January 29: Today in Christian History

January 29, 570

(probable date) Death of Gildas, thought to have been an abbot, who gave us the earliest history we have of the British Celts. Because of the scarcity and inaccuracy of records from that era, the date and place of both his birth and death will remain uncertain into the twenty-first century.

January 29, 1430

(probable date) Death of Andrei Rublev at Andronikov Monastery. He will be considered the greatest medieval Russian painter of icons and Christian frescoes.

January 29, 1555

Agents of Mary Tudor degrade and condemn the Protestant bishop John Hooper along with John Rogers, Rowland Taylor, and other preachers of the Reformation. Hooper will be executed the following month.

January 29, 1663

Death of Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln, whose biography was included as one of Izaak Walton’s Lives. Siding with the Royalists, Sanderson had been deprived of his living after the Puritans took power during the Commonwealth.

January 29, 1877

Death in New York of Sarah Doremus, sometimes called the “Mother of Missions” because of her strenuous efforts in behalf of foreign missions.

January 29, 1882

“Cotty” Peabody arrives in Tombstone a few months after the shootout at O.K. Corral where he will establish Arizona territory’s first Protestant church.

January 29, 1918

Death in Chicago of Sarah Dunn Clarke, co-founder of the Pacific Garden Mission and its "mother."

January 29, 1921

The Congregational Holiness Church is formally organized in High Shoals, Georgia, following a split the previous year with the Pentecostal Holiness Church.

January 29, 1929

Death in Baxter Springs, Kansas, of Charles Fox Parham, early American Pentecostal innovator and theologian.

January 29,

Popular Nigerian multi-award winning Pastor and Relationship coach, Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo, was born today. You can read his full biography here.

January 29, 2005

Bulus Marwa becomes the pastor of Victory Baptist Church, Alamuderi, Maiduguri, Nigeria, where he will serve until December 24, 2010, when members of the militant Muslim group Boko Haram will murder him along with several other Christians.