1546 - At its fourth session, the Council of Trent adopted Jerome's "Latin Vulgate" as the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. (Included in the Vulgate O.T. were the 15 apocryphal books which Protestants reject in their biblical canon.)
1730 - Shearith Israel, first Jewish congregation organized in America, consecrated their synagogue in New York City.
1912 - The American Theological Society was organized at Union Theological Seminary, in New York, for the purpose of discussing religious, theological and philosophical problems.
1945 - German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the night before he was hanged by the Nazis, said: 'This is the end - for me the beginning' - his last recorded words.
1988 - Televangelist Jimmy Swaggert, 52, was defrocked by the Assemblies of God following the disclosure of his involvement with a prostitute. (Swaggert was ordered to stay off TV for a year, but had returned after only three months.)
© 1987-2009, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from
Almanac of the Christian Church
