George Whitefield, one of the most influential evangelists of the eighteenth century, died on September 30, 1770, in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The Anglican minister had spent more than three decades traveling throughout Britain and colonial America, preaching to enormous crowds and helping establish the evangelical movement that became known as the First Great Awakening. Historians estimate that he delivered approximately 18,000 sermons during his lifetime, reaching a cumulative audience of perhaps ten million listeners.

Sir John Oldcastle was a respected English knight, a member of Parliament, and a personal friend of King Henry V. He was also one of the most prominent supporters of the Lollards, a religious reform movement that challenged the authority and teachings of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. His refusal to abandon those beliefs brought him before Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Arundel in September 1413, beginning a confrontation that would ultimately cost him his life.

The founding of America’s first graduate-level theological seminary grew out of a dispute over the direction of Christian theology at Harvard University. On September 28, 1808, Andover Theological Seminary formally opened in Andover, Massachusetts, establishing a new model for educating Protestant ministers that would influence American theological education for generations.

The history of formal education in Colombia is closely connected to the missionary work of the Society of Jesus. On September 27, 1604, Jesuit missionaries formally established a college in Santafé de Bogotá, then part of Spain’s colonial territories in South America. Known initially as the Colegio de la Compañía de Jesús, the institution would eventually become the Colegio Mayor de San Bartolomé, one of the most enduring educational institutions in Latin America.

Few English churchmen of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries combined biblical scholarship, preaching, and royal influence as successfully as Lancelot Andrewes. Serving under Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, and King Charles I, Andrewes became one of the Church of England’s most respected theologians. His accomplishments included serving as a royal chaplain, leading one of England’s most prominent colleges, holding three bishoprics, and directing an important portion of the translation project that produced the King James Bible. He died on September 26, 1626, leaving a legacy that extended well beyond the English church.

On September 25, 1929, fifty students gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the opening of Westminster Theological Seminary, an institution established amid one of the most consequential theological controversies in twentieth-century American Presbyterianism. Its principal founder, J. Gresham Machen, had resigned from Princeton Theological Seminary after years of opposing changes that he believed threatened the institution’s historic commitment to biblical authority and Reformed theology. Addressing the new students and assembled guests, Machen declared:

“No, my friends, though Princeton Seminary is dead, the noble tradition of Princeton Seminary is alive. Westminster Seminary will endeavor by God’s grace to continue that tradition unimpaired.”

Archibald Thomas Robertson spent nearly half a century teaching ministers to understand the New Testament in its original language. By the time of his death on September 24, 1934, the Southern Baptist professor had become one of the most widely respected Greek scholars of his generation, producing a body of work that extended far beyond his denomination.

Who had the authority to appoint a bishop—the pope or the emperor? For much of the Middle Ages, this question was about far more than religious leadership. Bishops controlled extensive lands, collected revenues, administered justice, and sometimes commanded military forces. Whoever appointed them could exercise considerable influence over both the church and the political affairs of Europe.

Christian tradition remembers September 22, AD 286, as the day Roman Emperor Maximian ordered the execution of thousands of his own soldiers because they refused to abandon their Christian faith. Known as the Theban Legion, these soldiers reportedly came from Egypt and served under a commander named Maurice. Their story became one of Christianity’s most enduring accounts of martyrdom and the conflict between religious conscience and imperial authority.

By the early 1940s, evangelical Christian broadcasters faced a serious problem: the major American radio networks were increasingly restricting their access to the airwaves. Independent ministries that had spent years building national audiences suddenly found themselves threatened by broadcasting policies that favored established denominational organizations. Their response led to the creation of National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), which was formally established in Chicago on September 21, 1944.

On September 20, 1884, Dr. Horace Newton Allen arrived at Chemulpo (modern-day Incheon), Korea, hoping to establish a Protestant missionary presence in a country where public Christian evangelism was not yet permitted. The 26-year-old American physician had traveled from China, leaving his wife and infant son in Shanghai while he investigated opportunities in Korea. Within three months, a violent political uprising would place Allen at the bedside of a critically wounded member of the Korean royal family, creating an unexpected opportunity for Protestant medical missions.

On September 19, 1971, William Foxwell Albright, one of the most influential biblical archaeologists of the twentieth century, died in Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of eighty. During a career spanning more than half a century, Albright helped transform the study of the ancient Near East and became particularly famous for using archaeological evidence to investigate the historical world described in the Bible.

When Chileans celebrated their national independence on September 18, 1975, the country’s traditional Te Deum was no longer the only major Christian service associated with the national celebration. Just four days earlier, on September 14, Chile’s rapidly growing evangelical community had held the country’s first Evangelical Te Deum, formally known as the Servicio de Acción de Gracias or Service of Thanksgiving. The new ceremony connected Chile’s September independence observances with one of the most significant developments in twentieth-century Latin American Christianity: the extraordinary growth of Pentecostalism.

Long before Presbyterianism became one of the major Protestant traditions in the United States, its congregations in the American colonies were scattered across a large territory and often separated by considerable distances. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, Presbyterian ministers had begun creating a system of church government that connected these congregations. An important step in that process occurred on September 17, 1717, when the first Presbyterian synod in the American colonies met in Philadelphia.

Few names have become as closely associated with religious persecution as Tomás de Torquemada, the Dominican friar who became the first Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition. Torquemada died at Ávila on September 16, 1498, after helping construct an institution that would continue operating in various forms for more than three centuries.

On September 15, 1648, the English Parliament ordered the Westminster Assembly’s catechisms printed for public use. Behind that seemingly ordinary act of publication stood years of theological debate, political maneuvering, and civil war. The Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms would ultimately have a far greater influence outside the Church of England than the political circumstances surrounding their creation might have suggested.

Few works of Christian music are as immediately recognizable as George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Its famous “Hallelujah” chorus has been performed in churches, concert halls, royal celebrations, and community productions for generations. Yet the chorus is only one part of a much larger work constructed almost entirely from Scripture. On September 14, 1741, Handel completed the score after an extraordinary period of composition lasting only twenty-four days.

On September 13, 1601, Meletius Pegas, one of the most influential Eastern Orthodox churchmen of the late sixteenth century, died in Alexandria at about fifty-two years old. His career unfolded during an era when ancient Christian divisions collided with the religious conflicts created by the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. As Patriarch of Alexandria, Meletius attempted something particularly ambitious: defending Eastern Orthodoxy against Roman Catholic influence while simultaneously seeking closer relations with the Coptic Christians of Egypt.

On September 13, 1844, Barton Warren Stone died at the home of his daughter in Hannibal, Missouri. By then, the seventy-one-year-old preacher had spent more than four decades challenging the denominational divisions of American Christianity. What began amid the revivals of the Kentucky frontier eventually helped produce one of the largest religious movements to emerge from the early United States.

Near the end of his long reign, Charlemagne faced a problem that had troubled rulers for centuries: succession. Two of his legitimate sons had died, leaving Louis, king of Aquitaine, as his only surviving legitimate son and heir. On September 11, 813, at Aachen, Charlemagne elevated Louis to share the imperial title with him. When Charlemagne died only a few months later, on January 28, 814, Louis inherited one of the largest political realms Western Europe had seen since the fall of the Roman Empire.