Chronology of Modern Christianity

Christian History Timeline, 1600 - 2000

Related Pages • Christianity Timelines • Chronology Index

Below is chronology of events and people who during the history of Christianity during and after the Reformation, from 1600 until 2000. There are six different types of color-coded dates:

• Important events within the Roman Catholic Church.
• Important events for Protestant churches and reformers.
• Historical events important for Christianity generally.
• Important events in the history of other religions.
• Events in the creation and development of the Bible
• Other dates in history for comparison & context.

Words in red were linked to our glossary - so clicking on them will take you to much more information than can be included in brief chronology like this.

Christianity: during and after the Reformation
1600	Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for supporting Copernican astronomy.
1604	King James (1566 - 1625) of England commissioned the "King James" translation of the Bible. He also banned the Jesuits.
1607	English settlers established the Jamestown colony in Virginia.
1608	John Smyth (c. 1570 - 1612) established the Baptist Church.
1609	Christianized Muslims, called Moriscos, were expelled from Spain, depriving Spain of much of its learned class.
1610	Tea was introduced to Europe.
1612	Christian missionaries were evicted from Japan.
1614	Dutch founded the colony of New Amsterdam in the area of modern-day New York City.
1616	The Church prohibited Galileo from further scientific work.
1618	Protestant uprising in Bohemia initiated the Thirty Years' War.
February 9, 1619	Humanist Lucilio Vanini was tortured and burnt at the stake for atheism.
1620	English Puritans, known as Pilgrims, established a colony in America at Plymouth Rock to escape religious pluralism in England.
1621	Church banned Johann Kepler's The Epitome of the Copernican Astronomer.
1622 - 1625	Execution of Christian missionaries to Japan reached its high point.
1624	Cardinal Richelieu became chief minister in France. He continued until 1642 and was instrumental in making France a great international power.
June 21, 1633	Galileo was forced by the Inquisition to renounce theories of Copernicus. Descartes stopped publishing in France in response to the Church's attacks on Galileo.
1637	Japanese outlawed Christianity, foreign books, and contact with Europeans.
1638	Christian rebellion was suppressed in Shimabara.
1641	Catholics massacred Protestants in Ulster.
1642	City of Montreal was founded in Canada by French settlers.
1642 - 1649	Puritans and Presbyterians on one side fought with Anglicans and Catholics on the other side in the English Civil War.
1646	Presbyterianism was established as the national religion in England by the Long Parliament. This lasted through English Civil War and, afterward, during interregnum.
1647	George Fox founded the Society of Friends (Quakers), repudiating the use of violence and oathswearing.
1648	Thirty Years' War ended with the Peace of Westphalia, with Germany divided between Catholic and Protestant states.
1650	Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland used the Bible to calculated life emerged on Sunday, October 23, -4004.
1652	City of Capetown was founded in South Africa by Dutch settlers.
1653 - 1658	Oliver Cromwell became "Lord Protector" of England.
1660	Stuart dynasty regained the throne of England and restored Episcopacy as national religion.
1660	The Amsterdam Synagogue officially petitioned the municipal authorities to denounce Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza as a "menace to all piety and morals."
1662	Book of Common Prayer was declared the only legal form of worship in England by the Act of Uniformity.
1664	British forces captured New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it New York City.
1664	First women were condemned as witches in the New World.
1670	German pastor Philipp Jacob Spener led the German Pietism movement, which emphasizes pious living and personal experiences of faith.
1673	Roman Catholics and nonconformists in England were deprived of public office by the Test Act.
1685	French king Louis XIV renounced the Edict of Nantes and denied religious freedom to French Protestants, resulting in a mass exodus of Huguenots from France.
1689	Dissenters from the Church of England were granted rights by the Act of Toleration. Catholics were excluded from the English throne by the English Bill of Rights.
1692	Salem witch panic and trials occurred. Read a more detailed timeline of events.
1706	Irish churchman Francis Makemie (c. 1658 - 1708) established the Presbyterian church in America.
1716	Christian religious teaching was prohibited in China.
1719	Jesuits were expelled from Russia.
1720 -1760	American colonies experienced the Great Awakening, involving widespread conversions to charismatic Protestant churches emphasizing personal piety and individual interpretations of the Bible.
1723	England allowed Jews to take oaths without the words, "On the true faith of a Christian."
1731	Protestants were expelled from Salzburg.
1738	Methodist Church was founded by Rev. John Wesley.
1743	Pogroms began in Russia.
1752	Benjamin Franklin invents the lightning rod.
1767	Jesuits were expelled from Spain, Parma, and the Two Sicilies.
1777	Christianity was introduced into Korea.
1784	John Wesley wrote the Deed of Declaration, the basic work of Methodism.
1789	Protestant Episcopal Church was founded in America as an independent branch of Anglicism.
1790	Mutiny on the Bounty - first British mutinying settlers colonized Pitcairn island.
1792	Denmark became the first European country to ban slave trade.
1796	First smallpox vaccination was used by Edward Jenner.
1799	Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834) published Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers, initiating the Romantic movement which emphasized religious emotions over 18th century rationalism.
1801-1877	Brigham Young, Mormon leader, colonized Utah.
1805	Christian literature was forbidden in China.
1814	First modern Shinto group, the Kurozumi sect, was founded in Japan.
1820	First American missionaries reached Hawaii.
1825	French law made sacrilege a capital offense.
1827	Mormon Church was founded by Joseph Smith as a result of reported visions of the Angel Moroni.
1829	With the Catholic Emancipation Act in Britain, Roman Catholics were allowed to hold public office.
1832	Church of Christ (Disciples) was organized. It was primarily comprised of Presbyterians in distress over Protestant factionalism and decline of fervor.
1834	Spanish Inquisition was finally abolished.
1837-1901	Victoria became queen of England.
1848	Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles published Communist Manifesto, predicting the eventual collapse of capitalism.
1852-1922	Life of Charles Taze Russell, who founded the Jehovah's Witnesses movement in the 1870s.
1853	Commodore Perry arrived in Japan and forced an opening of the society.
1853 - 1856	David Livingstone crossed Africa.
1855	English nurse Florence Nightingale reformed nursing during the Crimean War.
1858	Reported apparition of Mary in Lourdes, France, considered "worthy of belief" by the Catholic Church.
1861	American Civil War began, and would last until 1865.
1867	Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown and the Meiji Restoration began in Japan.
1869-1870	First Vatican Council, 20th ecumenical, affirmed doctrine of papal infallibility (i.e. when a pope speaks ex cathedra on faith or morals he does so with the supreme apostolic authority, which no Catholic may question or reject).
1876	At the Battle of Little Big Horn, Sioux Indians led by Chief Sitting Bull killed General George Armstrong Custer and all his men.
1881-1894	Revised Version of the Bible, called for by Church of England, is created. It used the Septuagint (B) and (S) as well as the Massoretic text for the Old Testament and included the Apocrypha.More accurate than previous versions, its scholarship was never disputed.
1882	Mohammed Ahmed of Dongola, Sudan, claimed to be the Mahdi ("the guided one" - Islamic equivalent to the Messiah) and leads a bloody rebellion against British-influenced Egyptian rule.
1896	Billy Sunday, American Presbyterian evangelist, began preaching. His road shows attracted huge crowds and foreshadowed the future of evangelists and televangelists in modern America.
1901	American Standard Version of the Bible, a revision of the RV, was published. It included words/phrases preferred by Americans and follows Greek order of words.
1901	Pentecostal Church was formed in Topeka, Kansas in reaction to loss of evangelical fervor among Methodists and other denominations.
1910-1915	The Fundamentals, a 12-volume collection of essays by 64 British and American scholars and preachers, became the ideological inspiration and foundation of Fundamentalism.
1913-1924	James Moffat Bible: the first one-man translation of the Bible in almost 400 years.
1914	Panama Canal was opened for business.
1917	Reported apparition of Mary in Fatima, Portugal - "miracle of the sun" witnessed by between 70,000 and 100,000 people and considered "worthy of belief" by the Catholic Church.
1919	World's Christian Fundamentals Association was founded.
1925	Scopes Monkey Trial, in which John T. Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in a public school.
1946-1952	Revised Standard Version was written as a revision of the ASV "based on consonantal Hebrew text" for OT and the best available texts for the NT. It was done in response to changes in English usage.
1949	Discovery of Qumram ( Essene?) scrolls, aka Dead Sea Scrolls (see year 68).
1957	United Church of Christ was founded by the ecumenical union of Evangelical and Reformed Christians with Congregationalists and was comprised of both Calvinists and Lutherans.
1962-1965	Second Vatican Council, 21st ecumenical, announced by Pope John XXIII in 1959, produced 16 documents which became official after approval by the Pope, purpose to renew "ourselves and the flocks committed to us" (Pope John XXIII).
1966	RSV Catholic Edition, a joint effort between Catholics and the Church of England, was published, representing a big step towards a common Catholic/Protestant Bible.
1971	New American Standard Bible was written, updating the ASV using recent Hebrew and Greek textual discoveries.
1977	Ordination of the first female Episcopal priest.
1978	New International Version published. It used eclectic Greek text, Massoretic Hebrew text, and current English style.
1979-1982	New King James Bible, a complete revision of the 1611 KJV, updated archaisms while retaining style.
1984	Italy ended Roman Catholicism as a state religion.
October, 1994	Belgian homeopathic preacher Luc Jouret leads his cult of roughly 50 followers to their deaths in Canada and Switzerland.
2000	Pope John Paul II offered apology and asked for forgiveness for Catholicism's history of "violence in the service of truth."

Back to the Christian History Timeline Index

-->