April 20, 1479
Death of Alexander who founded the Orthodox monastery of Oshevensk, experienced miracles, and was a notable spiritual counselor.
April 20, 1529
At the Second Diet of Speyer, the term “Protestant” is first applied to participants of the Reformation. The term was taken from the Protestatio, a statement by the reformers challenging the imperial stance on religion.
April 20, 1534
Execution of Elizabeth Barton, the “Nun of Kent” who had prophecied against King Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. She said Henry would die shortly thereafter. (He lived fifteen more years.) A staunch Roman Catholic with a reputation for holiness, she urged pilgrimmages and prayer to Mary and strongly opposed the Lutheran Reformation.
April 20, 1558
Death of Johannes Bugenhagen, a leading Lutheran reformer, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, and the pastor of the city church there. Bugenhagen had helped Luther with his German Bible translation as well as translating the Bible into Low German himself.
April 20, 1653
Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament, so-called because it consisted of only a few representatives who still remained. Cromwell lectures them on their vices and their uselessness, saying he is doing this at God’s command: “Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. Go!”
April 20, 1676
Death of Baptist minister John Clarke, a founding father of Rhode Island, and the agent who obtained the colony’s charter from King Charles II in 1663.
April 20, 1884
Leo XIII issues his encyclical Humanum genus against the Masonic order which, in Europe, is atheistical and anti-religious in tenor.
April 20, 1898
C. H. Spurgeon’s London tabernacle burns down. Efforts to rebuild it commence at once.
April 20, 1962
Theologian Karl Barth is featured on the cover of Time magazine.
April 20, 1988
Wilson Rajil Sabiya, a Lutheran theologian, writes a letter to General Ibrahim Babangida, President and Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, alerting him to Muslim efforts to make Nigeria an Islamic country by infiltrating the police force.
April 20, 2001
A Peruvian Air Force aircraft shoots down a private airplane carrying missionaries, killing Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter, Charity.
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