Christmas Every Day

1521

The Diet of Worms opens.

Th religious turmoil begun by Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses in 1517 reached a climax when the German parliament (Diet) met in the town of Worms. Luther’s defenders had demanded that he be tried only in a German setting and so he was summoned to meet the emperor Charles V and representatives of the Church and nation. His defiance of these authorities would result in his outlawing and the beginnings of a separate religious movement that later in the decade would come to be known as Protestantism.

1547

Henry VIII dies.

The death of the king who had pulled the Church of England from obedience to the pope meant the succession of young Edward VI who, along with his closest advisers, were committed to a deeper reformation of that church along Protestant lines. Within six years England will have a new theology, married clergy, ceremonies in English, and an English prayer book but the population will remain split between Catholic supporters, those content with the new order, and those who wanted further reform. These divisions will continue for decades more.

1962

The birth of a prosperity preacher.

Few clergymen have been as aptly named as Creflo Dollar, a clergyman who ended up boasting the ownership of two Rolls-Royce automobiles, multiple multi-million dollar residences and a private jet. Born in Georgia, he began his ministry in 1986 in a school auditorium with only 8 people in the congregation. Preaching the message that God wishes his followers to be be wealthy and healthy, Creflo succeeded in creating a church of 30,000 members, satellite churches across America and an international organization, World Changers Church. His television program is broadcast around the globe. Dollar’s wife Taffi is co-pastor and is developing an outreach to women in the sex trade.

1077

In one of the most famous confrontations in medieval history Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV kneels before Pope Gregory VII in the snow at Canossa. A quarrel over whether secular powers could appoint church leaders had resulted in open war between emperor and pope. Gregory excommunicated Henry and Henry nominated a rival pope. The excommunication cut away much of Henry’s support and he was forced at Canossa to beg for forgiveness and reinstatement into the Church. This the pope granted but soon Henry rebelled again. Gregory would eventually be driven from Rome. His last words were “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.”

1366

Death of Henry Suso (b. 1295) was a Dominican monk and mystic. For a period in his life he submitted himself to rigorous mortification of the flesh, wearing underwear studded with brass nails and sleeping on a cross of protruding needles. He later abandoned these as a distraction. Lovers of Christmas carols will know him as the composer of “In Dulci Jubilo“, translated as “Good Christian Men Rejoice”. Suso learned the tune from a dream in which angels visited him and led him in a round dance.

1533

Henry VIII secretly marries Anne Boleyn. Henry had for years sought to rid himself of his barren wife Katherine of Aragon and marry a woman who could provide him with a legitimate male heir. When his mistress Anne Boleyn became pregnant, it forced Henry’s hand. He wed her, though his union with Katherine had not been ended. This was regularized later by his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who ruled that the marriage to Katherine was invalid and the Boleyn marriage lawful. The ensuing legal and religious brouhaha would result in the pulling out of the Church of England from obedience to the pope and the eventual formation of the Anglican Church.

1944

Florence Li Tim-Oi becomes the world’s first female Anglican priest. The Japanese invasion of China had created a crisis for Christians and Christian missionaries in China. Because it was impossible to get a male priest to minister to the Anglicans of Portuguese colony of Macau on the coast of China, Bishop Ronald Hall of Hong Kong ordained Florence Li Tim-Oi. Her ordination was controversial; it would be decades before any church in the Anglican communion would ordain women and her appointment was opposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury when he learned of it. In 1971, however, she was recognized as an Anglican priest. Today The Li Tim-Oi Foundation exists to empower Christian women as agents of change. It provides grants to suitable candidates in the Two-Thirds World to train for Christian mission and ministry. She died in Toronto in 1982.

1918

Birth of Oral Roberts

Oral Roberts (1918-2009) was one of America’s most successful televangelists. Born into a poor Oklahoma family, he claimed that at the age of 17 he was miraculously healed of tuberculosis and stuttering by God while on his way to a revival meeting. God, he said, spoke to him, saying “Son, I am going to heal you, and you are to take My healing power to your generation. You are to build Me a university based on My authority and on the Holy Spirit.”

Roberts dropped out of university before graduating and began a career as an itinerant faith healer, holding services in a large tent. By the late 1940s he had his own radio show and in 1954 he began a television ministry. He had by this time adopted a form of what would become known as the “prosperity gospel”, the belief that God wished all Christians to thrive physically and financially as well as spiritually. Part of the secret to this prosperity was “seed-faith” giving to the church, believing that this money would come back multiplied by God. He founded the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, Oral Roberts University, and the City of Faith and Medical Research Center, which opened in 1981, offering both prayer and medical healing for physical ailments. At its peak his various organizations employed thousands and had annual revenue of over $100,000,000. So attractive and successful was he that the United Methodist Church, a mainline denomination which felt itself in need of spiritual regeneration, recruited him to serve as one of their ministers.

Yet in the 1980s when a number of scandals rocked the world of televangelism and shaky finances plagued his cherished medical center, Oral Roberts resorted to extreme fundraising techniques. In January 1987, he announced on television that Lord had told him that unless $8,000,000 was soon raised God would “take him home.” (With the help of an extended deadline, this sum was raised.)

His biography on the oralroberts.com website claims that Roberts wrote 130 books, conducted 300 healing crusades, laying hands on over two million people and performed many miracles. After his death in 2009 his work was carried on by his son Richard.

1549

The First Act of Uniformity sets the course for the Anglican Church.

When Henry VIII withdrew the Church of England from the authority of the pope, its theology and ceremonial remained visibly Catholic. His successor, the boy-king Edward VI, wished the Church to become authentically part of the new reform movement. He would import Protestant preachers and university lecturers from the Continent, evict Catholic bishops from their sees and replace them with reformers, end clerical celibacy and finish the destruction of the monastic system.

On January 21, 1549 Parliament passed “An Acte for the unyformytie of Service and Admynistracion of the Sacramentes throughout the Realme”. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer had overseen the preparation of a Book of Common Prayer and the new Act commanded that all “ministers in any cathedral or parish church or other place within this realm of England, Wales, Calais, and the marches of the same, or other the king’s dominions, shall, from and after the feast of Pentecost next coming, be bound to say and use the Matins, Evensong, celebration of the Lord’s Supper, commonly called the Mass, and administration of each of the sacraments, and all their common and open prayer, in such order and form as is mentioned in the said book, and none other or otherwise.”

Many Protestants complained that this new order of things was not reformed enough: its use of words concerning the Eucharist might be interpreted in a Catholic way. Many Catholics, however, were furious at the abolition of the Latin Mass and parts of the country rose up in rebellion at the new liturgy. In the west of England, Cornishmen called for a return to Henrician Catholicism with the battle cry “Kill all the gentlemen and we will have the Six Articles up again, and ceremonies as they were in King Henry’s time.” The rising was put down by the government’s army of foreign mercenaries.

In 1552 a new prayer book, clearly more Protestant, replaced the 1549 version.

250

Beginning of the Decian persecution.

Christians had been frequently the subject of hostile acts by the Roman state: the persecutions by Nero, Domitian and Pliny the Younger kept Christianity an underground movement. However, these decrees tended to be local and sporadic, not empire-wide. It was not until the accession of Decius in 249 that the notion of a national test for religious loyalty was conceived. The mid-third century was a time of crisis for the Roman Empire and Decius believed that a wholesale assertion of loyalty to the old gods would serve to unify and revitalize the state. In 250 he mandated that all citizens (with the exception of Jews) be required to sacrifice to the pagan pantheon and receive and official certification recording this. Though it appears that Decius was not aiming specifically at the Christian community the effect on it was profound. Its leadership either fled, apostatized or faced martyrdom. On this day Pope Fabian was executed.

1569

Death of a Bible translator.

Miles Coverdale (1488-1569) was an English Roman Catholic priest who became influenced by the religious Reform movement in the 1520s. He spent many years in exile on the Continent involved in the production of an English translation of the Bible, a project for which William Tyndale had been arrested and executed for in 1536. Parts of his work appeared in the clandestine “Matthew Bible” of 1537 but his triumph was the production of the 1540 “Great Bible” authorized by the English government which commanded each parish purchase “one book of the bible of the largest volume in English, and the same set up in some convenient place within the said church that ye have care of, whereas your parishioners may most commodiously resort to the same and read it.”

During the Protestant reign of Edward VI Coverdale was named Bishop of Exeter but when Mary I came to the throne in 1553 he was expelled and fled to the Continent for refuge. On the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 he returned to England but was denied a bishopric, most likely because of his Puritan leanings.