This week in church history

For good or ill, the past has changed our present. Whether we know it or not, the past has brought us to where we are today. And through it all, God has been in Heaven, doing whatever He pleases.

June 22

1559

In England, Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book was issued. During her 45-year reign, Elizabeth I rejected the Catholic faith, adopting instead the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church.

1750

Clergyman Jonathan Edwards was dismissed from his Congregational pulpit in Northampton, MA, after serving there 23 years.

June 23

1683

English Quaker William Penn signed his famous treaty with the Indians of Pennsylvania. Voltaire once remarked that it was the only treaty never sworn to, and never broken.

June 24

1519

Birth of Theodore Beza, French-born Swiss theological reformer. Beza became the acknowledged leader of the Swiss Calvinists, following John Calvin's death in 1564.

June 25

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.

June 27

1844

Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, and his brother Hyrum were lynched by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, resulting in part from the community's moral outrage at Smith's recent authorization of polygamous Mormon marriages

Information gathered from http://www.studylight.org/his/tich/