27th March: Today in Christian History

27th March, 853

Death of Haymo, a Saxon monk and scholar, and founder of the library of Halberstadt.

27th March, 1329

On this day in Christian History, Pope John XXII issued In Agro Dominico condemning twenty-eight propositions of the Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart.

27th March, 1378

Death of Pope Gregory XI, the last internationally-agreed-upon pope to reign in Avignon. Antipopes will reign there, however, because rivalries for the papacy after his death will result in the “Great Schism,” in which popes and antipopes vie for control of Christendom.

27th March, 1555

On this day in Christian History, Nineteen-year-old William Hunter was burnt to death in Brentwood, England, for refusing to accept the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation. He had resisted both threats and bribes.

27th March, 1683

On this day in Christian History, King Christian V of Denmark commissions pastor and poet Thomas Kingo to prepare a new hymnal for use in Danish churches.

27th March, 1716

On this day in Christian History, George Keith, an Anglican rector, died. As a young man, Keith had joined the Quakers but later withdrew from them, believing their doctrine had drifted from truth, and became instead an Anglican priest. He had served as a missionary to American Quakers before becoming a rector in Sussex, England.

March 27, 1837

Death at Bancoorah, India, of James, a convert from Hinduism. After his conversion, he had superintended a string of Christian schools and evangelized his own people as he had opportunity, overcoming the prejudices of his father, brothers, and some others who became Christians.

March 27, 1889

Death in Britain of John Bright, an English Quaker parliamentarian, famous for his speeches and advocacy of reforms.

March 27, 1920

Death of Francis Nathan Peloubet, American Congregational clergyman known for his annual volumes of Select Notes on the International Sunday School Lessons.

March 27, 1929

Death in Lausanne, Switzerland, of Charles Henry Brent, an Episcopal priest active in the ecumenical movement. Two years before his death, he had presided over the 1927 World Conference on Faith and Order, in Lausanne, Switzerland.

27th March, 1930

• On this day in Christian History, Bolsheviks shot Basil Borisovich Chubinsky Feofanovich Infantyev, an Orthodox priest of the Bratskaya Church in Barabinsk on accusation of counter-revolutionary activities, and “anti-Soviet activity” because he had opposed communist renovations in the teaching and practice of the Russian Orthodox Church. They harrassed his widow after his execution, and exiled his family.

27th March, 1981

On this day in Christian History, Alfred Selepe, a Nazarene church-planter, pastor, and evangelist in South Africa was attacked by two young men who were gangsters, and suffered eleven stab wounds but recovered after treatment.

27th March, 1991

On this day in Christian History, Missionary Lynda Bethea was beaten to death by robbers in Kenya when she and her husband had stopped to help a “wounded” African lying in the road.

27th March, 1993

On this day in Christian History, Security officers in Shaanxi Province, China, descend on a house church and beat the leaders. They then force the lay Christians to beat the leaders, too. They beat and expose some of the church’s women, hang some Christians from beams and beat them again, before forcing Lai Manping and several other badly-beaten Christians to crawl eighteen miles to a police station. Fearing than Lai will die in custody, they order him to leave. He is found dead on a roadside, having tried to crawl home.