Napoleon, in response to his excommunication, has pope Pius VII arrested and kept in captivity in northern Italy and then France

The Jesuit Order is restored by Pius VII on his return to Rome

The rulers of Russia, Prussia and Austria form a Holy Alliance to preserve their concept of a Christian Europe

Daniel O'Connell organizes Catholic Associations throughout Ireland, funded by the members' penny subscriptions

The Emancipation Act, enabling Daniel O'Connell to take his seat at Westminster, at last removes the restrictions on Catholics in UK public life

Evangelical preacher Charles Grandison Finney leads a new wave of revivalism in the northeastern states

In his Divinity School Address, delivered at Harvard, Ralph Waldo Emerson criticizes formal religion and gives priority to personal spiritual experience

The Young Men's Christian Association is founded in London by British drapery assistant George Williams

The first American branch of the Young Men's Christian Association is established in Boston

France demands that Turkey should end Russia's exclusive control of the Christian Holy Places in the Ottoman empire

Russia insists that her exclusive rights over the Holy Places are enshrined in the treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji

Antoinette Brown becomes the first female to be ordained a minister in the USA, in the First Congregational Church in South Butler, NY

Pope Pius IX issues a papal bull declaring that the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is to be an article of faith for Catholics

The Christian Socialism of F.D. Maurice and others is mocked by its opponents as 'muscular Christianity'

David Livingstone urges upon a Cambridge audience the high ideal of taking 'commerce and Christianity' into Africa

Pope Pius IX includes socialism, civil marriage and secular education among eighty modern errors listed in his Syllabus

British prime minister William Gladstone introduces a bill to disestablish the Anglican church in Ireland

Pope Pius IX, rapidly losing temporal authority, declares a new dogma – that the pope, when speaking from the throne, is infallible on matters of faith or morals

The Turkish sultan finally allows the Christians of Bulgaria to have their own Orthodox patriarch

US shoe salesman and YMCA member Dwight L. Moody launches into a new career as a revivalist preacher

Giuseppe Sarto is elected pope and takes the name Pius X

Gideons International place their first bible in a hotel bedroom, in Montana, USA

Albert Schweitzer and his wife become missionaries at Lambaréné in west Africa

The Assemblies of God is established as the largest affiliation of Pentecostal churches

Giacomo della Chiesa is elected pope and takes the name Benedict XV