March 2: Today in Christian History

March 2, 396

Under ecclesiastical legislation issued by emperor Honorius, all buildings in which heretics assemble are confiscated and all meetings interdicted.

March 2, 1559

Pierre Viret is appointed a preacher to the City of Geneva where his sermons will be more popular than those of Calvin.

March 2, 1606

Nicholas Owen, Jesuit builder of priest holes (secret hiding places for priests), dies under torture in the Tower of London.

March 2, 1631

Death of Job Boretsky, an Orthodox metropolitan in the Ukraine, noted for his defence of the Orthodox faith, his poetry, writings, and translations.

March 2, 1690

French archbishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet forces the locks on an abbey in order to compel the nuns, who have long had a measure of autonomy, to submit to him.

March 2, 1874

Murder of Protestant missionary John Luther Stephens in Ahualulco, Mexico, by a mob stirred up by a local Catholic priest. Stephens had recently begun work at this “outpost” where he taught night schools and found many listeners for impromptu sermons and lessons.

March 2, 1898

At Australia’s Constitutional Convention, Patrick Glynn, a Roman Catholic member, asks for an amendment in the preamble to say the people of the colonies, “humbly relying upon the blessing of almighty God,” agree to unite into an indissoluable commonwealth. His proposal is accepted by the majority over the jeers of secularists.

March 2, 1907

Chicago evangelist William Durham, visiting the Asuza Street Mission in Los Angeles, speaks in tongues. Pentecostal leader William J. Seymour predicts that wherever Durham speaks the Holy Spirit will fall on people.

March 2, 1938

The Nazi trial of pastor Martin Niemoller, an outspoken critic of Hitler’s regime, ends. He will spend seven years in prisons and concentration camps.

March 2, 1990

Christians are physically assaulted by Muslims at the Egyptian city of Abu Qurqas and the towns of Beni Ebid and al-Berba. Five churches are severely damaged along with more than forty other properties belonging to Christians.