Archive for April 2025
Frank Buchman
When Frank Buchman issued his call for a rededication to Christian values in May 1939, Europe was only months away from the explosive outbreak of the Second World War. That spring, however, Buchman was one of the nation’s most popular and influential religious evangelists. His call for a “moral re-armament,” which was also the name…
Read MoreJohn Wesley Work Jr.
John Wesley Work is said to have been the first black collector of Negro folksongs, and was most likely born on August 6, 1871 in Nashville, Tennessee. His father, John Wesley Work, was a church choir director in Nashville, where he wrote and arranged music for his choirs. Some of his choristers were members of…
Read MoreWilliam Seymour
William Joseph Seymour was born May 2, 1870 in Centerville, Louisiana to Simon and Phillis Seymour. His parents had been slaves prior to the Civil War. Seymour was the oldest of ten children, but only three lived to adulthood. Information about Seymour’s early years is generally sketchy. The family’s religious affiliation appears to have been…
Read MoreKarl Barth
One would not put much stock in a boy who was the leader of a street gang to become a transformative theologian in adulthood. But such is the case with Karl Barth. He was not particularly fond of attending school or of behaving. He was a brawler both at school and in his neighborhood. He…
Read MoreG.K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. Nor in one paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies that have been written of him, he has never been captured between the covers of one book. But rather than waiting to separate the goats from the sheep, let’s just come right…
Read MoreNikolai Berdyaev
Berdyaev was born on March 6, 1874, in Kiev. His father had come from a military family and was himself an officer in the Imperial Guards. His mother, Princess Kudashev, was half French, but also belonged to Polish nobility. The family religion was Orthodox. Early in his life he developed a tic douloureux which caused him both…
Read MoreOswald Chambers
Oswald Chambers was a prominent early twentieth century Scottish Protestant Christian minister and teacher, best known as the author of the widely-read devotional My Utmost for His Highest. Chambers was born 24 July 1874 in Aberdeen, Scotland to devout Baptist parents. He accepted Christ in his teen years. While walking home from a service conducted by Charles…
Read MoreBilly Sunday
Billy Sunday (1862-1935), evangelist. Born near Ames, Iowa the son of a tenant farmer and wife, he spent most of his teen years in an orphanage and working as a hired farm laborer. A superb baseball player with lightning speed he was signed to a contract with the Chicago White Stockings (today’s Chicago Cubs) in…
Read MoreAnton Chekhov
The anti-heroine of Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, Hanna Schmitz, is illiterate, and serving a life sentence in prison. She is sustained mentally by tape recordings, sent to her by a well-educated former lover. In the film of the book, the tape with which she begins to teach herself to read begins: “People were saying that someone…
Read MoreC.T. Studd
Over a hundred years ago, in February 1885, a group of young men set sail from England to become missionaries in China. They included graduates and ex-army officers and were known as the “Cambridge Seven” because they had felt called to the mission field after attending meetings at that University. The leading member of the…
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