February 7

1478 Sir Thomas More, British Roman Catholic humanist, was born in London (d. 6 July 1535).

1528 The Reformation was established by edict in Bern, Switzerland. Bern, the strongest canton (state) in southern Switzerland in its day, officially embraced the Protestant faith of Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), Johannes Oecolampadius (1482-1531) and other Swiss reformers.

1537 The Lutheran princes arrived at Schmalkalden to affirm the Augsburg Confession and the Apology.

1550 Julius III (1487–1555) became pope.

1785 Jacob Scherer, North Carolina Synod home missionary, was born (d. 2 March 1860).

1832 Hannah Whitall Smith, American Quaker evangelist and author, was born in Philadelphia (d. 1 May 1911).

1834 John Hampton, hymnist, was born (d. 4 December 1922).

1869 Connecticut Congregational clergyman Samuel Wolcott (1813–1886), on returning home from a YMCA evangelistic service in Ohio, penned the words to the hymn “Christ for the World We Sing.” The hymn was first published in W. H. Doane’s Songs of Devotion (1870).

1870 Alfred Adler, Jewish convert to Christianity, neurologist and psychiatrist, was born in Vienna, Austria (d. 28 May 1937).

1878 Pope Pius IX died (b. 13 May 1792).

1883 Martin Gustav Carl Lochner, pastor, educator and organist, was born in Springfield, Illinois (d. 6 February 1945).

1886 Lorenz F. R. Blankenbuehler, professor at Concordia College (Portland, Oregon) and Concordia College (Saint Paul, Minnesota), a member of the Intersynodical Committee on Hymnology and Liturgics and editor of The Lutheran Witness, was born in Webster City, Iowa (d. 21 February 1964).

1898 Carl Wilhelm Grönning, missionary to India, died (b. 22 November 1813, Fredericia, Denmark).

1906 Milton Valentine, Lutheran theologian and president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, died (b. 1 January 1825 near Uniontown, Carroll Co., Maryland).

1909 Hélder Câmara, Roman catholic archbishop and a major precursor to Latin American liberation theology, was born (d. 27 August 1999).

1915 Teoctist, patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, was born (d. 30 July 2007).

1920 Johannes Schaller, president of Wisconsin Synod colleges, died in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin (b. 10 December 1859).

1938 After years of being closely watched by Nazi secret police, Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was put on trial. He was subsequently confined in a concentration camp, but he survived and went on to hold a leadership role in the World Council of Churches from 1948 to 1968.

1942 Hans Baagöe Thorgrimson, who helped found the Icelandic Lutheran Synod in North America, died (b. 21 August 1853, Eyrarbakki, Iceland).

1955 The first synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of England was held.