WHenry Ward Beecher was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His rhetorical focus on Christ's love has influenced mainstream Christianity to this day.
WThe Claudy bombing occurred on 31 July 1972, when three car bombs exploded mid-morning on the Main Street of Claudy in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The attack killed nine civilians, and became known as "Bloody Monday". Those who planted the bombs had attempted to send a warning before the explosions took place. The warning was delayed, however, because the telephones were out of order due to an earlier bomb attack. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) issued an immediate denial of responsibility, and later stated that "an internal court of inquiry" had found that its local unit did not carry out the attack.
WGreater Grace World Outreach (GGWO) is a nondenominational evangelical Christian churches that emphasize grace, the finished work, and missions. The headquarters of Greater Grace World Outreach is currently located at its megachurch in Baltimore, Maryland. The church has a weekly attendance of 1500+ (on-site) and services are live-streamed on YouTube and Facebook. GGWO was founded by Carl H. Stevens Jr. who was succeeded by Pastor Thomas Schaller as Presiding Elder and Overseeing Pastor of Greater Grace World Outreach in Baltimore in April 2005.
WHyles–Anderson College (HAC) is an unaccredited Independent Baptist college in unincorporated Crown Point, Lake County, Indiana. As a ministry of the First Baptist Church of Hammond, it focuses on training pastors, missionaries and Christian teachers to work in Independent Baptist schools.
WThe Keldholme Priory election dispute occurred in Yorkshire, England, in 1308. After a series of resignations by its prioresses, the establishment was in a state of turmoil, and the Archbishop of York, William Greenfield, appointed one of the nuns to lead the house. His candidate, Emma de Ebor', was deemed unacceptable by many nuns, who undermined her from the start to the extent that she resigned three months later. The archbishop, forced to find another candidate, claimed that he was unable to do so from within the priory and appointed Joan de Pykering from nearby Rosedale Priory. It is likely that Keldholme saw de Pykering as an intruder, and it seems to have reacted against her in much the same way as to her predecessor.
WGeorge Patrick Lee was the first Native American to become a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was a member of the church's First Quorum of Seventy from 1975 to 1989, when he was excommunicated from the church.
WThe Littlemore Priory scandals took place between 1517 and 1518. They involved accusations of sexual immorality and sometimes brutal violence among the Benedictine nuns and their prioress at St Nicholas' Priory in Littlemore, in Oxfordshire, England. The priory was very small and poor, and had a history of troubled relations with its bishops, dating back to the mid-1400s. The scandal that came to light in 1517, however, became enough of a cause célèbre to contribute to the priory's eventual suppression in 1525. Katherine Wells, the prioress of Littlemore at that time, ran the priory with strict and often violent discipline. She was accused of regularly putting nuns in the stocks for extended periods, as well as physically assaulting them. She also had a baby by the priory's chaplain and had pawned the priory's jewels to pay for the child's upbringing. She entertained men in her parlour, even after the bishop had been made aware of the accusations, which involved heavy drinking. At least one other nun also had a child. On one occasion a number of the nuns broke out of the priory through a window and escaped into the surrounding villages for some weeks.
WLiving Enrichment Center (LEC) was a New Thought organization and retreat center in the U.S. state of Oregon. It was founded in the farmhouse of senior minister Mary Manin Morrissey of Scholls, Oregon, in the mid-1970s; the church moved to a 94,500 square foot building on a forested area of 95 acres in Wilsonville in 1992. Over the course of its existence, the congregation grew from less than a dozen to an estimated 4,000, making it the biggest New Thought church in the state. Living Enrichment Center maintained an in-house bookstore, retreat center, café, kindergarten and elementary school, and an outreach television ministry.
WMagdalene asylums, also known as Magdalene laundries, were initially Protestant but later mostly Roman Catholic institutions that operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries, ostensibly to house "fallen women". The term implied female sexual promiscuity or work in prostitution, young women who became pregnant outside of marriage, or young girls and teenagers who did not have familial support. They were required to work as part of their board, and the institutions operated large commercial laundries, serving customers outside their bases.
WThe Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, also known as Magdalene asylums, were institutions usually run by Roman Catholic orders, which operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries. They were run ostensibly to house "fallen women", an estimated 30,000 of whom were confined in these institutions in Ireland. In 1993, a mass grave containing 155 corpses was uncovered in the convent grounds of one of the laundries. This led to media revelations about the operations of the secretive institutions. A formal state apology was issued in 2013, and a £50 million compensation scheme for survivors was set up by the Irish Government. The religious orders which operated the laundries have rejected activist demands that they financially contribute to this programme.
WMansion House is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. It is a Grade I listed building.
WAimee Elizabeth Semple McPherson, also known as Sister Aimee or Sister, was a Canadian Pentecostal evangelist and media celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s, famous for founding the Foursquare Church. McPherson pioneered the use of modern media in religious services, using radio to draw on the growing appeal of popular entertainment and incorporating stage techniques into her weekly sermons at Angelus Temple, an early megachurch.
WTamara Faye Messner was an American Christian singer, evangelist, author, talk show host, and television personality. She initially gained notice for her work with The PTL Club, a televangelist program she co-founded with her husband Jim Bakker in 1974. They had hosted their own puppet show series for local programming in Minnesota in the early 1970s; Messner also had a career as a recording artist. In 1978, she and Bakker built Heritage USA, a Christian theme park.
WMichelle Remembers is a 1980 book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient Michelle Smith. A best-seller, Michelle Remembers was the first book written on the subject of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) and is an important part of the controversies beginning during the 1980s regarding SRA and recovered memory. Several investigators have subsequently been unable to corroborate many of the book's events despite extensive searches. According to these investigators, the events described in the book were very unlikely and in some cases seemingly impossible.
WEarl Pearly Paulk, Jr. was an American televangelist and the founder of the Cathedral at Chapel Hill, a charismatic/Pentecostal megachurch in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. Noted as "one of the country’s first great independent megachurches", Paulk's church gained an international reputation for combining liturgical arts, such as dance and drama, with social ministry. Paulk was also known for his lifelong crusade against racism.
WThe PTL Club, also known as The Jim and Tammy Show, was a Christian television program that was first hosted by evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. It ran from 1974 to 1989. The program was later known as PTL Today and as Heritage Today.
WMichael Reid is a Christian evangelist in Essex, England and founder of Peniel Pentecostal Church. Michael and his late wife Ruth Reid were missionaries travelling the world spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. They ministered in African countries like Cameroon and planted the vastly successful Peniel Church. He founded Peniel College allowing many students to train and graduate in Theology. He resigned from the role of pastor at Peniel Church in April 2008 after personal issues arose. The Church is now known as Trinity.
WRichard Lee Roberts is chairman and chief executive officer of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and previously served as president of Oral Roberts University (ORU) for 15 years.
WMarion Gordon "Pat" Robertson is an American media mogul, televangelist, political commentator, former Republican presidential candidate, and former Southern Baptist minister. Robertson advocates a conservative Christian ideology and is known for his past activities in Republican party politics. He is associated with the Charismatic Movement within Protestant evangelicalism. He serves as chancellor and CEO of Regent University and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). He appears daily on The 700 Club, CBN's flagship television program.
WJoseph Fielding Smith was Patriarch to the Church and a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1942 until 1946.
WJimmy Lee Swaggart is an American Pentecostal evangelist.
WThe Tarakeswar affair refers to a public scandal in 19th-century Bengal during the British Raj. It resulted from an illicit love affair between Elokeshi, the wife of a government employee Nobin Chandra, and the Brahmin head priest of the Tarakeswar Shiva temple. Nobin subsequently decapitated his wife Elokeshi because of the love affair. A highly publicised trial followed, dubbed the Tarakeswar murder case of 1873, in which both the husband and the mahant were found guilty in varying degrees.
WTheodore Tilton was an American newspaper editor, poet and abolitionist. He was born in New York City to Silas Tilton and Eusebia Tilton. On his twentieth birthday, October 2, 1855, he married Elizabeth Richards. Tilton's newspaper work was fully supportive of abolitionism and the Northern cause in the American Civil War.
WWilbur Glenn Voliva was an American evangelist and Flat Earth theorist who controlled the town of Zion, Illinois during the early 20th century.
WMichael Alfred Warnke is an American Christian evangelist and comedian who was exposed in 1992 for inventing stories of his past as a Satanist. Before being debunked by the Christian magazine Cornerstone, he was viewed as an "expert" on Satanism in the 1980s.
WRavi Zacharias was an Indian-born Canadian-American Christian apologist who founded the RZIM. He was involved in Christian apologetics for a period spanning more than 40 years. Zacharias was the author of more than 30 books on Christianity, including the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association's Gold Medallion Book Award winner Can Man Live Without God? in the category "theology and doctrine" as well as Christian bestsellers Light in the Shadow of Jihad and The Grand Weaver. Zacharias was the founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) and host of the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking. He was a lifelong minister of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Keswickian Christian denomination in which he was ordained.