1115 - St. Bernard founded a monastery in Clairvaux, France. It afterward became a strategic center for the Cistercians, a religious order that flourished up until the Reformation.
1580 - The German 'Book of Concord' was published, containing all the official confessions of the Lutheran Church. (English translations of the entire work were not available before 1851.)
1744 - The first Methodist conference convened, in London. This new society within Anglicanism imposed strict disciplines upon its members, formally separating from the Established Church in 1795.
1865 - English pioneer missionary J. Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission. Its headquarters moved to the US in 1901, and in 1965 its name became Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) International.
1957 - During a convention in Cleveland, Ohio, the United Church of Christ (UCC) was formed by a merger of the Congregational Christian Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Church.
© 1987-2010, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from
Almanac of the Christian Church
