Leo Tolstoy (above), the most highly acclaimed novelist in the world of the time, died today in 1910. A passionate Christian, he condemned the Russian Orthodox Church, which responded by excommunicating him. In an attempt to follow ‘the law of Jesus’, he freed his serfs, gave away his copyrights, and quit alcohol, smoking, hunting and meat. His writings on non-violence, including his book, The Kingdom of God is Within You, had a profound effect on Mahatma Gandhi, and through Gandhi, on Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.
‘Between the Churches and Christianity, not only is there nothing in common except the name, but they are two quite opposite and opposing principles. The one represents pride, violence, self-assertion, immobility and death: the other humility, penitence, meekness, progress, and life.’ Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You
Fasilidas became Emperor of Ethiopia on this day in 1632. His father had tried to convert Ethiopia to Catholicism, with disastrous results, but Fasilidas revived the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and planted a new capital city in Gondar, in the highlands north of Lake Tana. There he built seven churches and a royal fortress, the Fasil Ghebbi, where he stayed during the rainy season. Over time, many more churches were consecrated in Gondar, which became a major centre of Orthodoxy, attracting hundreds of priests, monks and scholars. Every year on the feast of Timkat (Epiphany), hundreds of pilgrims come to the baths of Fasalidas in Gondar, plunging into the vast pool after the waters have been blessed to celebrate the baptism of Jesus.
On this day in 1861, the Secretary of the Treasury in President Lincoln’s administration, Salmon P Chase, set the ball rolling for American coins to be stamped with the motto, ‘In God We Trust’. Chase, who had received a letter from a church pastor urging him to add a recognition of the Almighty on the nation’s coinage, instructed the director of the Mint at Philadelphia to come up with a brief motto and produce a design for it. Two years later, Chase himself suggested the motto ‘In God we trust’, and the following year, the words started to appear on dollars, quarters and nickels.
‘Dear Sir: No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins. You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.’ Letter by Salmon P Chase, November 1861
Today in 1595, the Lambeth Articles were passed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift. They were the outcome of heated debate among Cambridge theologians about predestination and related doctrinal chestnuts, with one side trying to wriggle out of the Calvinism of the Church’s Thirty-nine Articles, and the other wanting an even more stringent formula to be imposed. The Lambeth Articles have just nine short statements, such as, ‘The number of the elect is unalterably fixed’. Elizabeth I wasn’t impressed, and told Whitgift to stop talking about predestination, ‘being a matter tender and dangerous to weak and ignorant minds.’
Diocletian, the last anti-Christian Roman Emperor, publicly murdered his rival to take the top job today in the year 284. Persuaded by his fellow Emperor Galerius, and by conspiracy theories against Christians, he razed churches, burned the scriptures, and had Christians put to death. His persecution was the greatest Roman assault on the Church, but also the last. People and local governments across the Empire no longer had the heart to turn against their many Christian friends and neighbours, and so the Church survived, and within 30 years had a Christian Emperor.
Image: Library of Congress