December 17: Today in Christian History

December 17, 630

Death of Modestus of Jerusalem who had become acting Patriarch of Jerusalem and then patriarch in his own right when the Persians captured the city and slaughtered or imprisoned many Christians, including Patriarch Zacharias.

December 17, 693

Death of Begga, a daughter of Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace of Austrasia. Following the death of her husband, she had become a nun, founded seven churches, and built a convent where she was abbess.

December 17, 1559

Matthew Parker is made Archbishop of Canterbury and supports Reformation under Elizabeth I. Implementing Elizabeth’s policies, he will be cruel with Puritans and other dissenters. In an effort to undermine the legitimacy of his apostolic succession and the validity of Anglicanism, Catholics will later assert his consecration was invalid.

December 17, 1801

Ordination of William Bengo Collyer. At eighteen he had accepted the pulpit of the Presbyterian Church of Peckham, Surrey, which had been declining under Arian teaching. Under Collyer’s faithful and articulate preaching, the congregation will increase tenfold, attracting large crowds. Later he will preach at Salter’s Hall, another church destroyed by Arian teaching and it, too, will come back to a flourishing state.

December 17, 1912

William Borden (Borden of Yale) boards a ship for Africa to work as a missionary among Muslims. The rich young man will die in Egypt before his work can begin.

December 17, 1917

The Bolsheviks in Russia confiscate church lands, cancel state subsidies for the church, make marriage a civil ordinance, and nationalize the schools, abolishing all religious instruction.

December 17, 1949

Czechoslovakian bishops declare that their nation’s November 1st 1949 law regarding religion is in contradiction to the law of God.

December 17, 1961

Death in Asyut, Egypt, of Lillian Trasher, an Assemblies of God missionary, known as the “Mother of the Nile” for her development of a large orphanage complex in Egypt which also accepted widows and blind people.

December 17, 1976

The Moravian Church in Southwest Tanzania officially starts with its first synod at Utengule, at which delegates elect Tulinawo Luhomano Msinjili as their first provincial chairman.

December 17, 1999

Speaking to an international symposium, Pope John Paul II expresses regret “for the cruel death inflicted on Jan Hus,” commending Hus’s “moral courage in the face of adversity and death.