1629 - The settlers of Salem, Mass. appointed Samuel Skelton as their pastor, by ballot. Their church covenant, afterward composed by Skelton, established Salem as the first non-separating congregational Puritan Church in New England.
1780 - Benjamin Randall organized a fellowship of churches known as Free Will Baptists in New Hampshire. It became one of the early branches of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, which was formed in 1935.
1909 - In Rome, the Catholic Pontifical Biblical Commission issued a decree interpreting the first 11 chapters of Genesis as history, not myth.
1973 - In Korea, the Far Eastern Broadcasting Co. began transmitting the Gospel from HLAZ, its first radio station in this country. FBEC is active today through radio missions outreach, and focuses its work among the islands of Eastern Asia and the Pacific.
1974 - Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr., and a church deacon were slain by a crazed gunman in Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her son, the assassinated civil rights leader, once preached.
© 1987-2011, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from
Almanac of the Christian Church
