest childhood, Klaus and his siblings learned to work very hard. When he was a young teenager, Klaus read several books by "jungle doctor" Paul White, an Australian doctor who had served as a missionary in Tanganyika, Africa...  Read More

In the history of Christian missions, those intending to share the gospel have taken several approaches in doing so. Early on, during the Catholic European expansion period, missionaries were regularly sent out with explorers. They sometimes exploited indigenous peoples as they claimed lands and resources, forced baptisms, and eradicated original cultures and languages. Later, some Colonialists st...  Read More

Christians have been responding to disasters since the New Testament times, when house churches sent relief to brothers and sisters living in famine affected regions (e.g., Acts 11:27-30). As Christians, we do not “put our theology on the shelf” when we respond to disasters. Instead, we put our theology to work! Identifying with and assisting individuals and communities affected by disasters, whet...  Read More

Two streams of thought have influenced this April column. The first was a Sunday, 9 May 2021, Christian Post article on the top Mothers of Christian history, written by Mainline Church Editor, Michael Gryboski. That set me to thinking about the women I might choose. The second was a recent movie I watched with my daughter and a friend, Unsung Hero*, which affected me deeply.We have highlighted in ...  Read More

On 16 December 1867, in the village of Millisle, County Down, Ireland, a tiny babe was born to a young miller and his wife, David and Catherine Carmichael. They named her Amy Beatrice. She was the eldest of seven siblings and helped her parents raise them. She attended grade school in the hamlet and later attended Harrogate Ladies College for four years. She was five-foot tall, brown-eyed, and a b...  Read More

Dirk Willems was born in a small village called Asperen, Netherlands, about 1540. He was an Anabaptist, believing in salvation through Jesus Christ and a public declaration of His Lordship through believer's baptism.He believed that the true church was composed of born-again believers, that membership was voluntary, that discipleship was their goal, and that the government had no right to dictate ...  Read More

One of the most brilliant sons of the Church is a man almost nobody remembers today, although he belongs indisputably to the whole Christian church.His name is Jan Amos Comenius, a follower of Jan Hus of Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia), the martyr burned at the stake in 1415 for his preaching. Hus taught that God's Word should be read in the language of the people, instead of Latin. He also preached ...  Read More

We live in a war-torn world. We are eyewitnesses to war within countries, war within regions, war within communities and families, and war within human hearts. This month, we spotlight a contemporary PeaceWeaver, who has spent his life addressing the causes, preventing, and halting war. For two decades, Greg Boyle has rescued young men and women from the ravages of soul-deep conflict. He is the Fo...  Read More

“Surrender yourselves then to be ledand disposed of just as God pleases,with respect both to your outwardand inward state.”* Most historians date the close of the Reformation to the year 1648. Luther in Germany, Zwingli and Calvin in Switzerland, Latimer and Ridley in England, and the Anabaptists in many parts of Europe, all had addressed errors they found in the Catholic tradition. Protests also...  Read More

In early America, during the 17th and first half of the 18th century, most children led rather predictable and routine lives. They lived at home in rural homesteads and farms, working with their families in self-sufficient units. They raised gardens and crops and livestock, and made their living from their land. Every child grew up with family chores and responsibilities.Between the Revolution and...  Read More

Every once in a while, a whole family will come to the notice of the general public for its distinguished and extraordinary service. The Edwards are such a tribe in the Christian story. We present this group of parents and siblings as fine examples of child-rearing through troublesome circumstances. Timothy and Esther, who were Congregationalists, produced devout followers of Christ through the fi...  Read More

The "Harvard Computers," as they were called, were a team of brilliant women who observed, charted, and processed astronomical data at the Harvard Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, between 1877 and 1919. Edward Charles Pickering directed this hand-selected team until his death in 1919, and then Annie Jump Cannon became its director. From the beginning, the women were challenged to make sens...  Read More

Just nineteen days after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved individuals during the Civil War, a child was born in a small, rugged, logging camp to William and Lerona Sherwin Helms, near Malone, upstate New York, not far from the Canadian and Vermont borders. Remarkably, that tiny son’s life was set upon a trajectory that would help millions of people to be freed f...  Read More

Marjory Bankson wrote a compelling history of a small and innovative ministry that began in 1946 in Washington D. C. Engaging its community for almost eighty years, it is still strongly rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and bears fruit in the people He came to redeem. On Sunday, 5 October 1946, Gordon and Mary Cosby met with seven others to begin Church of the Savior (CoS) as "a local expressi...  Read More

The Christmas baby, given the grown-up name of Clarissa (Clara) Harlowe Barton, was born December 25, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts, more than two hundred years ago. Her father was Captain Stephen Barton, an Indian Wars veteran, leader of his town, and owner of a farm. Her father inspired in his daughter both a strong patriotism and a broad interest in helping others. Her mother, Sarah Ston...  Read More

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell was born on February 1865, at Parkgate, Cheshire, England to his parents - Algernon Sydney Grenfell, an educator and hospital chaplain, and Jane (Hutchinson) Grenfell. Grenfell grew up in the English countryside, swimming and fishing in the River Dee and hunting local birds along the river's banks.At fourteen, Wilfred attended the Marlborough College in Wiltshire, a board...  Read More

Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was born in Belfast, in Ulster, Ireland, the second son of Albert James and Florence Augusta Hamilton Lewis. His mother was the daughter and great-granddaughter of priests, and his elder brother Warren, or Warnie, was his best chum. As a babe, he was baptized by his mother's father in St. Mark's Church, Dundela. He named himself when he was...  Read More

Early Church Father Ambrose reports that Easter in 387 was observed in Gaul (France) on 21 March, in Italy on 18 April, and in Alexandria, Egypt, on 25 April. From the 4th century onward, factions of the Church debated the proper dating of Easter. It took a great deal of diplomacy to handle these matters. Hilda of Whitby, a princess and Abbess of a famous monastery, negotiated this very question i...  Read More

If one takes the A10 road north from London, and drives through Stoke Newington, Stamford Hall, and Seven Sisters, one will come next to Tottenham, which was a tiny village in the late 18th century and home to the Williams family. John was born in June of 1796 to parents devoted to God. He was a good student in grade-school and, in 1810 at fourteen years old, was apprenticed for seven years to Eno...  Read More

The wagon creaked slowly, trundling its way through an East Texas pine forest in the summer of 1859. Overhead, the towering trees swayed in the light breeze and provided dappling shade from the oppressive sun. The twenty- six year-old, Tennessee-born-pastor, Robert Cooke Buckner (1833-1919), did not mind the heat. He and his soul-mate wife, Vienna, and their two little girls, were headed west in s...  Read More

In 1845, the population of Ireland numbered almost eight million. The Irish were an industrious, hardy people, exporting to England their livestock, peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey and even potatoes. However, when the Irish potato crop failed that year and the next, large parts of the population, particularly in the west of Ireland, were left destitute. Irish Qu...  Read More

On 9-10 November 1938, Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, and killed almost 100 Jews. In the aftermath of what was called Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass,” some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. German Jews had been subjected to repressive policies since 1933, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler (18...  Read More

“Peace” seemed to be the middle name of the babe born that sunny day in Bethnal Green, east London, on 29 July 1870. Son of devout Anglican parents, James Henry Rushbrooke was brilliant, thoughtful, and became known as a careful reconciler of differences, even as a child. When James was fifteen years old, he began attending Westbourne Park Chapel with his aunt each Sunday and soon made a professio...  Read More

In the year 1864, on a 240 acre farm near Diamond Grove, Missouri, George was born to his mother Mary and father Giles. He had a sister and a younger brother too, and they were all enslaved by Moses and Susan Carver. When George was an infant, his father died. He and his mother were then kidnapped by rustlers and resold in a neighboring state. Mary was never seen again, but George, small and frail...  Read More

It is generally held that Mickey Leland was one of the most effective spokespersons for hungry people in the 20th century. How did this young man, born and raised in obscurity, become such a globally-recognized figure for this cause?Born to George Thomas and Alice Rains Leland II in Lubbock, Texas in November of 1944, “Mickey,” as his maternal grandfather called him, was a third generation namesak...  Read More

Brother Laurence (225-258) was one of seven deacons in the Early Church in Rome, in charge of the church’s treasures and the distribution of funds for the poor. But when Valerian took the throne and began persecuting Christians, hundreds died and serving the poor became more difficult. And when Valerian’s director of pagan religions demanded that Laurence turn over all of the church’s resources, L...  Read More

Carlos is a friend of ours. He lives in Cuba. Every two or three weeks, he is summoned to the police station to be interrogated for his role as pastor in his city. Every day, he and others are followed, they have had phone and computer accounts tapped, their mail is read before they receive it, and their cell phones are confiscated when they arrive at the police station. Carlos sends out prayer re...  Read More

Could it be possible that a single church’s response of forgiveness in crisis turned an entire nation toward peace? The answer is yes, and a work not new to Malkhaz Songulashvili, who has led the Baptists of Georgia (former Soviet Republic) to model reconciliation in their war-ravaged nation for years. Generations of the Republic of Georgia’s citizens have lived through the World Wars, with their ...  Read More

One bright day on 23 August 1835 in the village of Homer, New York, about thirty miles south of Syracuse, near Lake Ontario, a young bride greeted her soon-to-be husband, Samuel. They entered the little Homer church together to take their vows and began a legacy that has endured until the present day. The handsome young groom, Samuel Stearns Day, was born in a hamlet in Ontario, Canada, in 1808 to...  Read More

In March of 1901, a tiny girl-child was born to a Presbyterian lay preacher and his wife in Toronto, Canada. Her grandfather had been an ordained Presbyterian minister. Even so, with all of these generations of good models and devout home life, Belle did not know Jesus personally. She entered college, and her professor sneered at her belief in God and the Bible, proclaiming that no enlightened per...  Read More

Early in 1612, Edmund was arrested for preaching “that the baptizing of infants is an abominable custom; that the Lord’s supper and baptism are not to be celebrated as they are now practiced in the Church of England; and that Christianity is not wholly professed and preached in the Church of England, but only in part.” Later historians noted that “they found him guilty of many heresies, some of wh...  Read More

 Ida Sophia Scudder (December 9, 1870 – May 23, 1960) was born into the famous Scudder family. Her grandfather, Rev. Dr. John Scudder, Sr., had been the first American medical missionary, and had served as a doctor in Panditeripo, Ceylon, India with the Reformed Church in America. His seven sons, all born in India, became missionaries too. The youngest son, John Jr., married and soon became Ida’s ...  Read More

Born and reared in the north as a free black during the Revolutionary War in America, Thomas Paul heard the cry for freedom. He became one of the most ardent supporters of “soul-liberty” that America has ever known. While all but forgotten today, the legacy of this pastor, church planter, abolitionist, and missionary, still echoes, both from pulpits and in the hearts of freedom-advocates across th...  Read More

"Miss Mac," as she was affectionately known for most of her adult life, was born 26 June 1930 to Rev. Rufus Alexander and Stella Eley McWhorter, on her farm near Centralhatchee, Georgia. She attended school there, worked hard in the fields of her family’s cotton farm, and did heavy chores every day. She was a member of the Baptist church her father pastored and, when Mildred was thirteen, she real...  Read More

Pastor Josef Mohr (1792-1848) was a December babe, born in Salzburg, Austria, where he was reared to love Christ and his Church. As a young man, he entered the seminary, where he was ordained in 1815. He then began to minister to the villagers in several hamlets nearby. His work was intense, for there was unending misery in those days.A string of volcanoes had been erupting in Asia for many years ...  Read More

In 1871, Horatio Spafford (1828-1888), a devout Presbyterian church elder and prosperous businessman, was living comfortably in Chicago with his wife Anna, and their four young daughters. At their home in a north side suburb, the Spaffords hosted and financially supported many guests. Horatio had been active in the abolitionist crusade and their cottage was a meeting place for activists in the ref...  Read More

Muriel Lester was born in Leytonstone, Essex (now in east London), on 9 December 1883 into a prosperous Victorian shipbuilding family. Her father Henry owned a shipyard in Blackwall Docks to the south on the Thames River, on the Isle of Dogs. It was her family's company that built the barge that carried Cleopatra’s Needle, an ancient Egyptian obelisk, dated 1450 BC, to London when it was given as ...  Read More

Lillian Hunt Trasher was born on 27 September 1887 in Jacksonville, Florida, and was reared in Georgia. Early in her life she put her faith in Jesus Christ and determined to live for Him, moving from her Roman Catholicism to a Pentecostal-Holiness tradition. She attended Bible college for a term, worked in an orphanage under the supervision of Miss Mattie Perry in North Carolina, and was soon enga...  Read More

Little Adeyemi was born in 1888 into a family who worshiped Orisa-oko, the god of harvest of the rural province of Oloisaoke, near Ogbomoso, in the Oyo State of Nigeria. The family worshiped and displayed the python snake prominently as a part of this worship and, as a child, Adeyemi was dedicated to marry a priest of Orisa-oko someday. As a young girl, she became an ambassador for the worship of ...  Read More