Brazil

In 1500 the Portuguese explorer Pedro Cabral, on landing at the newly discovered thousands of miles across the ocean, built a wooden cross and together with his crew they knelt before it and kissed it. This was to demonstrate to the natives their veneration for the cross. Cabral named this new land, “Vera Cruz”, meaning “True Cross”, though others are calling it ‘Brazil’ after the brazilwood found on the coast.

The Reverend Dr Thomas Bray (1658 – 1730) was an English clergyman. Henry Compton, Bishop of London, appointed him in 1696 as his commissary to organize the Church of England in Maryland, and he was in that colony in 1699–1700. Whilst out there he organised a scheme with four laymen for establishing parish libraries in England and America, out of which grew the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Its object was to encourage Christian education and literature in both Britain and America.
Bray took a great interest in colonial missions, especially among the Native Americans and in 1702 he founded the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to provide a ministry to English settlers in North America after becoming aware, whilst touring Maryland, of the weakness of the Church of England in the American colonies.

Boys Brigade

In Great Britain in 1883, a successful Christian businessman, William Smith, decided to work towards “the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom among boys”. The movement he formed later became known as the Boys’ Brigade, which founded its first branch in America four years later.

Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was an Anglo-Irish chemist and physicist who is best known for formulating Boyle's law in 1662, which says that the pressure of gases varies inversely with the volume. An eager Christian, Boyle was fluent in Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac and spent much of his private wealth on promoting the study of the Bible. As a director of the East India Company, he encouraged Christian missionary work in the Far East.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day is traditionally celebrated on 26 December. A British tradition, going back many centuries It was only made an official holiday in 1871. Also known as St. Stephen's Day, it was customarily a time for giving to the poor. The name comes partly from the metal boxes kept in churches to collect money for the needy. On the day after Christmas Day these boxes were opened and the money shared among the poor people of the parish.
In the United Kingdom it became a custom of the nineteenth century Victorians for tradesmen to collect their "Christmas boxes" or gifts in return for good and reliable service throughout the year on the day after Christmas.

The Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Rebellion took place in north China in 1900, the largest ever massacre of Protestant Christians. 188 Protestant missionaries plus their children and thousands of Chinese Christian converts were massacred and burnt alive by a fanatical occult sect. The cries of the Boxers- “Sha kuei-tzu” (“kill the devils”) could be heard along with the shrieks of the victims and the groans of the dying.

Antoinette Bourignon

Antoinette Bourignon (1616 –1680) was a Flemish mystic. Antoinette was born at Lille to a rich Catholic family with a facial deformity. Believing herself called to restore the pure spirit of the Gospel, she fled her French home and entered a convent. Antoinette gathered followers in Amsterdam and printed enthusiastic works. Her religious enthusiasm, peculiarity of views and disregard of all sects raised both zealous persecutors and warm adherents. Bourignonism proved to be especially popular in Scotland, sufficiently to call forth several denunciations of her doctrines in various early 18th century Presbyterian general assemblies.

Bourbon

In 1789 the Reverend Elijah Craig was the first person to distil bourbon, a whiskey distilled from a mixture of grains, around 50% being maize. The drink is named after Bourbon County in Kentucky, where the clergyman had his parish.

Rodrigo Borgia

Rodrigo Borgia (1431-1503), who was of Spanish origin, bribed his way to the papacy in 1492. A wily, morally corrupt politician, whose love of woman was legendary, many doubted his suitability to be the new head of the church. This head of the Catholic Church fathered several illegitimate children by his mistress Vannozza Cattani, including a daughter called Lucrezia. He arranged two marriages for her when she was 12 and 13 purely to further his own ambitions, then when he’d got what he wanted out of them he arranged the divorces. Borgia had a picture of her made to look like the Virgin Mary painted over the door of his bedroom.
When Savonarola preached against his corrupt practices Alexander had him executed. He is said to have died of a poison he had prepared for his cardinals. Such was the late Pope’s unpopularity that only four prelates attend his the Requiem Mass.

William Booth (1829-1912) was born in Nottingham and had a conversion at the age of 15. He experienced religious conversion at the age of 15. By 1855 Booth had become a travelling evangelist for the Methodist church. Trekking up and down the country by train, the recently married Booth and his wife, Catherine, were surviving on £2 a week. Having originally been inspired by an American hellfire preacher, he devoted his evenings ten years to religious work in the local slums. It is here that became acquainted with conditions of life among the very poor.
In 1865 Booth and his wife start their mission aimed at the unprivileged classes that live in unspeakable poverty in the East End of London. Thirteen years later, the annual Christmas appeal for William Booth’s Mission was being drawn up. The circular was in dialogue form and to one of the questions “What is the Christian mission?” the answer was “a volunteer army”. Suddenly Booth seized a pen, crossed out “volunteer” and wrote instead “salvation”, thus coining the title “Salvation Army” for his movement.
His book In Darkest England, and the Way Out (1890) contained proposals for the physical and spiritual redemption of the many down-and-outs Booth ministered to. It was not only a best-seller after its 1890 release, but also set the foundation for the Army's modern social welfare schemes. He wrote, "A starving man cannot hear you preaching. Give him a bowl of soup and he will listen to every word."
As a preacher Booth was a populist crowd puller. For example he was known to demonstrate the easy road to Hell by sliding down the stair-rail of his pulpit. A champion of the poor he railed against those who “reduce sweating to a fine art, who systematically and deliberately defraud the workman of his pay, who grind the faces of the poor and rob the widow and the orphan.”
In 1912 Booth, who had been in poor health for several years died. When asked what had been the secret of his success all the way through, the General replied “I will tell you the secret, God has had all there was of me!” The end of his last speech went as follows: “While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight. While little children go hungry, I’ll fight. While there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, where there remains one dark soul without the light of God- I’ll fight! I’ll fight to the very end!”

Bookkeeping

In medieval western Europe businessmen commonly opened on their books an account for “Messer le Bon Dieu” or “God Esquire”. When a contract was signed, God was called in as a witness and received a penny.

Book of Common Prayer

In 1552 in England the second English Book of Common Prayer was published by King Edward VI’s advisor Thomas Cranmer. It was intended to be the basis for worship throughout the Anglican Church. Around the same time, the Act of Uniformity enforced the use of the Book of Common Prayer and outlawed the Mass.

Books

In 1966 the Catholic Church abolished it’s list of Forbidden Books, which had existed since the sixteenth century. By 1948 over 4,000 titles had been censored including works by Erasmus, Defoe, Descartes and Immanuel Kant.

Pope Boniface VIII

Pope Boniface VIII (c. 1235 – 1303), born Benedetto Caetani, was Pope from 1294 to 1303. Today, Boniface VIII is probably best remembered for his feuds with Dante, who placed him in a circle of Hell in his Divine Comedy, and with the English and French kings. He was also the first pope to wear the zucchetto, a small skullcap that covers the tonsure.
In 1296 Pope Boniface VIII issued Clericis Laicos, which threatened excommunication for any lay ruler who taxed the clergy and any clergyman who paid the taxes. Despite being pious himself, the King of England, Edward 1st, retorted by decreeing if the clergy did not pay, they would be stripped of all legal protection and the King’s sheriff would seize their properties. The Pope backed down.
His bull of 1302 Unam sanctam, asserting papal authority over all temporal rulers was just as controversial and King Philip IV of France responded with a counter attack and was behind the kidnapping of the pope by some Italian noblemen. The Pope was soon released but so roughly was he treated that Boniface died shortly afterwards.

Saint Boniface

In 729AD Boniface (680-754), a bishop originally from Devon in South West England was commissioned by Pope Gregory II to evangelize Germany. The English missionary, spent twenty five years aggressively defying the pagan Saxon’s gods, demolishing their shrines and cutting down their trees, before being murdered near Dokkum in Frisia. It is thought the motive was robbery.
An inspirational and successful missionary, Boniface bought Germany into Christian Europe. The “Apostle to the Germans” had a well-developed mission strategy in which he kept in touch with the Christians back home in England who prayed for him and sent him money, supplies and workers. On his mission field Boniface built churches on holy sites and founded monasteries with the facilities for teaching people academic and agricultural disciplines. He was also one of the pioneers in recruiting women into mission by bringing over nuns from Britain to teach education and domestic science.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In 1939 Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), a German Lutheran theologian made the dramatic decision to return from America to Nazi Germany to be with his people in the tragic times that he saw ahead. He was opposed to the “German Christian Movement,” which advocated the removal of all Jewish elements from the Christian faith and he challenged Christians to reject a complacent, immature and compliant faith. Instead Bonhoeffer believed that the Christian walk requires a costly involvement in the modern secular society.
On April 6, 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested for involvement in the political resistance against Hitler. On April 9, 1945, just three weeks before the Soviet capture of Berlin and a month before the capitulation of Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer was hanged.
The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer ... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”

Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn (1501 or 1507 – 19 May 1536) Having no male heir by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII wanted to get a Papal annulment so he could marry the flirtatious Anne Boleyn. Unable to do so the English king was forced to break from Rome and the pope ( thus creating the Church of England) in order to divorce Catherine and wed the now pregnant Anne. The new English queen was sympathetic towards the new Bible based Protestantism and Martin Luther viewed her rise to the throne as a positive sign.
Anne gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I in 1533, but was unable to produce a male heir to the throne, and three years later was accused of adultery and incest with her half-brother (a charge invented by Thomas Cromwell), and sent to the Tower of London. She was declared guilty, and was beheaded on 19 May 1536 at Tower Green, her last words being “Christ have mercy on my soul.”