CHAPTER 19: Nineteenth Century

Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Smith, Felix Mendelssohn, Andrew Jackson, William Miller, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Livingstone, Charles Dickens, Alexander von Humboldt, Brigham Young, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Queen Victoria, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, James Hudson Taylor, Soren Kierkegaard, Gregor Mendel, Charles Darwin, Julia Ward Howe, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, Otto von Bismarck, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry Ward Beecher, George Custer, Dwight Moody, Andrew Carnegie, Edgar Cayce, John Muir, Thomas Huxley, Grigori Rasputin, and Robert Ingersoll are introduced.
Apparitions of the Virgin Mary begin to be more common.
The United States finishes removing Indigenous people from almost all their land.
The sciences of paleontology, archeology, geology, and psychology make giant leaps forward, enabling a better understanding of the ancient world.
In the US and England, the quality of life improves with public education and many charitable organizations being established.
The Mormon, German Pietist, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Scientist Christian sects appear.
Waves of Catholic immigrants enter the US, leading to clashes with Protestantism.
The Industrial Revolution is in full gear, causing a demographic revolution with rural people moving to cities.
The concept of an End-times rapture originates in Scotland and becomes popular in the US.
Hawaii is converted to Christianity, then converted into a US territory.
Great Britain frees all slaves in its empire, and many are returned to Africa.
Christmas, for the first time, becomes a legal holiday in the US.
The Behistun cuneiform inscriptions are translated, providing access to pre-Hebrew Mesopotamian writings.
The Gospel of Q is deduced from similarities in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
US women begin to campaign for the right to vote.
The US goes to war with Mexico and acquires enormous regions of land.
US churches split over the issue of slavery, both sides quoting the Bible to defend their positions.
The US stops importing slaves, but Southern states refuse to emancipate their slaves, leading to the US Civil War.
A pope defines the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Historical criticism based on linguistic studies, a better understanding of ancient history, and the discovery of long-lost texts lead to much broader and deeper Bible studies.
Following the US Civil War, the racist Ku Klux Klan is born and gains power.
The First Vatican Council addresses the threats of rationalism and liberalism.
A united Italy ends the Papal States and relegates the pope to the Vatican hill.
Scientific findings continue to confirm Darwin’s concept of evolution and the vast age of the universe.
The Reconstruction Era ends in the South and the US army is no longer available to protect the rights of former African American slaves.
National parks are established to preserve sections of the United States from ruination by human development.
With no end to European antisemitism on the horizon, Jews reinvent the Hebrew language for use in Palestine where the Jews begin to see their future.

CHAPTER 20: Twentieth Century

Theodore Roosevelt, George MacDonald, Albert Einstein, Albert Schwitzer, Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, Henry Ford, Irving Berlin, Calvin Coolidge, Edwin Hubble, Adolph Hitler, John Scopes, Benito Mussolini, Chiang Kai-shek, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Walter Bauer, Karl Barth, Martin Niemoller, Oskar Schindler, George Orwell, Francisco Franco, Charles Coughlin, C. S. Lewis, Corrie ten Boom, Joseph Stalin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Harry Truman, Alan Turning, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Schaeffer, Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King Jr., Madalyn Murray, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jack Chick, Pat Robertson, Adolph Eichmann, Lyndon Johnson, Phyllis Schlafly, Chuck Smith, John Lennon, Hal Lindsay, Chuck Girard, Keith Green, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice, Bill Gothard, Marjoe Gortner, Ralph D. Winter, Larry Norman, Gerald Ford, Anne Nicol Gaylor, Annie Laurie Gaylor, James Dobson, Jim Jones, Jerry Falwell, Bob Dylan, Ronald Reagan, Oscar Romero, Robert Schuller, Desmond Tutu, Saddam Hussein, Randall Terry, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts, Peter Popoff, Jimmy Swaggart, Lech Walesa, Josh Harris, Timothy McVeigh, Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins,
and Jim Wallace are introduced.
In response to scientific discoveries that conflict with scripture, fundamentalism becomes a movement for the literal interpretation of the Bible.
Pentecostal, Assemblies of God, Scientology, People’s Temple, Hillsong Church, Branch Davidians, and the Concerned Christian sects appear.
Antisemitism comes to its zenith in Russia, Germany, the US, and other countries.
Great Britain and France make plans to carve up and control the Middle East upon the ending of the First World War.
The Ottoman Empire comes to an end when Turkey is defeated in the First World War.
Prohibition begins with one constitutional amendment and ends with another.
The Scopes Trial gains national attention and decides the legality of teaching evolution in public schools.
American women finally achieve the right to vote.
Christians in Germany split over who supports the Nazis and who opposes them.
The Nazis carry out an extermination program against the Jews and others they feel are inferior to them.
Many more ancient Christian writings are discovered, shedding new light on old beliefs.
Most former colonies of European nations win their independence.
Jews migrate to Palestine and form the nation of Israel by overpowering the local Muslim population.
Black Americans gain civil rights by legislation, but white racists refuse to accept equality with them.
Various groups of Middle Eastern Muslims become more radical and violent to achieve their goals.
Due to the rise in Communism, the US enters a period of paranoia and a return to God.
The missionary establishment targets all non-Christian people groups in the world and have great success in Africa.
Women’s liberation, the legalization of abortion, the availability of contraceptive drugs, and any form of birth control become contentious issues between Christians.
Young Earth creationism becomes affixed to Christian fundamentalism.
The Second Vatican Council is called to bring the Catholic Church more in touch with the modern world.
Waves of new charitable organizations are created.
Warnings begin to be raised about threats to the Earth’s atmosphere due to gas emissions caused by human-built engines burning coal, oil, and natural gas.
The US Supreme Court makes rulings to enforce the separation of Church and State.
The US becomes more welcoming to foreign immigrants.
With the anti-Vietnam War sentiments among young Americans, a Jesus movement begins, and popular music becomes more focused on Jesus. Rock music also becomes included in many US church services.
Inter-racial marriages become legalized throughout the US.
The US passes its first environmental protection laws.
US states begin to enact living wills, limit the artificial extension of life, and provide more compassionate care for the terminally ill.
Western countries begin to ban corporal punishment of children.
The Taliban takes control of Afghanistan and allow terrorist groups such as al-Qaida to train there.
With the ending of the Soviet Union, Christianity revives in the countries formerly under Soviet control.
Ireland becomes embroiled in a thirty-year-long socio-religious conflict.
When Yugoslavia begins to break apart, wars ensue, often fueled by old religious resentments.
Evangelicals in the US unite into a powerful voting block that many of them hope will lead to a theocracy in what they feel is a “Christian Nation”.
Widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy is reported in the US and other countries.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Twenty-first Century

Muslim extremists attack New York City and Washington, DC, and the US goes into lengthy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This coincides with a period of Islamophobia.
George W. Bush, John Eldredge, Gene Robinson, Dan Brown, Sam Harris, Carlton Pearson, Ted Haggard, Kent Hovind, Al Gore, Ken Ham, Frank Schaeffer, Tony Alamo, Terry Jones, Rob Bell, Bart Campolo, Tony Campolo, Mark Driscoll, and Donald Trump, are introduced.
A trial in Pennsylvania addresses the issue of whether Intelligent Design, a form of Creationism, can be taught in schools.
In its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US government fails to follow the humanitarian guidelines of the Geneva Convention.
As the Earth heats up and natural disasters intensify, the US is split between those who see climate warming as a looming catastrophe, and those that think the warnings are nothing but political propaganda.
The US Supreme Court invalidated the pre-clearance clause of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for states to amend and their voting laws and restrict voting.
With the failure to control who qualifies to own a gun and how deadly legally purchased guns can be, mass shootings become commonplace in the US.
With the election of a mixed-race president, American racists unite and become more militant.
When a deadly epidemic hits the country., it becomes a political issue and only some Americans take serious steps to preventive its spread.
A mob of thousands of Trump supporters, many of them motivated by a belief that he was chosen by God to be president, storm the US Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
The behavior of many people with deep religious beliefs cause many Americans to turn away from Christianity and religion in general.