For reasons that my psychiatrist, if I had one, would have to explain, I tend to be intrigued by the anniversaries of historical events.
Which is why I noticed recently that the American Bible Society was created May 8, 1816, which is exactly 202 years before the date on which this column about Bible reading was posted online.
The history of the American Bible Society, or ABS, reveals its Protestant roots and how, at times, that produced an anti-Catholic bias.
"When Irish and German Catholics began pouring into the country in the early 19th century," says John Fea, author of a book on ABS history, "the ABS solidified its position as a distinctly Protestant benevolent society. Relations with Catholics would improve in the 20th century, but in the years before the Civil War it embraced the largely anti-Catholic spirit of the age."
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