<!-- Start of JavaScript
document.write("<B>July 1, 1643:</B> The Westminster Assembly convenes for the first time in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey. Five years later it published the Westminster longer and shorter catechisms, which the Anglican church rejected, but the Presbyterians accepted.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 1, 1824:</B> The Presbyterian church ordains Charles Grandison Finney, the father of modern revivalism.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 1, 1899:</B> Three traveling businessmen meet in a YMCA building and decide to form an organization to distribute Bibles. The Christian Commercial Men's Association of America, later renamed the Gideons, placed their first Bibles in a hotel nine years later.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 1, 1896:</B> Abolitionist writer Harriet Beecher Stowe dies. She averaged nearly a book a year, but Uncle Tom's Cabin remains her legacy. Even one of her harshest critics acknowledged that it was ‘‘perhaps the most influential novel ever published . . . a verbal earthquake, an ink-and-paper tidal wave’‘.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 2, 1489:</B> English reformer Thomas Cranmer is born at Aslockton, Nottinghamshire. The archbishop of Canterbury wrote the Book of Common Prayer and was burned at the stake in 1556.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 2, 1505:</B> A rain storm in Germany helps launch the Protestant Reformation. While returning from a trip to visit his parents, Martin Luther (then a law student) was caught in a violent thunderstorm near Stotternheim. Fearing for his life, he cried, ‘‘Help me, St. Anne! I will become a monk!’‘ Within two weeks, he made good on his promise.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 2, 1752:</B> The first English Bible published in America rolls off presses in Boston.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 3, 529:</B> The Synod of Orange convenes in southern France. Led by a forcefulAugustinian, Caesarius of Arles, the synod upheldAugustine's doctrines of grace and free will while condemning the views of Semi-Pelagians (including John Cassian and Faustus of Riez), who believed the human will and God's grace work together.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 4, 973:</B> Ulrich, bishop ofAugsburg from 923, dies. Twenty years later he would become the first person canonized by a pope.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 4, 1187:</B> Saladin, leader of the united Muslim forces, defeats the armies of the Third Crusade at Tiberius, Syria.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 5, 1439:</B> Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics sign the Decree of Union at the Council of Florence, creating an official union between the two churches. Popular sentiment in Constantinople opposed the decree, and when the Turks captured the city, the union ceased. However, the council's definition of doctrine and its principles of church union (unity of faith, diversity of rite) have proved useful in subsequent church talks.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 5, 1865:</B> William Booth founds The Christian Mission to work among London's poor and unchurched. Later, he changed the mission's name to the Salvation Army.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 5, 1962:</B> H. Richard Niebuhr, theologian, Yale professor, and author of Christ and Culture (1951), dies at age 67.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 6, 1054:</B> Church legates of the Roman pope march into the church of Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and place a bull on the altar, excommunicating him. So began of the Great Schism between the Catholics and the Orthodox."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 6, 1415:</B> Jan Hus, Bohemian preacher and forerunner of Protestantism, is burned as a heretic in Constance, Germany.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 6, 1535:</B> Sir Thomas More (b. 1478), who had recently resigned as Lord Chancellor of England, is executed for treason. He had sided with the pope against Henry VIII in the matter of the king's divorce. He was sentenced to be hanged, but Henry commuted the sentence to beheading.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 7, 1647:</B> Thomas Hooker, Puritan pastor, political theorist, and founder of Connecticut dies on his sixty-first birthday.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 7, 1874:</B> Popular New England preacher Henry Ward Beecher demands an investigation by his church into the charges of adultery brought by Theodore Tilton, who later sued Beecher for ‘‘alienating his wife's affections.’‘ The jury could not decide whether a sexual affair had really taken place.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 7, 1946:</B> Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917), founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, becomes the first American to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 8, 1115:</B> French monk Peter the Hermit dies. Several argue that Peter the Hermit launched the crusades. Supposedly, he visited Jerusalem on a pilgrimage in 1093 and returned to Pope Urban II with a plea to do something to stop the Muslims from harassing Christian pilgrims. Two years later Urban II pronounced the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont and Peter the Hermit became one of the crusade's dominant preachers. After leading a failed ‘‘pre-crusade’‘ in which Muslims slaughtered his entire army of 20,000 peasants, Peter joined the main army of the First Crusade."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 8, 1896:</B> At the Democratic National Convention, fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan gives his famous speech supporting ‘‘the little man’‘ of American life. ‘‘You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,’‘ he shouted.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 8, 1741:</B> Colonial Congregational minister Jonathan Edwards preaches his classic sermon at Enfield, Connecticut: ‘‘You are thus in the hands of an angry God; 'tis nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction’‘.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 9, 381:</B> Nestorius, the first patriarch of Constantinople, is born in what is now Maras, Turkey. Nestorius attained fame for his teaching that Christ had two natures and two persons (rather than two natures in one person), which the Council of Ephesus in 431 condemned as heresy."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 9, 1228:</B> Stephen Langton, greatest of the medieval archbishops of Canterbury, dies. He had formulated the original division of the Bible into chapters in the late 1100s, and his name appears on the Magna Carta as counselor to the king (though he supported the English barons in their pursuit for more freedoms).");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 9, 1925:</B> The Scopes ‘‘Monkey Trial’‘ begins in Dayton, Tennessee, as John Scopes is tried for teaching evolution to his students. Though William Jennings Bryan, acting as prosecuting attorney, won the courtroom battle, the creationists lost where public opinion was concerned. Chagrined, fundamentalist Christians largely withdrew from American culture.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 10, 1509:</B> French Protestant reformer John Calvin is born in Nyon, France."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 10, 1863:</B> Clement C. Moore dies. In 1819 he established the General Theological Seminary, where he taught Greek and Hebrew Literature for 28 years. He also authored ‘‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’‘ ('Twas the Night Before Christmas . . . ) in 1823.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 11, 1533:</B> Pope Clement VII excommunicates England's King Henry VIII for remarrying after his divorce.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 11, 1656:</B> Barbados expatriates Ann Austin and Mary Fisher become the first Quakers to arrive in America. Officials promptly arrested them and deported them back to England five weeks later.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 11, 1681:</B> Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, is executed, having been found guilty of treason. He was the last Catholic to die for his faith in England and the first Irish martyr to be beatified.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 11, 1886:</B> Protestant missionary Horace Underwood secretly baptizes Mr. Toh Sa No in Korea—the first recorded Protestant baptism in that country. However, an underground church was probably already active in Korea, begun by Korean workmen who had heard the gospel in China.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 11, 1955:</B> Congress puts ‘‘In God We Trust’‘ on all U.S. currency.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 12, 1536:</B> Desiderius Erasmus, Dutch scholar and the first editor of the Greek New Testament, dies in Basel. One of the leading scholars of the Protestant Reformation, he also wrote the influential In Praise of Folly. ‘‘Most holy was his living,’‘ said one observer, ‘‘most holy his dying’‘.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 13, 1886:</B> Father Edward Flanagan, the Roman Catholic parish priest who founded Boys Town (orginally named the Home for Homeless Boys) near Omaha, Nebraska, is born in Roscommon, Ireland. July 13, 1917.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 13, 1917:</B> Three children in Fatima, Portugal, report seeing visions of the Virgin Mary.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 14, 1833:</B> Anglican clergyman John Keble preaches his famous sermon on national apostasy, marking the beginning of the Oxford Movement in England. Keble was joined by John Henry Newman and E.B. Pusey, who led this effort to purify and revitalize the Anglican Church by reviving the ideals and practices of the pre-Reformation English church.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 15, 1015:</B> Vladimir, the grand prince of Russia who made Orthodox Christianity the national religion, dies at age 59."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 15, 1099:</B> The First Crusade captures Jerusalem, massacring thousands. ‘‘The city was filled with corpses and blood,’‘ wrote one chronicler.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 15, 1606:</B> Dutch Painter Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn is born to a wealthy family in Leyden. Personal tragedies seemed to deepen the spiritual dimensions of his art, and he eventually created nearly 90 paintings and etchings depicting Christ's passion.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 15, 1704:</B> August G. Spangenberg, bishop of the Unitas Fratrum and founder of the Moravian Church in North America, is born in Germany."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 16, 1519:</B> The Disputation of Leipzig, in which Martin Luther argued that church councils had been wrong and that the church did not have ultimate doctrinal authority, ends."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 16, 1769:</B> Spanish Franciscan friar Father Junipero Serra founds the San Diego de Alcala mission in California, the first permanent Spanish settlement on the west coast of America."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 16, 1931:</B> Missionary C.T. Studd, one of the famous ‘‘Cambridge Seven’‘ and evangelist to China, India, and Africa, dies."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 17, 180:</B> Seven men and five women who had been captured carrying ‘‘the sacred books, and the letters of Paul’‘ are tried before Roman proconsul Saturninus. Since none would renounce their Christian faith, all 12 were beheaded.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 17, 431:</B> The Council of Ephesus ajourns, having rejected Nestorianism (the idea that Christ had two persons, not two natures) and condemned Pelagianism (a doctrine refuting human depravity).");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 17, 1505:</B> Martin Luther enters theAugustinian monastic order at Erfurt, Germany, at age 21.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 17, 1674:</B> Isaac Watts, author of about 600 hymns, is born in Southampton, England.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 17, 1917:</B> American Baptist radio evangelist Charles E. Fuller accepts Christ as his savior. Fuller was ordained in 1925 and in 1937 began the pioneer program The Old Fashioned Revival Hour. He also helped found Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 18, 64:</B> The Great Fire of Rome begins, and to direct suspicion away from himself, young Emperor Nero blames the city's Christians. A persecution followed in which Christians were (among other punishments) burned alive.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 18, 1504:</B> Henry Bullinger, Ulrich Zwingli's successor as chief pastor of Zurich and a close associate of Cranmer, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Beza, is born in Switzerland.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 18, 1870:</B> The Vatican I Council votes 533 to 2 in favor of ‘‘papal infallibility’‘ as defined that ‘‘the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church . . . is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his church should be endowed.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 18, 1970:</B> Pope Paul VI names mystic Teresa of Avila the first woman doctor of the church.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 19, 1692:</B> Puritan magistrates convict and hang five women for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. By September, 20 people had been executed on charges brought by 15 young girls.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 19, 1848:</B> More than 300 men and women assemble in the Wesleyan Chapel at Seneca Falls, New York, for the first formal convention to discuss ‘‘the social, civil and religious condition and the rights of women.’‘ The event has been called the birthplace of the women's rights movement.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 20, 1054:</B> Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius, having been excommunicated from the Roman church four days earlier, excommunicates Pope Leo IX and his followers. This precipitates the Great Schism.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 20, 1910:</B> The Christian Endeavor Society of Missouri begins a campaign to ban all motion pictures that depicted kissing between nonrelatives.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 21, 1773:</B> Pope Clement XIV dissolves the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), which was founded in 1534. Clement did not condemn the Society, but explained it was an administrative move for the peace of the church. Pius VII restored the society in 1814.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 21, 1925:</B> Biology teacher John T. Scopes is fined $100 for teaching evolution. He lost his trial, but because of it fundamentalists lost respect.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 22, 1620:</B> Led by John Robinson, a group of English Separatists who had fled to Holland in 1607, sail for England, where they would board the Mayflower.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 22, 1822:</B> Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk and botanist who discovered the basic laws of genetic inheritance, is born.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 23, 1373:</B> Saint Bridget (or Birgitta) of Sweden dies. The pious and charitable mystic and founder of the Bridgettine Order, greatly influenced the pope's decision to return to Rome.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 23, 1583:</B> Protestant printer John Day, who was responsible for publishing Hugh Latimer's sermons, Nicholas Ridley's ‘‘Friendly Farewell,’‘ and John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, dies."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 23, 1742:</B> Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles, dies. Born the twenty-fifth child in a clergyman's family, she became one of the most notable mothers in church history."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 24, 1725:</B> John Newton, author of ‘‘Amazing Grace’‘ and other hymns, is born in London. Converted to Christianity while working on a slave ship, he hoped as a Christian to restrain the worst excesses of the slave trade, ‘‘promoting the life of God in the soul’‘ of both his crew and his African cargo. In 1764 he became an Anglican minister and each week wrote a hymn to be sung to a familiar tune. In 1787 Newton wrote Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade to help William Wilberforce's campaign to end the slave trade."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 24, 1874:</B> Oswald Chambers, author of ‘‘My Utmost for His Highest’‘ (which was published posthumously in 1927), is born in Aberdeen, Scotland.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 24, 1921:</B> C.I. Scofield, editor of the Scofield Reference Bible and defender of dispensational premillennialism, dies in Douglaston, New York.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 25, 325:</B> The Council of Nicea closes. The first ecumenical council, convened by Constantine, it rejected the Arians (who denied the full divinity of Christ) as heretics.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 25, 1593:</B> King Henry IV of France, raised a Protestant, converts to Catholicism. Long considered a political move, the conversion is now thought to have been sincere, partially because of the king's statement that ‘‘religion is not changed as easily as a shirt.’‘ His conversion did not end his sympathy for Protestants, however, and in 1598 he promulgated the Edict of Nantes, giving Protestants freedom of worship and permitting them to garrison certain towns for security."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 25, 1918:</B> Walter Rauschenbusch, Bapstist pastor and theologian of the Social Gospel, dies. His books, including Christianity and the Social Crisis and The Social Principles of Jesus, influenced many—among them Martin Luther King, Jr., who observed that ‘‘Rauschenbusch gave to American Protestantism a sense of social responsibility that it should never lose.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 26, 1603:</B> James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England. Among his many acts affecting English religious life (it is he for whom the King James Version is named) was the issuing of the Book of Sports, approving sports on Sunday.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 26, 1833:</B> Having abolished the slave trade in 1807, Britain's House of Commons bans slavery itself. When William Wilberforce, who had spent most of his life crusading against slavery, heard the news, he said, ‘‘Thank God I have lived to witness [this] day.’‘ He died three days later."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 26, 1869:</B> England's Disestablishment Bill is passed, officially dissolving the Church of Ireland. It is from this act that we get the mighty word ‘‘antidisestablishmentarianism,’‘ which was the organized opposition to the legislation.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 26, 1925:</B> William Jennings Bryan, American editor, politician, and anti-evolutionary leader, dies five days after being publicly ridiculed for his role in the Scopes ‘‘Monkey’‘ trial."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 27, 1681:</B> During a bitter battle between Scottish Episcopalians and Presbyterians, five Presbyterian preachers are martyred in Edinburgh. The Church of Scotland became Presbyterian permanently in 1690.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 28, 1148:</B> Too weak to retake Edessa from the Muslims, the armies of the Second Crusade beseige Damascus. They blundered and were forced to retreat within five days. Believers throughout Christendom were shocked and devastated that a crusade preached by a moral exemplar (Bernard of Clairvaux) and led by royalty (King Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad III of Germany) would fail."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 28, 1727:</B> Moody, stiff young preacher Jonathan Edwards marries Sarah Pierrepont, a lively 17-year-old. The union proved happy and produced 11 children, six of who were born on Sundays. This caused a bit of a scandal, because people then believed children were born the same weekday they were conceived. Nonetheless, people admired the marriage, including George Whitefield, who declared, ‘‘A sweeter couple I have not seen’‘.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 28, 1881:</B> American Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen is born in Baltimore."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 29, 1030:</B> Viking king Olaf Haraldsson, patron saint of Norway, dies in the battle of Stiklestad. Though limited in his ability to force his countrymen to convert during his reign, his death was later hailed as a miracle-filled martyrdom and, as his legend grew, it spurred on christiansd converting the country. In time, Olaf became one of the most well-known saints of medieval Christendom, and his relics in Norway became one of Europe's most popular pilgrimage destinations."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 29, 1794:</B> In a converted blacksmith's shop in Philadelphia, former slave Richard Allen assembles a group of black Christians who had faced discrimination in the local Methodist Episcopal Church. They formed the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the mother church of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, now known throughout the world.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 29, 1833:</B> English abolitionist William Wilberforce dies a mere three days after England abolishes slavery. ");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 29, 1968:</B> Pope Paul VI publishes his encyclical ‘‘Humanae Vitae,’‘ which condemns artificial birth control methods.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 29, 1030:</B> Viking king Olaf Haraldsson, patron saint of Norway, dies in the battle of Stiklestad. Though limited in his ability to force his countrymen to convert during his reign, his death was later hailed as a miracle-filled martyrdom and, as his legend grew, it spurred on christiansd converting the country. In time, Olaf became one of the most well-known saints of medieval Christendom, and his relics in Norway became one of Europe's most popular pilgrimage destinations."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 29, 1794:</B> In a converted blacksmith's shop in Philadelphia, former slave Richard Allen assembles a group of black Christians who had faced discrimination in the local Methodist Episcopal Church. They formed the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the mother church of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, now known throughout the world.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 29, 1833:</B> English abolitionist William Wilberforce dies a mere three days after England abolishes slavery."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 29, 1968:</B> Pope Paul VI publishes his encyclical ‘‘Humanae Vitae,’‘ which condemns artificial birth control methods.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 30, 1718:</B> William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania as a colony for Quakers to enjoy religious liberty, dies.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 30, 1775:</B> The U.S. Army founds its chaplaincy, making it the Army's oldest division after the infantry.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 30, 1956:</B> In God We Trust becomes the official motto of the United States by an act of Congress signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower (see the U.S. Treasury website).");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 31, 1556:</B> Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish Roman Catholic reformer and founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), dies in Rome. During his life he saw 1,000 men join his order and 100 colleges and seminaries established. Apart from his order, Ignatius's greatest legacy he left in his Spiritual Exercises, a devotional guide that has been in constant use for over 460 years.");
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 31, 1566:</B> Bartolome de las Casas, the first Spaniard ordained in the New World and ‘‘Father to the Indians,’‘ dies in Spain. He wrote several books detailing the horrors committed upon Native Americans by the Spanish settlers, and argued for the humanity of the Indians against many of his countrymen who had described them as children or subhuman."); 
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("<B>July 31, 1966:</B> After John Lennon proclaims the Beatles to be ‘‘more popular than Jesus,’‘ residents of Alabama burn the band's records and other products.");
document.write("<br><br>");
// -- End of JavaScript -->
