February 7
1478
Sir Thomas More, British Roman Catholic humanist, was
born in London (d. 6 July 1535).
1528 The Reformation was established by
edict in Bern, Switzerland. Bern, the strongest canton
(state) in southern Switzerland in its day, officially
embraced the Protestant faith of
Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531),
Johannes Oecolampadius (1482-1531) and other Swiss
reformers.
1537 The Lutheran princes arrived at
Schmalkalden to affirm the Augsburg Confession and the
Apology.
1550
Julius III (1487–1555) became
pope.
1785
Jacob Scherer, North Carolina Synod home missionary, was
born (d. 2 March 1860).
1832 Hannah Whitall Smith, American Quaker
evangelist and author, was born in Philadelphia (d. 1 May
1911).
1834 John Hampton, hymnist, was born (d. 4
December 1922).
1869 Connecticut Congregational
clergyman Samuel Wolcott (1813–1886),
on returning home from a YMCA evangelistic service in Ohio,
penned the words to the hymn “Christ
for the World We Sing.” The hymn
was first published in W. H. Doane’s
Songs of Devotion
(1870).
1870 Alfred Adler, Jewish convert to
Christianity, neurologist and psychiatrist, was born in
Vienna, Austria (d. 28 May 1937).
1878
Pope Pius IX died (b. 13 May 1792).
1883
Martin Lochner, pastor, educator and organist, was born
in Springfield, Illinois (d. 6 February 1945).
1886
Lorenz F. R. Blankenbuehler, professor at Concordia
College (Portland, Oregon) and Concordia College (Saint
Paul, Minnesota), a member of the Intersynodical Committee
on Hymnology and Liturgics and editor of The Lutheran
Witness, was born in Webster City, Iowa (d. 21 February
1964).
1898
Carl Wilhelm Grönning,
missionary to India, died (b. 22 November 1813, Fredericia,
Denmark).
1906
Milton Valentine, Lutheran theologian and president of
the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, died (b. 1 January 1825 near Uniontown,
Carroll Co., Maryland).
1909
Hélder Câmara, Roman catholic archbishop and a major
precursor to Latin American
liberation theology, was born (d. 27 August 1999).
1915
Teoctist, patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, was
born (d. 30 July 2007).
1920
Johannes Schaller, president of Wisconsin Synod
colleges, died in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin (b. 10 December
1859).
1938 After years of being closely
watched by Nazi secret police, Lutheran pastor
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)
was put on trial. He was subsequently confined in a
concentration camp, but he survived and went on to hold a
leadership role in the World Council of Churches from 1948
to 1968.
1942
Hans Baagöe Thorgrimson, who
helped found the Icelandic Lutheran Synod in North America,
died (b. 21 August 1853, Eyrarbakki, Iceland).
1955 The first synod of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of England was held.
