1672 - Colonial American clergyman Solomon Stoddard, 29, was ordained pastor of the Congregational church in Northampton, Mass. He remained at this pulpit for the next 57 years! (From 1727 until his death in 1729, Stoddard was assisted by his grandson, Jonathan Edwards.)
1857 - Mormon fanatic John D. Lee, angered over President Buchanan's order to remove Brigham Young from governorship of the Utah Territory, incited a band of Mormons and Indians to massacre a California-bound wagon train of 135 (mostly Methodists) in Mountain Meadows, Utah.
1892 - The Scarritt Bible and Training School in Nashville, TN, was dedicated, primarily as the result of the conception, urging and fund-raising of southern Methodist missions leader and social reformer, Belle Harris Bennett (1852-1922).
1955 - The first Southern Baptist church to be established in Nebraska was organized at Lincoln, with 34 charter members. Founded by Southern Baptist U.S. Air Force personnel who had been stationed in Lincoln, the congregation first met for worship on Easter Sunday of this year.
1962 - American Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote in a letter: 'We have not tasted the things given to us in Christ. Instead, we have built around ourselves walls and cells, and buried ourselves in dust and documents, and now we wonder why we cannot see God, or leap to do his will.'
© 1987-2009, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from
Almanac of the Christian Church
