Channing Moore Williams, Bishop and Missionary

Today the Church commemorates Channing Moore Williams, bishop and missionary, who spent more than half a century serving the Church in East Asia and helped prepare an Anglican Church in Japan to grow in its own land.

Williams was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1829. His widowed mother raised him in modest circumstances. After studying at the College of William and Mary and Virginia Theological Seminary, he was ordained a deacon in 1855. He offered himself for missionary service and sailed to China. There he learned a new language, served a small Christian community, and was ordained priest in 1857.

Two years later, Williams went to Nagasaki in Japan. Christianity had long been forbidden there, and the government still restricted its public practice. The work began quietly. He ministered to foreigners, studied Japanese, met people who were willing to speak with him, and waited for the opportunity to teach openly. Years passed before he baptized his first Japanese convert.

In 1866 the Church chose him as missionary bishop for China and Japan. A bishop’s work required more than finding new places to preach. Williams now had to care for clergy, nurture small communities, and help provide the structures through which Christian life could continue. After the political changes of the late 1860s, he concentrated increasingly upon Japan. He later relinquished his Chinese jurisdiction so that he could give his attention to the Japanese Church.

He traveled among communities separated by considerable distances. He preached, taught, and translated portions of the Book of Common Prayer into Japanese. His translations helped Japanese Christians pray in their own language.

In 1874, Williams opened a small school in Tokyo. Its first students gathered for lessons in English and the Bible. The school would become Rikkyo University, also known as St. Paul’s. In a country where practical Western knowledge was eagerly sought, Williams joined this learning to Christian formation. A fire destroyed the school building in 1876, and the work had to be rebuilt.

The work required more than the labors of missionaries from abroad. On Palm Sunday in 1883, Williams ordained Nobori Kanai and Masakazu Tai as deacons. The ministry of the Church was taking root among the people of Japan themselves.

British and American Anglican missions had begun separately in Japan, bringing different customs and lines of authority. In 1887 Williams joined Bishop Edward Bickersteth, Japanese clergy, and lay representatives in a synod that formed the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, the Holy Catholic Church of Japan. The gathering brought these missions into one ecclesial body. Japanese Christians would no longer have to belong to competing foreign missions in order to belong to the Anglican Church. The new Church remained small, but it had begun to order its common life in its own name.

Williams’s years as bishop did not end his service. He resigned his jurisdiction in 1889 and remained in Japan. He lived chiefly in Kyoto, assisted those who succeeded him, and continued encouraging new Christian communities. When Bishop John McKim succeeded him in 1893, Williams continued his missionary work without seeking to reclaim his former authority.

Rikkyo University preserves the words with which Williams’s students recalled their bishop and teacher: “Teach the way, not the self.” His years of service had given the school a founder, but the teaching and the Christian communities continued through others.

After nearly fifty years in Japan, Williams returned to the United States in 1908. He died in Richmond on December 2, 1910. He had seen a mission of fragile beginnings become a Church gathering its own people around the Scriptures, the sacraments, and the ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons. He entrusted that work to the people who would carry it forward. We ask God for the same perseverance in our own callings, that we may give our talents to Christ’s service and trust him to uphold those whom he sends.