Timothy Dwight (born this day, May 14, 1752; died in 1817) became the President of Yale at a time in American higher education when skepticism was becoming cool, and all the young men of the nation who had spent a few months on a college

It had one of those classic self-expositing eighteenth-century titles: “An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens,” and tacked onto that was an even more elaborate sub-title: “in which the Religious State of the Different Nations of

Matteo Ricci was the pioneer Jesuit missionary to China. He was born in 1552 and died on this day, May 11, in 1610. Ricci had to carry out his mission by making his way very delicately between two titanic forces: the imperial court of China,

Karl Barth (born May 10, 1886, died 1968) was the greatest theologian of the 20th century. His work made certain kinds of liberalism impossible, got modern thinkers to take revelation seriously, and put the Trinity back in the center of Christian theology. From an evangelical

Andrew Murray, Reformed pastor who worked chiefly in South Africa, was born on May 9, 1828 and died at a ripe old age in 1917. He wrote scores of books, most of them having 31 chapters and intended to be read a chapter at a

H. C. G. (that’s Handley Carr Glyn) Moule was born in 1841 and died on May 8, 1920. He served as the Bishop of Durham from 1901-1920. He was an acute scholar and a powerful communicator. He wrote great Bible commentaries, an outline of Christian

There must be some significance to Soren Kierkegaard’s birthday falling on Cinco de Mayo, but it escapes me. An admonition from the great Dane, from his book For Self-Examination: If you are a scholar, remember that if you do not read God’s Word in another

Donald Bloesch is a theologian whose name rhymes with “keep it fresh,” “nativity creche,” and “word made flesh.” Born on May 3, 1928, Bloesch has been an important theological voice for decades. He published the widely-used two-volume Essentials of Evangelical Theology back in the early

Athanasius of Alexandria (born around 293, died on this day, May 2, 373) stands out from the great crowd of witnesses that make up the early history of the church. If you’d like to begin reading the church fathers but don’t know where to start,

Cornelia ten Boom was born on April 15, 1892, and died on her ninety-first birthday, April 15, 1983. Corrie was from a remarkable family of pious Dutch Christians who constructed a secret room in their home and housed a number of Jews there, hidden from