1555 - The Peace of Augsburg was signed, resolving bitter disputes between Protestants and Catholics in the German states. Its wider significance, however, meant that both the political unity of Germany and the medieval unity of Christendom was permanently dissolved.
1789 - The establishment of religion on a national level was expressly prohibited in the U.S. with the adoption of the First Amendment, the opening words of which read: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' Final ratification of the First Amendment came in 1791.
1872 - Death of Peter Cartwright, 87, early American Methodist circuit rider. Converted at age 29, Cartwright possessed a rough, uneducated and eccentric personality; but he spent over 50 of his 87 years spreading the Gospel through the Midwestern frontiers of Kentucky and Illinois.
1890 - Polygamy was officially banned by the Mormon Church. (This announcement followed on the heels of an 1890 Supreme Court ruling denying all privileges of U.S. citizenship to Mormons who practiced this outlawed form of marriage.)
1908 - Death of English Old Testament textual scholar Henry A. Redpath, 60. From 1892-1906, Redpath and Edwin Hatch compiled "A Concordance to the Septuagint and Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament"- still in print today!
© 1987-2008, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from Almanac of the Christian Church
