May 13, 1801:
The first reports of wild "camp meetings" in the wilderness of Kentucky filtered back to the east coast, marking the beginnings of the Second Great Awakening. Although the meetings were originally organized by Presbyterian ministers, they became so intense and emotional that they were eventually repudiated by the Presbyterians, then the Baptists. Only the Methodists continued to boogie down in the woods for the rest of the 19th century. (Above, "Sacramental Scene in a Western Forest," lithograph by P.S. Duval, ca. 1801, from Joseph Smith, Old Redstone, Philadelphia: 1854. Library of Congress)
May 8, 1865
Thomas Paine, the Revolutionary War pamphleteer, was the only American member of the French National Assembly when he published The Age of Reason, which came to be regarded as "The Atheist Bible" and would cause Paine to be attacked by both English and American clergy for the rest of his life, especially for his allegation, endlessly repeated, that the virgin birth was "blasphemously obscene." Paine died penniless and alone, so we showed him.
May 7, 1865
The First Congregational Church of Washington, D.C., didn’t have enough money for its own sanctuary, so Charles Boynton, the pastor, started conducting services in the House of Representatives, a practice that continued for three years, with about 2,000 people attending each Sunday. God apparently allowed this to happen so that, in future centuries, Christopher Hitchens could be appalled.
January 12, 1806
Dorothy Ripley, the English evangelist, became the first woman to preach in Congress, and the first woman to speak officially in Congress for any reason. With both President Thomas Jefferson and Vice President Aaron Burr in attendance, she said that “very few” lawmakers had been born again and broke into a camp-meeting-style sermon, calling on them to dedicate their lives to Christ. None of them did.
January 8, 1826
John England, Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, became the first Roman Catholic to preach in the Congress, addressing the House of Representatives in order to rebut President John Quincy Adams, who had stated in 1821 that the Catholics were intolerant of other religions and therefore were not compatible with republican principles. Said England, “We do not believe that God gave to the church any power to interfere with our civil rights or our civil concerns. I would not allow to the Pope, or to any bishop of our church, the smallest interference with the humblest vote at our most insignificant balloting box.” What’s unclear is whether he still would have felt the same way after the year 1870, when the Pope became infallible. READ MORE...
11.21.2007 | Comments(1)April 26, 1475
Three Jewish households in Trent, Italy, were accused of murdering a Christian boy named Simon, using his blood to make matzo, and drinking his blood at Passover. 
They were all imprisoned and then tortured with a device called the strappado, a pulley that could be used to raise a person to the ceiling and then drop him, making him “dance” at the end of a rope, dislocating his limbs and inflicting pain. The few who didn’t confess immediately then had onions and sulfur placed under their noses, and hot eggs held under their arms, as a stenographer recorded the proceedings. Eventually all the members of all three families confessed, named names, and told the torturers what they wanted to hear. They were then convicted and executed, after which the young boy Simon became a saint. For some reason the Catholic church annulled Simon’s sainthood in 1965, just ten years shy of the 500th anniversary of his martyrdom.
March 14, 1859
Eleven-year-old Thomas Wall refused to read the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments during his weekly required exercises at a Boston public school, so his teacher, McLaurin F. Cooke, whipped the boy’s hands with a three-foot-long rattan stick, pausing occasionally to give him a chance to begin his recitations. The beating continued for 30 minutes, after which Wall agreed to read as instructed. The Wall family lodged a criminal complaint, but the judge said that the Bible exercises were required by law so that young children could learn “humanity, and a universal benevolence, sobriety, moderation and temperance.” Complaint dismissed. History does not record whether the boy developed a deep reverence for the Lord’s Prayer, or whether he became benevolent, sober, moderate and/or temperate.
11.16.2007 | Comments(0)
August 8, 1854
John Bapst, a Jesuit priest in Ellsworth, Maine, was set upon by a mob of Protestants who were angered about his legal complaints that the King James Bible was required in schools, even for Catholic children. Father Bapst was tarred and feathered, but none of the perpetrators were arrested, no doubt out of a sense of Christian mercy.
11.15.2007 | Comments(0)
July 4, 1844
Fearing violence from Catholic- hating Protestants on the national holiday, the Irish militia took up positions in front of the Catholic church in the Southwalk neighborhood of Philadelphia. READ MORE...
11.13.2007 | Comments(0)
May 8, 1844
Armed Protestant gangs, defeated two days' running by the more accurate musket fire of the Irish Catholics they were attempting to rout from the city of Philadelphia, turned to arson as their best weapon, torching St. Michael's Church and cheering as the steeple collapsed to the ground, bringing a cross with it. Then they burned the seminary of the Sisters of Charity and ransacked homes and stores, making a bonfire of books in the street. When Mayor John M. Scott stood on the steps of St. Augustine's Catholic Church and asked the crowd to disperse, someone knocked him down with a rock to the chest, then a new fire broke out, destroying St. Augustine's within half an hour. Martial law was declared, and the three days of violence ended with the Catholics leading by sheer body count, but the Protestants starting to make an impact with their ability to loot, pillage and burn.
11.12.2007 | Comments(2)
January 17, 897
Pope Stephen VI decided to dig up the corpse of Pope Formosus, who had been dead for eight months, so that Formosus could be put on trial before a synod of bishops. READ MORE...
10.15.2007 | Comments(13)