April 23: Today in Christian History

April 23, 685

Dedication of a new church at the monastery of Jarrow in England. This monastery will be of interest because of its association with Biscop Baducing and the Venerable Bede. The building will still be functional, displaying its original dedication inscription, fifteen centuries later.

April 23, 997

Martyrdom of Adalbert of Prague, Missionary to Prussia, at the hands of a heathen priest. As bishop of Prague, he had sought to extinguish heathen customs and institute moral reforms and, when repulsed, devoted himself to mission work in Germany and Poland. It was he who baptized Stephen of Hungary.

April 23, 1625

Death of Maurice de Nassau, Prince of Orange, who had successfully driven the Spanish from the Netherlands, improving the training and care of armies in the process. He had favored strict Calvinists over Arminians and a centralized state over states’ rights, executing his chief rival Johan van Oldenbarnevelt.

April 23, 1702

Death of English Quaker leader Margaret Fell Fox. Her last words were “I am in Peace.” She had been a founding member of the Religious Society of Friends and one of the society’s “Valiant Sixty” preachers and missionaries.

April 23, 1849

Fyodor Dostoevsky is arrested, accused of plotting to overthrow the Russian government. After a staged appearance before a firing squad with a last minute reprieve, he will be sent to Siberia where he will take comfort in the Bible. Dostoevsky will include Christian themes in his writing but will suffer until the last decade of his life from an inability to control his impulse to gamble.

April 23, 1960

Death of Japanese Christian Socialist Toyohiko Kagawa.

April 23, 1968

In Dallas, the ten-million-member Methodist and the seven hundred and fifty thousand-member Evangelical United Brethren churches join together to form the United Methodist Church, which thus becomes at that time the second largest Protestant denomination in the United States (after the Southern Baptists).

April 23, 1982

Death in North Carolina of Cameron Townsend while battling acute leukemia. He had been a missionary linguist and founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, one of the world’s largest mission agencies.