Formation of the National Association of Evangelicals at Hotel Coronado in St. Louis, Mo. - April 7
1199 - England's King Richard I, the "Lionhearted," dies at age 41. Richard, as one of the three leaders of the Third Crusade, negotiated Christian access to Jerusalem.
1321 - Muslims near Bombay challenge Franciscan Thomas of Tolentino to say what he thinks of Muhammad. When he responds that “Muhammad is the son of perdition and has his place in hell with the devil his father...” they kill him and his companions, who will become known as the Four Martyrs of Tana. Jordanus of Severac survives to bury them and to conduct mission work in India for about ten years.
1541 - On his 35th birthday, Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, for Goa, India. The first Roman Catholic missionary there, he also traveled to Japan, Sri Lanka, and other countries in Asia. It is hard to say how many people Xavier, the Roman Catholic patron saint of all missions, converted; the figure goes as high as 1 million, but modern scholars peg the number around 30,000. Jesuits claim 700,000.
1546 - Death in Gotha, Thuringia, Germany, of Friedrich Myconius, an associate of Martin Luther who had brought the Reformation to Thuringia and labored throughout Germany and Switzerland.
1550 - John Hooper declines the bishopric of Gloucester because he does not believe it is right for him to don the required vestments. He will be placed under house arrest and finally actually imprisoned, after which he will relent and accept consecration. During the persecutions under Mary Tudor, he was burned to death as a heretic.
1628 - Arrival in what is now New York of Dominie Jonas Michaelius, the first Dutch Reform pastor in the New Nederlands.
1933 - “German Christians” apply the Nazis’ Aryan clause to the church, effectively barring Jews (and individuals of Jewish descent) from holding church offices.
1942 - Formation of the National Association of Evangelicals at Hotel Coronado in St. Louis Missouri. Rev. J. Elwin Wright delivers the opening address of a three-day conference. Evangelicals are there to find common ground to fight against evil forces, he says, and to seek ways to fight for Christ aggressively and unitedly.
2007 - Death in Nineveh, New York, of Johnny Hart, following a stroke. He had created the popular comic strip B.C. (featuring Stone Age characters) through which he sometimes expressed evangelical Christian beliefs after his conversion.
– Sources: Christian History Institute, christianitytoday.com