Because they Believed 1

He wrote and performed much music every week, including some of the greatest early masterpiece oratorios and cantatas and a vast rich output of church organ music. Such was his loving attention to Scriptural detail that when setting a passage of the Last Supper in one of his Passions, he uses exactly 11 choral 'entries' at the point where the Disciples ask 'Is it I [who am going to betray You]?'. Yet his sublime, moving and craftsmanly works remained unknown beyond his time and region until a revival over 150 years after his death. Who was he?

Back in the bad old early days of the Roman Empire (so the story goes), in an age where a runaway slave could be punished for the offence of 'stealing themself' from their rightful owner, such a Christian slave named Androcles fled from his master. While on the run he sheltered overnight in a cave, which he was alarmed to find he was sharing with a lion. The lion had a thorn in its paw, and, far from attacking him, approached Androcles hoping he could help pull out the thorn using his more delicate hands, then clean and dress the wound. Androcles did this and in due course they went their ways. He was later captured and sent to the Coliseum (Rome's major entertainment stadium) to be put to death as part of a public spectacle, as was also an accepted custom in those days. What happened next?

What shameful and sinful practice was William Wilberforce instrumental in abolishing in Britain, at around the same time as the French Revolution was taking place?

John Newton, author of that widely-loved hymn Amazing Grace, spent the prime years of his life as ...

The Samaritans (the international telephone and drop-in befriending organisation, offering anonymous help for people who feel alone in difficult life circumstances) was founded in London in 1952, and named after the 'Good Samaritan' in Jesus' famous parable, who crossed the ethnic divide to help a fellow human being in distress.
What was the name of the clergyman who founded the organisation?

Martin Luther King was a pastor within which branch of the church?

Which of the following contains a substantial UNTRUTH about the life of William T Stead?

Many of Britain's famous family firms of chocolatiers were founded by active members of which religious organisation?

Mother Teresa was a 20th-century Albanian Catholic nun who exercised her ministry to the street people of which city?

Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a practical priest and theologian who devoted himself to work against both the influence of secularism ('the lure of worldly goods', particularly in the relative prosperity boom between the World Wars) and the Nazi regime, of whose policies and horrors he was an unwavering critic. The Nazi system observed, caught up with him and put him to death by hanging at Flossenburg concentration camp ... just how long before Germany surrendered at the end of the War?