November 11: Today in Christian History

November 11, 397

Martin of Tours, a bishop responsible for the evangelization of Gaul (modern-day France), died

November 11, 619

Death of St. John the Almsgiver, Cyprus-born Patriarch of Alexandria. Upon taking office, he had found that the Monophysites held a large number of Egyptians in their sway, but through symapthy and charity, he won much of the population back to Orthodoxy.

November 11, 826

On this day, Theodore the Studite, a champion of icons, died.

November 11, 1215

The fourth Lateran Council is convoked. It officially confirms the doctrine of transubstantiation—that the substance of Eucharistic bread and wine become the physical body and blood of Christ. The council also prescribes annual confession for all Christians.

November 11, 1620

On this day, in signing the The Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims pledged themselves, “solemnly mutually in the presence of God and one another,” to “covenant, and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic.”

November 11, 1620

Forty-one (41) Puritan separatists arrive in Plymouth, Massachusetts. They had hoped to settle further south, but as William Bradford wrote in his journal on December 19, "We could not now take much time for further search . . . our victuals being much spent, especially our beer"

November 11, 1793

On this day, William Carey landed in Calcutta, India, to begin his missionary career.

November 11, 1821

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose works (including Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamozov, and Notes from the Underground) reflect his deep Russian Orthodox faith, is born.

November 11, 1831

Baptist preacher Nat Turner is hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia, having led a slave insurrection that resulted in the deaths of fifty-five white people. (Whites killed two hundred or more African-Americans in retaliation.)

November 11, 1855

Danish Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, regarded as the founder of existentialism, dies at age 42. Trying to "reintroduce Christianity to Christendom," he believed that Christianity was far more radical and difficult than did his Danish contemporaries.

November 11, 1883

Elizabeth Ryder Wheaton claims she has had a vision of Christ. Afterward she will become a social reformer and evangelist.

November 11, 1917

Death of David Lipscomb, a Disciples (Churches of Christ) editor and author, and one of the founders of Nashville Bible School, which will later be renamed Lipscomb University.

November 11, 1921

Death of English theologian and educator P. T. Forsyth, who wrote The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, stressing man’s need for atonement and Christ’s voluntary provision of it. He had been principal of Hackney Theological College in Hamstead, London.

November 11, 1938

Kate Smith first sings Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” a song that she thought she was not going to like. It will become her signature song.

November 11, 1951

Death of Jesuit bishop Tsiang Beda of Shanghai in a communist prison. He had refused to head the Chinese “reform” church.