December 5: Today in Christian History

December 5, 532

Death of St. Sabas, a hermit who had become the leader of an early monastic movement and traveled widely preaching against heresy. He founded a monastery in Palestine, Mar Saba, that will still be standing in the twenty-first century. 

December 5, 1525

Anabaptist leader Hans Schlaffer is arrested by persecutors in Austria. Refusing to recant his opposition to infant baptism, he will subsequently be burned alive.

December 5, 1784

Death of Phillis Wheatley, the first published African American poet and a Christian. She had written brilliantly in English as a second language.

December 5, 1804

Missionary Wilhelm Tobias Ringeltaube lands at Tranquebar, India, serving under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, and will labor there and at Travencore with much success until 1816, when he will move on to Ceylon.

December 5, 1837

The first public performance of Hector Berlioz’s Requiem takes place in a church in Paris in honor of General Damremont and other soldiers who had died during a siege in Algeria.

December 5, 1903

James C. Sheafe, African American pastor, organizes a new congregation of 51 members, mostly African American, into the People’s SDA [Seventh-day Adventist] Church, in Washington, DC.

December 5, 1907

Death of Priscilla Jane Owens, who had been an American Methodist school teacher and author of several popular hymns, including “Jesus Saves” and “We Have an Anchor.”