Friday, October 3, 2025

It is the 3^rd of October 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I'm your guest host, Sam Leanza Ortiz.

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Happy Friday, happy Mean Girls Day, and happy Life of a Showgirl release day to all who observe.

And, if you’re in the Episcopal Church, I also wish you a blessed feast day of John Raleigh Mott, whose mark on the liturgical calendar lands on this, the 3^rd of October.

John Raleigh Mott was perhaps one of the most well-traveled evangelists of the early twentieth century, traversing the globe multiple times in his work with a staggering number of missionary organizations, many of which he either founded or led.

This is all the more remarkable for a man born in New York in the spring of 1865, in a nation raw from the recently ended Civil War. By year’s end, his family, like so many others, went west and settled in Iowa, where Mott spent his formative years.

His upbringing has been described as “Puritan,” and he was immersed in the Methodist tradition, attending the Methodist-affiliated Upper Iowa University for one year before returning to New York and transferring to Cornell University. At Cornell, Mott reportedly experienced an “evangelical conversion” and began a long career in serving Christian organizations that started with his development of Cornell’s Christian Association.

After graduating in 1888, Mott served as the secretary of the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association, with which he would be associated in one role or another for the next four decades.

By 1891, he would marry Leila Ada White, with whom he would be married until her death in 1952. They would have two sons and two daughters over the course of their six-decade-long marriage.

By 1895, Mott had co-founded yet another organization, the World’s Student Christian Federation, which gathered together autonomous student Christian movements to serve locally and globally.

The turn of the century was a pivotal time for global missions, building on the “Great Century” of missions that came before, as the pursuit of new souls for God became more cooperative than ever.  

In 1910, Mott, by this point a Methodist layman, presided over the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, which is seen as a starting point in the ecumenical movement, which, by definition, brought together Christians and churches of different traditions “so that the whole world may believe.”

Mott had a lengthy stay across the pond, not returning until 1912. During his stay, his work caught the attention of a White Star Line official who offered Mott and his colleague free passage on the ill-fated Titanic. They humbly declined the offer, and upon learning of the disaster when they arrived in New York, they remarked that “The Good Lord must have more work for us to do.”  

And the Lord did indeed. Later that year, Mott traveled to Asia and hosted 18 conferences in multiple nations, from India all the way to Japan.

When war broke out in 1914, Mott directed his energies to supporting missionaries on the front, particularly among the Germans. When the United States entered the war in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson selected Mott to join the Russian Ambassador’s delegation to Russia, where Mott was able to bring the Russian Orthodox Church into the ecumenical mission field as it was being driven out of revolutionary Russia. 

As the world recovered from the Great War, Mott showed no signs of slowing down. In the decades to come, Mott dedicated himself to the International Missionary Council and the World’s Alliance of YMCAs.

By the time he became president of the YMCA’s World Alliance in 1926, Mott was in his 60s. In this role, he helped to organize youth exchanges, study groups, and international youth camps.

His long and varied career earned international renown in 1946 when he won the Nobel Peace Prize, an award he won jointly with Emily Green Balch, for his contributions “to the creation of a peace-promoting religious brotherhood across national boundaries.”

Mott’s pursuit of Gospel cooperation was celebrated once more two years later when he was named an honorary chair at the founding of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam.

By that time, Mott had stepped down from his official posts, being well into his 80s. He spent his remaining years in Florida, where he passed in 1955 at the age of 89. In a callback to Monday’s show, he is buried in the nave vault of the Washington National Cathedral.

But his legacy lives on. His leadership abilities and passion for the spread of the Gospel fueled a decades-long career creating and leading organizations to shape twentieth-century missions’ efforts. The Episcopal Church highlights the Lord’s efforts through John Raleigh Mott on his feast day, added to the calendar in 2022, on this, the 3^rd of October. 

 

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary, from Psalm 37:

¹ Do not fret because of those who are evil
    or be envious of those who do wrong;
² for like the grass they will soon wither,
    like green plants they will soon die away.

³ Trust in the Lord and do good;
    dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
⁴ Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.

⁵ Commit your way to the Lord;
    trust in him and he will do this:
⁶ He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
    your vindication like the noonday sun.

⁷ Be still before the Lord
    and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
    when they carry out their wicked schemes.

⁸ Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
    do not fret—it leads only to evil.
⁹ For those who are evil will be destroyed,
    but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 3^rd of October 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

This show has been produced by Christopher Gillespie.

This show has been written and read by Sam Leanza Ortiz, who, by the time you’re listening to this, will have probably already streamed Taylor Swift’s new album, filling in for Dan van Voorhis, who hasn’t listened to a new album since Amy Grant’s Heart in Motion.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.