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1517

Christian History Almanac

A short daily podcast that takes one thing that happened on today’s date — a council, a hymn, a death, a squabble — and tells it in about ten minutes, usually with a poem at the end. Dan van Voorhis presents; the archive runs to well over a thousand episodes.

ProvisionalChurch historyLutheran

Why this is listed

Church history usually arrives as a nine-hundred-page textbook nobody finishes. Ten minutes a day builds the same furniture over a couple of years, and the presenter is a trained historian, so the anecdotes are checked rather than repeated.

How to start

  1. Open 1517.org (opens an external site) and read what 1517 says about itself before you read anything else.
  2. Confirm the cost and level fit: free, introductory, over ongoing.
  3. Note the tradition — Lutheran. It will shape what you are taught, and that is worth knowing going in.
  4. Put the first session in your calendar now. The gap between reading about study and doing it is a calendar entry.

Close to this

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    Luther (2003)

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    A feature-length biographical drama with Joseph Fiennes as Martin Luther, from his early crisis of conscience as a monk through the Ninety-five Theses, Worms and the Peasants' War. It was partly funded by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and released in US cinemas in 2003.

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    Ryan Reeves church history lectures

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    Full lecture courses on YouTube from a historical theologian who taught at Gordon-Conwell: Ancient and Medieval Church, Reformation and Modern Church, Luther and Calvin, and Tolkien and Lewis. Each lecture runs about half an hour and is written for a general audience.

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    Last verified October 24, 2026