Biography

Samuel M. Zwemer and the Glory of Christ “The deity of Christ makes all the difference in our Christmas joy. He who came to the manger was God’s Son. To deny this is to deny essential Christianity. If the Savior of men is not identical with their Creator, there are no good tidings of great joy for...

Scipione Lentolo – A Firm Hand in Unstable Times John Calvin didn’t have a good opinion of Italians. Basing his judgment on the scholars he had met, he thought they were too skeptical, too eager to get embroiled in convoluted discussions, and constantly itching for new ideas. In his writings to...

David George – from Anxious Runaway to Zealous Pastor Born on a cotton plantation in Virginia around 1742, David George grew accustomed to hard work and abuse. The plantation owner, a man called “Chapel,” was particularly cruel. George had to witness the whipping of his sister Patty and the...

Samuel Crowther – The First African Anglican Bishop When a visiting missionary reunited with his mother in 1848, she must have hardly believed her eyes. It had been about 26 years since she had seen him. She had left him a young teenager named Ajayi. Now he was an ordained minister in the Church of...

Francis James Grimké – Through a Pandemic and Social Unrest We are not the first generation who must deal with a pandemic and racial unrest at the same time. The Spanish flu of 1918 hit America at a time when racial segregation and lynching of blacks were commonplace and largely ignored by the...

Matilde Calandrini – Fighting for Education and Religious Freedom In 1831, 37-year old Matilde Calandrini moved from Geneva to Pisa for health reasons. Tuscany, the enchanting Italian region where Pisa was located, had been the home of her ancestors at the time of the Protestant Reformation. They...

Daniel Rowland and the Welsh 18 th -century Revival Llangeitho is a small village in the center of Wales. Today, its population counts just a little more than 800 people. It was even smaller in the 18 th century. And yet, thousands of people arrived on Sundays from all over Wales, traveling on foot...

The Birth of Early Christian Nations –Truth and Legend The accounts of the birth of early Christian nations is often shrouded in legend, as stories were told and retold, but there are still enough historical records to show that much of them are true. Grigor and the Brave Women of Armenia Armenia...

Gregory of Nyssa – A Lone Voice Against Slavery I have already written about Gregory of Nyssa [1] – one of the Three Cappadocian Fathers – and his compassion toward the poor. But he deserves another article, for a stand that made him unique and countercultural in his time: his stand against slavery...

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. think of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the violence it has spawned? What would he think of the death of Horace Lorenzo Anderson in CHOP? [1] What would he think about the shooting in Chicago that claimed the life of Mekhi James, a three year old boy? [2] What would...