From Pentecost to today, the world church and the Korean church side by side — 107 events.
World church Korean church
30 AD 30
The Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples in Jerusalem and three thousand are baptized.
49 AD 49
Decides not to require circumcision of Gentile believers — Acts 15.
64 AD 64
70 AD 70
The decisive parting of the ways between Judaism and the church.
110 AD 110
Sent to Rome under guard, he writes letters to seven churches along the way.
155 AD 155
180 AD 180
Against Gnosticism, he argues for the rule of faith and apostolic succession.
230 AD 230
The first systematic theology, and the high point of the Alexandrian school.
250 AD 250
An empire-wide sacrifice is decreed, leaving the church the problem of what to do with those who complied.
303 AD 303
The last great persecution — Scriptures burned, clergy imprisoned.
313 AD 313
Three centuries of anti-Christian policy are formally abolished.
325 AD 325
Against Arius, the council confesses that the Son is of one substance (homoousios) with the Father.
367 AD 367
Today's New Testament canon appears whole for the first time.
381 AD 381
Declares the deity of the Holy Spirit, completing the doctrine of the Trinity.
386 AD 386
397 AD 397
410 AD 410
The charge that "Christianity ruined Rome" — and the occasion for The City of God.
431 AD 431
451 AD 451
The four negatives — without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.
476 AD 476
The collapse of the ancient order, and the power vacuum the church filled.
529 AD 529
590 AD 590
The effective starting point of the medieval papacy.
800 AD 800
Christmas Day — the pope crowns the emperor, the ideal of the Holy Roman Empire.
1054 AD 1054
The filioque dispute ends in mutual excommunication.
1095 AD 1095
The appeal at the Council of Clermont — "God wills it."
1215 AD 1215
Establishes transubstantiation as official doctrine.
1265 AD 1265
The high point of scholastic theology and the framework of later Catholic thought.
1309 AD 1309
For seventy years the papal court stays in France.
1378 AD 1378
Two, then three popes excommunicate one another.
1382 AD 1382
The "Evangelical Doctor" — letting the people read Scripture in their own tongue.
1415 AD 1415
The Council of Constance — a fire that Luther would take up a century later.
1453 AD 1453
Eastern scholars and Greek manuscripts flow into the West.
1455 AD 1455
The printing press — the condition that let the Reformation spread by the thousands each month.
1516 AD 1516
"Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched."
1517 AD 1517
Wittenberg — a proposed academic debate on indulgences shakes all of Europe.
1519 AD 1519
Luther denies conciliar infallibility, while Zwingli begins preaching straight through Matthew.
1521 AD 1521
"My conscience is captive to the Word of God."
1522 AD 1522
Eleven weeks, at the Wartburg.
1525 AD 1525
The year the Reformation splits three ways.
1529 AD 1529
"This is my body" — Luther and Zwingli finally part ways.
1530 AD 1530
Melanchthon's public confession for the Lutherans.
1534 AD 1534
The Church of England breaks from Rome.
1536 AD 1536
Six chapters, written by a twenty-seven-year-old exile scholar.
1540 AD 1540
Loyola — the engine of Catholic reform and world mission.
1545 AD 1545
Over eighteen years, Rome answers the Reformation.
1549 AD 1549
Worship in English — becomes the shape of England's faith.
1555 AD 1555
"Whose realm, his religion" — a provisional coexistence.
1559 AD 1559
The Geneva Academy is founded; the Scottish Reformation begins.
1563 AD 1563
"What is your only comfort in life and in death?"
1572 AD 1572
Thousands of Huguenots are killed.
1598 AD 1598
Limited toleration is granted to French Protestants.
1618 AD 1618
Five points in answer to Arminianism.
1646 AD 1646
"What is the chief end of man?"
1648 AD 1648
The end of the Thirty Years' War — the confessional state system is established.
1675 AD 1675
The manifesto of Pietism — a thirst left by orthodoxy.
1727 AD 1727
The Moravian Brethren — a prayer meeting that did not stop for a hundred years.
1735 AD 1735
The beginning of the First Great Awakening, and its theological analysis.
1738 AD 1738
"My heart was strangely warmed."
1784 AD 1784
Koreans form a community of faith themselves, before any missionary arrives.
1792 AD 1792
"Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God."
1801 AD 1801
1807 AD 1807
1832 AD 1832
1859 AD 1859
Becomes the backdrop to the liberal theology and fundamentalist debates.
1865 AD 1865
A model, and a point of controversy, for inland mission and cultural adaptation.
1866 AD 1866
He hands over a Bible on the banks of the Daedong River, and dies.
1882 AD 1882
The first Korean-script Scripture, translated at Yingkou in Manchuria.
1884 AD 1884
A church Koreans built before any missionary did.
1885 AD 1885
Easter morning, at Jemulpo.
1887 AD 1887
The beginning of organized churches.
1890 AD 1890
Self-support, self-propagation, self-government — the framework for the Korean church's growth.
1903 AD 1903
Hardie's public confession of his own sin lights the spark.
1906 AD 1906
The beginning of the Pentecostal movement — Los Angeles.
1907 AD 1907
The spiritual archetype of the Korean church, and its first step toward self-government.
1910 AD 1910
The starting point of the ecumenical movement.
1911 AD 1911
The first organized crackdown targeting Christian leaders.
1912 AD 1912
From mission board to Korean church.
1919 AD 1919
"A bomb dropped on the playground of the liberal theologians."
1919 AD 1919
Sixteen of the thirty-three national representatives were Christians.
1934 AD 1934
"Jesus Christ is the one Word of God we have to hear."
1938 AD 1938
The heaviest decision in Korean church history.
1945 AD 1945
Flossenbürg — three weeks before the war's end.
1945 AD 1945
Conflict begins over reconstruction and the reckoning with collaboration.
1948 AD 1948
Amsterdam — the institutionalizing of the ecumenical movement.
1950 AD 1950
Churches flee south, the North Korean church is destroyed, and Busan becomes a refuge.
1952 AD 1952
The question of dealing with shrine worship becomes the first division.
1953 AD 1953
A division over the view of Scripture and theological education.
1959 AD 1959
The Presbyterian church divides again over WCC membership.
1962 AD 1962
Catholicism looks again at the modern world and at Protestantism.
1973 AD 1973
Yeouido — the era of mass rallies and growth.
1974 AD 1974
"Evangelism and social responsibility go together" — Stott.
1988 AD 1988
From a receiving church to a sending one.
1989 AD 1989
"The whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world" — reaffirming holistic mission.
1989 AD 1989
The Berlin Wall falls and the underground church comes into the open.
1992 AD 1992
A failed rapture prediction exposes the social cost of misusing eschatology.
1994 AD 1994
What happened in a majority-Christian country — reopening the question of conversion and discipleship.
1995 AD 1995
Growth crests after an increase of roughly 870,000, then turns downward.
2002 AD 2002
Jenkins's The Next Christendom — most believers now live in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
2005 AD 2005
For the first time in a decade, the count of believers falls.
2007 AD 2007
As Korea's sending scale reaches second in the world, short-term mission methods come under review.
2013 AD 2013
2013 AD 2013
Major Presbyterian denominations adopt assembly rules restricting hereditary succession.
2013 AD 2013
The Tenth Assembly meets in Korea, and the controversy for and against it surfaces together.
2015 AD 2015
The unaffiliated exceed half the population for the first time; the Protestant count rose, but the change in survey method is disputed.
2017 AD 2017
Alongside commemoration, the question of the Korean church's own reform is raised.
2020 AD 2020
Churches worldwide stop meeting in person at once and move online.
2020 AD 2020
As in-person worship stops, the meaning of church attendance and belonging is questioned again.