William Carey

In 1792 a Baptist pastor, William Carey (1761-1834), co-founded the Baptist Missionary Society at a house in Lower Street Kettering. A year later, Carey and his family together with another minister, John Thomas, were chosen as the first Baptist missionaries to India and after several years of struggle in 1799 he founded there the Serampore mission in North East India. A gifted linguist, he translated the entire Bible into the major Indian languages and from 1801-30 he was the Professor of Oriental languages at Fort William College, Calcutta.

Carey had for many years had an interest in worldwide mission and his avocation of the sending of missionaries to convert the heathen was unusual in an age when much of the church believed that missions had died with the apostles. His interest in mission once led him to make an inventory naming every place in the world and its religion. From that he calculated there were 731million people in the world, of which 421 million were pagans.

Carey achieved much in India, he founded mission schools, conceived the idea for a college to train native church leaders and campaigned against widow burning, infanticide and assisted suicide. In addition he developed a vast library system, printed the first Indian language newspaper, and introduced the idea of saving banks. He is considered to be a pioneer of the modern missionary movement and laid the foundation for many succeeding missionaries in India. A legacy of his trailblazing work, is that by the end of the nineteenth century there were over half a million native Indian Protestants.

Gerolamo Cardano

Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1576), the renowned Italian mathematician, physician and gambler, was a steadfast believer in the accuracy of the so-called science of astrology. He constructed a horoscope predicting the hour of his own death. When the day dawns it finds him in good health and safe from harm. Rather than having his prediction falsified, the famous astrologer killed himself.

King Canute Commands The Waves To Retreat

One day Canute found he needed to rebuke some courtiers who were assuring him was so great that he could even rule the waves. He decided to put their flattery to a practical test and on a beach near the home of his chief steward, Godwine at Chichester, he had a chair placed on the water’s edge before the incoming tide. He then proceeded to challenge the sea to soak his feet. The sea accepted the challenge and dampened the royal toes. Thus the King proclaimed "Behold how feeble is the power of Kings of men for the waves will not hear my voice. Honor the Lord only, and serve him, for to him all things give obedience." From this time
Canute never wore his crown again, but instead put it on a statue of the crucified Christ.
It should be noted that there are doubts as to the authenticity of this well-known story. In the main this is because due to King Canute’s positive treatment of the church, this might have been merely Pro-Canute propaganda by the church who in the early 11^th century were responsible for most of the recording of contemporary events.

King Canute

After defeating Edmund (II) Ironside at Assandun, Essex, in 1016, Canute (c995-1035) was offered the English throne. became king of all England . He succeeded his brother Harold as king of Denmark in 1018 and conquered Norway in 1028 forcing the devout Olaf II to take refuge. Bought up as a pagan, who worshipped the Norse god Woden, Canute converted to Christianity mainly because of the influence of his devout wife, Emma of Normandy.

As king of England, Canute revived the alliance of church and state by instructing his sheriffs to pay attention to the bishops in the administration of justice and by mandating that offenders against church law are to be punished. The Viking king gave rich gifts to monasteries, founded abbeys, and is introducing a number of Christian laws for the payment of tithes to churches. He also legislated that Sunday be observed as a day of rest from business and amusements. However despite supporting the church with great zeal, his murdering of political opponents and his removal of the Christian King Olaf II from the Norwegian throne cast doubts on the extent of his own personal commitment.

Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales is collection of stories in prose and verse by Geoffrey Chaucer told in Middle English prose and verse by a group of pilgrims (including Chaucer himself) on their way to Thomas Becket's tomb at Canterbury. The author died in 1400, having failed to complete his 14 year old project. By the time of his death twenty-four tales have been told. Chaucer had intended 31 pilgrims would tell two tales each on their way to Canterbury and another two on their way back. The book was a major influence on the development of  English literature.

Camp Meetings

At the beginning of the nineteenth century in the vast wilderness of the American Frontier, there were few places of worship. In 1801 Presbyterians and Methodists joined together at Cane Ridge in Kentucky to hold a ‘camp meeting’ whereby believers spread across the mid west trekked days before setting up camp to hear a series of circuit preachers expound the Gospel. So popular was this gathering that similar camp meetings were held throughout the century and when word spread that a religious meeting was to be held, both believers and non believers would attend. Such meetings proved popular with non believers as they were glad of a break in routine and upon hearing the Gospel many were consequently converted.

Calvinism

In 1536 French-born theologian John Calvin published The Institutes of the Christian Religion, his personal testament of faith written to put a finish to the divisions within the expanding Protestant movement. The book had a profound effect on the development of Protestantism and outlined the theological system known as Calvinism. His central doctrine was predestination under which God predestines certain souls (the elect) through the sacrifice of Jesus to salvation, and the others whose fate is damnation. He emphazised the utter sinfulness of mankind that cannot be saved unless they are one of the elect, one of the chosen ones to be saved. Calvin taught that there are three tests that constitute a good yardstick by which to judge who is God's chosen, the elect and therefore saved. Firstly participation in baptism and the Lord's Supper, secondly a public declaration of one's faith and lastly a righteous moral life.

John Calvin

John Calvin (1509-1564) was born in Noyon, Picardie. By his early twenties he had grown unsettled in his religious experiences and turned from studying law to the priesthood. Calvin turned from Catholicism and underwent a personal religious experience adopting a simpler form of Christianity after hearing a discourse on the sovereignty of the scriptures by the Rector of the Sorbonne, Nicholas Cop.  By 1533 he had become prominent in Paris as an evangelical preacher following his adoption of Luther's ideas. The following year, fearing repression if his beliefs were made public, Calvin fled to Basle where he where he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.
That same year he accepted an invitation by William Farel to help reform the church in Geneva. The city council resisted the implementation of Calvin and Farel's ideas, and he was expelled in 1538 because of public resentment against the numerous and too drastic changes he introduced. At the invitation of Martin Bucer, Calvin proceeded to Strasbourg, where he became the minister of a church of French refugees. He continued to support the reform movement in Geneva, and was eventually invited back in 1531 to lead its church, where in the face of strong opposition, he established a rigorous theocracy.  Following an influx of supportive refugees, Calvin's opponents were forced out. Calvin spent his final years promoting the Reformation both in Geneva and throughout Europe.

Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for a theological system known as Calvinism, which was subsequently adopted by the Reformed and Presbyterian branches of Protestantism.




 

Caligula

Caligula (AD12-41) succeeded his father Tiberius as Roman Emperor in AD37. Popular at first, thanks to his liberality and the illustrious reputation of his father, a serious illness seemed to affect his sanity and he declared himself a god. Caligula built a temple to himself as Jupiter Latiaris then hearing of the imageless worship in the Jerusalem Temple, he decided to set up his own life-sized statue in the Holy Place. His advisers beseeched him not to do so, fearing a bloody civil war, but Caligula won’t budge. However, he was assassinated before he could carry out his plan of desecration.

Julius Caesar

The Roman general and dictator Julius Gaius Caesar (102-44BC) is considered to be Rome's most successful military commander. As governor of Cisalpine Gaul, he conquered Gallic territory up to the river Rhine, suffering only two reverses in this period and his brilliance as a general led to his great victories at Pharsalus in 48 BC, Thapsus in 46 BC, and in 47 BC against King Pharnaces II in Asia Minor, a campaign he famously summarized as veni, vidi, vici (‘I came, I saw, I conquered’).
The leader of a highly efficient and fanatically loyal army, Caesar earned his troop's respect by leading by example and showing a humility many of today's Christian leaders can learn from. When his army were digging in he seized a spade and gave a hand. He ate the same food and drunk the same wine as his men and refused to sleep in a tent when his men were out in the cold and wet.

Caedmon

Cædmon (born in 7th century AD) was the first hymn writer to compose in English. Originally, a lay brother who worked as a herdsman at Whitby Abbey monastery, one evening, while the monks were feasting, singing, and playing a harp, he left early to sleep with the animals because he knew no songs. While asleep, Caedmon had a dream in which an angel approached him and commanded him to sing of God’s creation. After first refusing to sing, he subsequently produced a short eulogistic poem praising God, the Creator of heaven and earth.

Upon awakening the next morning, Cædmon remembered everything he had sung and added additional lines to what became known as Caedmon’s Hymn. After sharing it with the abbess he was given a new commission, this time for a poem based on “a passage of sacred history or doctrine”, by way of a test. When Cædmon returned the next morning with the requested poem, he was ordered to take monastic vows. The abbess ordered her scholars to teach Cædmon sacred history and doctrine, which after a night of thought, he would turn into the most beautiful verse.

Saint Francesa Xavier Cabrini

Francesca Cabrini (1850-1917) was born in Lombardy, Italy, one of thirteen children of rich cherry farmers Agostino Cabrini and Stella Oldini. Sadly only four of eleven survived beyond adolescence. Small and weak as a child, born two months premature, she remained in delicate health throughout her 67 years.
Francesca had been a devout child who took a vow of chastity at the age of 11. She took religious vows in 1877 and added Xavier to her name to honor the Jesuit saint, Francis Xavier. Trianed as a teacher, she became the mother superior of the House of Providence orphanage in Codogno, where she taught.
In 1880, the orphanage was closed. She and six other sisters that took religious vows with her founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC). Mother Cabrini composed the rules and constitution of the order, and she continued as its superior-general until her death. The order established seven homes and a free school and nursery in its first five years. Its good works brought Mother Cabrini to the attention of Pope Leo XIII.
The Pope sent Cabrini to New York City on March 31, 1889, along with six other sisters, to help the Italian immigrants. There, she obtained the permission of Archbishop Michael Corrigan to found an orphanage, which is located in West Park, Ulster County, New York, today and is known as Saint Cabrini Home. Battling money problems, she continued to found orphanages, schools and charitable institutions to serve poor immigrants in New York and other cities. She also dispatched missionaries to other countries.
Francesca was naturalized as a US citizen in 1909 and died in 1917 of complications from dysentery in Columbus Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, while preparing Christmas candy for the local children.
Francesca was beatified on November 13, 1938, and eight years later was the first American citizen to be canonized on July 7, 1946. She is the patron saint of immigrants.

Lord Byron

In 1819 The romantic poet, Lord Byron (1788-1824) published the first part of his epic satire, Don Juan, about the amorous adventurer. Critics felt it was morally deprived though the public are lapped it up. Byron’s scandalous lifestyle was much condemned, he was notorious as an enemy of conventional morality and religion. He had a great contempt for the establishment including the Church of England.

William Byrd

William Byrd (1543-1623) was England's foremost composer during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. A pupil of Thomas Tallis, he served as organist and master of the choristers at Lincoln Cathedral (1563-73) and in 1570 was sworn in as Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. From the early 1570s onwards Byrd became increasingly involved with Catholicism, which, as the scholarship of the last half-century has demonstrated, became a major factor in his personal and creative life. He evaded persecution only on account of his acknowledged excellence as a composer.

The Butter Tower

In 1515 the southern tower of Rouen’s Notre Dame cathedral was completed. It was called the “Butter Tower” because the people who contributed the money for its construction were in return given dispensation to eat butter during Lent.

George W Bush

Bought up an Episcopalian, Bush found himself overly devoted to alcohol before in 1985 a meeting with Billy Graham led to what he described as ‘a gradual warming of the heart’. He joined his wife’s United Methodist Church denomination, gave up alcohol and began reading the Scriptures and praying.
As President, Bush's religious certainty and his admission that his faith informed his decisions created a great deal of resentment amongst the more secular thinking politicians and media folk.

Robbie Burns

Robbie Burns (1759-1796) was renowned for his drinking and womanizing life style and claimed that he was haunted rather than helped by his religion. Despite this, the Scottish Bard was by no means irreligious, retaining a belief in a good and pure God but his preference was for the more liberal Christianity rather than the more traditionally rigid Scottish Calvinism. Indeed he circulated satirical poems on religion amongst friends including his Holy Fair which slammed Calvinist bigotry by contrasting the admonishments of the church leaders preaching hellfire and damnation with the genial sociability of the congregation at the local Calvinist church prayer meeting.

John Bunyan

Originally a High Anglican, the Bedfordshire tinker John Bunyan (1628 - 1688) led a footloose and fancy free life. His heart was first touched whilst playing tipcat, when he heard a voice saying “Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven or have thy sins and go to Hell?” Later Bunyan noticed four old women sitting at a door in the sun talking about new birth, the work of God on their hearts and of their own righteousness as too defiled to do them good. They spoke with “such pleasantness of Scripture language” Bunyan’s heart began to shake. His Christian wife introduced him to two religious works, Bayley’s Practice of Piety and Dent’s Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven , which Bunyan duly read. He describes his conversion thus in his autobiographical book, Grace Abounding: “One day as I was travelling into the country, musing on the wickedness of my heart and considering the enmity that was in me to God, the Scripture came to mind, 'He hath made peace, through the blood of the Cross.' I saw that the justice of God and my sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other. I was ready to swoon, not with grief and trouble, but with joy and peace.”
As a result of these experiences, Bunyan was baptised and received into St John's church in Bedford and he began to follow the teachings of its pastor, John Gifford. When Gifford died in 1655, Bunyan started preaching and soon gained a popular reputation in the villages around Bedford as an eloquent and powerful speaker. As his popularity and notoriety grew, Bunyan increasingly became a target for slander and libel; he was described as "a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman" and was said to have mistresses and multiple wives. In 1658, aged 30, he was arrested for preaching at Eaton Socon and indicted for preaching without a licence. He continued preaching, however, and did not suffer imprisonment until November 1660, when he was taken to the county gaol in Silver Street, Bedford for preaching outside a Parish Church whilst being unlicensed to preach. There he was imprisoned in Bedford from 1660 until 1672 for unlicensed preaching and wrote Grace Abounding in 1666.
Bunyan was released in January 1672, when Charles II issued the Declaration of Religious Indulgence. The same month he was appointed pastor by his congregation, but after a clamp down by the king on Non-conformism three years Bunyan found himseld back in prison. He refused all offers of freedom as he wass unable to agree to the prerequisite that he won’t preach again. It was during this second jail sentence that he completed the first part of Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory based on Bunyan’s own spiritual life. Written in straightforward language, it achieved immediate popularity and Bunyan was soon freed and, as a result of its success, was never arrested again.

Buddha

In 534BC, Gautama, the 29 year old heir to the kingdom of Lumbini (Nepal), whilst going for a walk, encountered a begging monk, an old man, a sick man and a corpse. This prompted the question “What is the cause of suffering?” and caused him to lose all joy in living so he renounced the world, left his wife and son and became a wandering ascetic.
After five years of wandering, having realised that he was now overindulging his asceticism, Gautama received his enlightenment as he sat in a lotus position under a Bo tree. He acquired The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Way, which according to his teaching if properly followed will result in attaining Nirvana, a complete serenity of spirit.
Having received this enlightenment, the ascetic former prince gave birth to the Buddhist religion when he preached a sermon, ”Turning the wheel of the law” to five fellow ascetics in a park. By turning the wheel he meant preach Buddhism without ceasing. The five ascetics became his followers and Gautama became known as the Buddha, meaning the wise or the enlightened one.
The most important doctrine he taught was “karma” or good or evil deeds meeting an appropriate reward or punishment, either in this life or in a long succession of lives.
Buddha died peacefully in 483BC on a couch spread between two trees. As he died his disciples asked him how they could best remember him. He told
them not to bother.