Georgi Vins and the Christian Resistance to Soviet Religious Persecution On April 26, 1979, 50-year-old Georgi Petrovich Vins was woken up in his cell in the labor camp where he had been serving sentence for four years. He was asked…
A favorite hymn we sing at church is Walter Smith’s “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” where the congregation beautifully confesses that “We blossom and flourish as leaves on a tree, and wither and perish, but naught changeth Thee.” My heart…
William Shedd and the Genocide of Assyrian Christians William Ambrose Shedd was born January 24, 1865, in the mountain village of Seir, near Urmia, in today’s Northwestern Iran, near Turkey. About one quarter of the population at that time was…
Samuel Crowther – The First African Anglican Bishop When a visiting missionary reunited with his mother in 1848, she must have hardly believed her eyes. It had been about 26 years since she had seen him. She had left him…
It has long been popular to characterize Anglicanism as a distinctive middle way or via media between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Many today understand Anglicanism as a unique combination of the best features of the two traditions, which avoids the…
Daniel Rowland and the Welsh 18th-century Revival Llangeitho is a small village in the center of Wales. Today, its population counts just a little more than 800 people. It was even smaller in the 18th century. And yet, thousands…
William Williams Pantycelyn – The Sweet Singer of Wales In most of the world, William Williams is only known to those who read the names of authors in their hymnbooks. Most people don’t, and go on singing his most…
Anne Ross Cundell Cousin – A Compassionate Friend The name of Anne Cousin is largely unknown today. It might sound familiar only to people to take the time to read the names of the authors of the hymns they…
Alexander McLeod and His Speech Against Slavery In the fall of 1800, Alexander McLeod (1774-1833) received a call to become pastor of the Congregation in Coldenham, New York. It was the culmination of a training he had received since he…
You may be familiar with the famous American pastor who loved chocolate and flying spiders, but did you know that Jonathan Edwards died from a smallpox inoculation? Edwards was not only a theologian but a student of natural philosophy who…
