March 27: Today in Christian History

March 27, 853

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

March 27, 1329

Pope John XXII issues In Agro Dominico condemning twenty-eight propositions of the Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart.

March 27, 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.

March 27, 1555

Nineteen-year-old William Hunter is burned to death in Brentwood, England, for refusing to accept the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation. He had resisted both threats and bribes.

March 27, 1683

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

March 27, 1716

Death of George Keith, an Anglican rector. 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.

March 27, 1930

Bolsheviks shoot Orthodox priest Basil Borisovich Chubinsky in Barabinsk on accusation of counter-revolutionary activities, and they exile his family.

March 27, 1930

Bolsheviks shoot Basil Feofanovich Infantyev, a priest of the Bratskaya Church, for “anti-Soviet activity” because he had opposed communist renovations in the teaching and practice of the Russian Orthodox Church. They will harrass his widow after his execution.

March 27, 1981

Alfred Selepe, Nazarene church-planter, pastor, and evangelist in South Africa is attacked by two young men, probably gangsters, and suffers eleven stab wounds but will recover after treatment.

March 27, 1991

Missionary Lynda Bethea is beaten to death by robbers in Kenya when she and her husband stop to help a “wounded” African lying in the road.

March 27, 1993

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.