When I was growing up and would spend the night at my grandmother’s house she had a closet of stuff for my sister and me to do including a couple of faith-based comic books. One was about Corrie ten Boom and her family called The Hiding Place. I was fascinated with their story and the Jews they hid in their …

After the Constitutional Convention in September of 1789, a Virginian named George Mason approached Congress about the lack of expressed guaranteed rights in the Constitution and 12 amendments were sent to the states for ratification. On December 15, 1791, Mason’s native Virginia became the 10th of the 14 states to ratify 10 of the 12 amendments, and what we know …

Lollards was the name given to followers of John Wycliffe who was the first person to begin to put the Bible into English. “Lollard” is a way of saying these chaps were “mumblers” and they mumbled about their need to have the Bible in everyone’s hand so they can read it for themselves. This was quite a radical thing in …

One of Martin Luther’s prime arguments that formed the breakaway from the Roman Catholic Church was a litany of abuses by the church that was blatantly un-Christian behavior. Things take time to reform but the Catholic Church did indeed begin an internal “house-cleaning” called the Council of Trent. The Council, which began on December 13, 1545, was held in Trento, …

When I think of 16th century Protestant Reformation theologians (wait, doesn’t everybody think a lot about that?) my mind ends up in Switzerland and England and Germany but not Italy where the power of the Catholic Church was absolute. But a guy named Peter Martyr Vermigli was an Italian theologian who did a lot of writing and thinking about how …

The most famous Christmas hymn ever written is “Silent Night”. It’s even more famous than “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”. It’s author, Joseph Mohr, penned the words on December 11, 1792, in his native Salzburg, Austria and this is the cathedral where he sang as a boy. He came from a very rough childhood as his mother’s 3rd …

You know you are in trouble with the Pope when he issues a decree with your name across the top. Such was the case with Martin Luther when he was excommunicated by Pope Leo X in July of 1520. Here is one line of the decree to give you a taste from the ex-communication: Let all this holy Church of …

Way before the dictionary that bears his name became a household staple, Noah Webster published the first daily newspaper in New York City called the American Minerva on December 9, 1793. Webster was a solid Christian educator and believer in the Bible with quotes like this: “All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, …

One of the issues Protestants and Catholics disagree on is the idea that Mary the mother of Jesus didn’t have any other children and she, in fact, was born a virgin and without sin. This is called the Immaculate Conception and it was issued in a Papal Bull on December 8, 1854, by Pope Pious IX. In Latin, it’s called …

How long does it take to heal a church spat? In one case it was 911 years. The Great Schism – as it is known – took place in AD 1095 and was the final straw between the church in Rome and the church in Constantinople. Today we would call it the Roman Catholic Church versus the Eastern/Greek Orthodox Church. …