March 28: Today in Christian History

March 28, 519

Under Emperor Justinian, the churches of the East and West reconcile. They had been separated for thirty-five years during the Acacian Schism, which revolved around whether or not Christ had two natures—the human and the divine. This had been the first significant break between the churches of East and West.

March 28, 1521

Pope Leo X condemns Luther by name on Maundy Thursday in the bull In Coena Domini, along with all his adherents.

March 28, 1538

A number of Geneva’s Catholic citizens, under the lead of François Chamois, enter a protest against the ordinance by which the city’s Protestant Confession of Faith had been adopted the year before.

March 28, 1568

Father Geronimo Ruiz Portillo, with six companions, arrives at Callao, Peru, the country’s first Jesuit missionaries. They will propagate the Christian faith among Indian populations, open churches, build schools, and develop a missionary training center.

March 28, 1606

Trial of Father Garnet, a leading English Jesuit, for collusion in the Gunpowder Plot to blow up parliament. Found guilty, he will be hanged in May.

March 28, 1866

A committee gathers to raise money to support William Lloyd Garrison who had dedicated his life and energy to the effort to abolish slavery. Rev. Samuel May, Jr., will do more than anyone else to raise the funds.

March 28, 1871

John Joseph Ignatius von Döllinger addresses a letter to his archbishop refusing to subscribe to the newly defined dogma of papal infallibility, saying, “As a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, as a citizen I cannot accept this dogma.” As a consequence Döllinger will be excommunicated in 1873.

March 28, 1886

Death of theologian Richard Chenevix Trench, archbishop of Dublin and student of Bible words, noted for his work  New Testament Synonyms.

March 28, 1892

William Christie sails from the United States bound for Buddhist Tibet. “By the grace of God I will spend and be spent for my Savior and the salvation of those who are sitting in awful darkness and sin and misery,” he writes. He will become known as the “Apostle of Tibet.”

March 28, 1896

Death of author, painter, linguist, and hymnwriter Elizabeth Rundle Charles in London, England. One of her better-known hymns was “Never Farther than Thy Cross.”

March 28, 1929

Death in Wellesley, Massachusetts, of hymnwriter Katherine L. Bates, author of the patriotic hymn “America the Beautiful.”

March 28, 1929

Death in England of evangelist and devotional writer Frederick Brotherton Meyer, an English Baptist clergyman.

March 28, 1938

Death at Oslo fylke, Norway, of Robert Parmalee Wilder, who had been an organizer of the Princeton Foreign Missionary Society and other mission societies. He had also been influential in the formation of the Student Volunteer Movement that advocated the “evangelization of the world in this generation,” and he authored several books on missions.

March 28, 1995

Popular Nigerian Gospel Music Artiste, Minister Deborah Enewa Hawthorns (Nee Paul Enenche) was born on this day.

March 28, 2011

The Simon Wiesenthal Center posthumously awards Hiram Bingham IV their medal of valor. Bingham, an Episcopalian, had been an American diplomat in France during the early years of the Nazi occupation and violated State Department protocol by arranging escapes for persecuted Jews. He will be remembered with other Righteous Gentiles in the Episcopal Church calendar on July 19.