John Knox
John Knox was born in Haddington, near Edinburgh around 1514. In 1536 he graduated from St Andrews University and was ordained a priest. He became a notary and tutor, but in 1543 was converted to Christ and embraced the Reformed faith. He was much influenced by the preacher George Wishart, and became his bodyguard. After…
Read MoreWilliam Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison, born in 1805 in the seaside town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, came of age in a nation teetering between the ideals of liberty and the brutal realities of human bondage. The son of a struggling Baptist mother and an absent father, Garrison was raised in poverty and piety. His mother, Frances Maria Garrison,…
Read MoreLyman Beecher
Lyman Beecher was one of the most influential religious figures in 19th-century America, a man whose theological convictions and activism helped shape the course of American history. Rooted in the fervor of the Second Great Awakening, Beecher emerged as a powerful voice in the religious revival movement that swept across the United States in the…
Read MoreMary Slessor
Mary Slessor was a hard working Scottish mill girl and an unorthodox Sunday School teacher, who, inspired by David Livingstone, became a missionary in Calabar, Nigeria, an area where no European had set foot before. Despite several bouts of illness and constant danger, she lived with the tribes, learned their language, and traditions, earning their…
Read MoreFlorence Nightingale
Famous for being the ‘Lady with the Lamp’ who organised the nursing of sick and wounded soldiers during the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale’s far-sighted ideas and reforms have influenced the very nature of modern healthcare. Her greatest achievement was to transform nursing into a respectable profession for women and in 1860, she established the first…
Read MoreWilliam Wilberforce
William Wilberforce (1759-1833), abolitionist and philanthropist, was born to a family of merchants. He was first educated at Hull Grammar School under Joseph Milner, an evangelical Anglican minister. His father died when Wilberforce was nine, and his mother sent him to stay near London where he was reared by an evangelical aunt and uncle. Through…
Read MoreJohn Calvin
Born July 10, 1509 in Noyon, France, Jean Calvin was raised in a staunch Roman Catholic family. The local bishop employed Calvin’s father as an administrator in the town’s cathedral. The father, in turn, wanted John to become a priest. Because of close ties with the bishop and his noble family, John’s playmates and classmates…
Read MoreMartin Luther
The life of Martin Luther is one of the most fascinating stories in the history of Christianity. It has all the stuff of a good novel: parental conflict, spiritual agony, life-changing moments, near-misses, princes, popes, emperors, castles, kidnapping, mobs, revolution, massacres, politics, courage, controversy, disguises, daring escapes, humor and romance. And not only is it…
Read MoreThomas Cranmer
Before a vast crowd of friends and enemies, the Archbishop thrust his hand into the fire. He was going to his death by being burned at the stake but insisted that the hand that was guilty of such shameful sin must burn first. Jesus said “It is better to lose a limb than for your whole body…
Read MoreUlrich Zwingli
Other than Martin Luther, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin, the most important early Reformer was Ulrich Zwingli. A first-generation Reformer, he is regarded as the founder of Swiss Protestantism. Furthermore, history remembers him as the first Reformed theologian. Though Calvin would later surpass Zwingli as a theologian, he would stand squarely on Zwingli’s broad shoulders. Less than…
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