September 29: Today in Christian History

September 29, 393

An imperial decision protects Jews and their synagogues in the Roman Empire, banning regulations against Judaism in the name of Christianity.

September 29, 440

Leo I, the Great, is consecrated bishop of Rome (i.e.: pope). He will strengthen the authority of the church, suppress the Manichean heresy, and write important doctrinal letters.

September 29, 1413

Archbishop Arundel condemned Sir John Oldcastle, a follower of John Wycliffe, of heresy. He was given 40 days to recant, during which he escaped and hid in Wales. He remained hidden for a year, until the offer of a large reward prompted someone to betray him. He was then captured and roasted to death.

September 29, 1622

Death in exile of theologian Conrad Vorstius, at Toningen, Holstein, Germany. He had been accepted for a time by the Dutch Remonstrants (Arminians) but apparently denied the Trinity and the pre-existence of Christ and was eventually exiled by the Calvinist Synod of Dort.

September 29, 1642

An American Indian tomahawks René Goupil for having made the sign of the cross over some Iroquois children. Goupil falls, gasping the name of Jesus. Earlier he had been beaten to the ground and assailed several times with knotted sticks and fists, had his hair, beard and nails torn off and his forefingers bitten through.

September 29, 1770

Facing Death, George Whitefield Preached One Last time

September 29, 1771

Death at Aventage, India, of Rajanaiken. Converted from Catholic to Protestant views while serving in the army, he had enjoyed such success winning souls that he left the military to became an evangelist and pastor. His former church then had persecuted him and stirred up mobs to kill him, but each time he managed to escape, dying at last of natural causes.

September 29, 1830

The Leeds Mercury publishes Richard Oastler’s letter deploring “Yorkshire Slavery”—oppressive labor conditions of women and children. “Thousands of our fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects, both male and female, the miserable inhabitants of a Yorkshire town....are this very moment existing in a state of slavery, more horrid than are the victims of that hellish system ‘colonial’ slavery.”

September 29, 1878

Death of Marianne Dyson, who had been on familiar terms with some of the Church of England’s Tractarians. She had sought to bring their teachings to the lower middle class through education and publications. She also had mentored the successful author Charlotte Yonge.

September 29, 1883

Baptism of Pandita Ramabai, who becomes the most influential woman of India in the nineteenth-century.

September 29, 1904

While Reverend Seth Joshua prays, Evan Roberts is filled with the Holy Spirit. He will go on to lead a significant revival in Wales.

September 29, 1918

Edward Thomas Demby is consecrated as the first African American suffragan (assistant) bishop of the Episcopal Church.

September 29, 1941

Communists sentence Natalya Ivanovna Sundukova to death because she refuses to work for the Soviet state, declaring it is antichristian. She is convicted of “anti-Soviet propaganda among the prisoners and counter-revolutionary sabotage” and will be shot the following January.

September 29, 1951

Death of notable Welsh evangelist and revivalist Evan Roberts near Cardiff.

September 29, 1968

Christian and Missionary Alliance missionary Betty Ann Olsen, who is being held captive by the Viet Cong, died and is buried by Michael Benge along a trail. Olsen, born to missionary parents in Bouake, Ivory Coast, had gone to Vietnam in 1964 as a missionary nurse. Eventually taken prisoner by the Viet Cong, Olsen and two other missionaries were chained together and moved north from one encampment to another through mountainous jungles. The grueling months-long trip took its toll. Physically depleted, the missionaries became sick from dysentery and malnutrition and were beset by fungus, infection, leeches and ulcerated sores.

September 29, 1978

Three weeks after being elected, Pope John Paul I dies while reading a devotional in bed.

September 29, 1979

The LDS Edition of the King James Version of the Bible was published.

September 29: Feast of the Archangels (Michaelmas)

In the Roman Catholic Church on 29 September three Archangels are celebrated: Saint Michael, Saint Gabriel, and Saint Raphael. Their feasts were unified in one common day during the second half of the 20th century.

Michaelmas also known as the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels) is a Christian festival observed in many Western Christian liturgical calendars on 29 September, and on 8 November in the Eastern Christian traditions