Biographical sketches
of memorable Christians of the pastBiographical sketches
of memorable Christians of the past
James E. Kiefer is a quiet soul whose day job is in a government research laboratory, but who enriches all of us by using his spare time to write down the stories of the people who, through the centuries, have made the Christian church be what it is today. For a number of years he has sent out to subscription lists his daily email messages commemorating memorable Christians of the past. To help differentiate these biographical essays from other electronic mail, the habit arose of prefixing the letters BIO to the subject of each biographical essay. Quickly, the growing assemblage of essays became known as "The BIOs" or "James Kiefer's BIOs".
Kiefer has resisted all requests to write a biography of himself; we know that he lives a quiet life in Bethesda, Maryland, and that he is willing to work hard to share his knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, church history. He has recommended an out-of-copyright online book as a good starting point for learning more about church history.
We have collected BIO postings from Mr. Kiefer, added to them a few that were contributed by others, formatted them into web pages, and placed them in our Anglican Resource Collection for your convenience. There is such a wide collection of names and phrases that the proper alphabetization of them is quite beyond a simple computer program, so for the moment we have them listed only in order by date.
These bios have proven so popular that two other web compendia of them also exist: by Don Westblade at Hillsdale College (Hillsdale, Michigan, USA), and by Darren Provine at Rowan University (Glassboro, New Jersey, USA).