Channing Moore Williams

Channing Moore Williams
Channing Moore Williams
Missionary
Born	(1829-07-18)July 18, 1829 Richmond, Virginia
Died	December 2, 1910(1910-12-02) (aged 81) Richmond, Virginia
Venerated in	Anglicanism
Feast	December 2

Channing Moore Williams (17 July 1829 – 2 December 1910) was an Episcopal Church missionary, later bishop, in China and Japan.

Williams was a leading figure in the establishment of the Anglican Church in Japan. His commemoration in the Anglican liturgical calendar is 2 December.

Channing Williams was born in Richmond, Virginia, the fifth child of lawyer and delegate John Green Williams and his wife Mary Anne Crignan. His father served on the vestry of Monumental Church and led its Sunday school. Channing's first and middle names reflected Virginia's second bishop, Richard Channing Moore, who also served as Monumental Church's rector due to the Episcopal Church's financial straits in Virginia after the Revolutionary War and disestablishmnet. John Williams died when Channing was three years old, so the devout Mary Williams raised her four sons and two daughters rather than marry again.

When Channing turned 18, he went to Henderson, Kentucky, to work in his cousin Alex B. Barrett's general store, as well as save money for future studies. There, he was confirmed by Benjamin Bosworth Smith, Kentucky's first bishop, on 7 April 1849, and also studied Greek at night under the guidance of the rector of St. Paul's Church. Then, like his eldest sibling John (1823-1870, who became a long-serving rector at St. Peter's Church in Rome, Georgia), Channing attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He graduated with a master of arts degree in 1852, then attended the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia.

At VTS, Williams read The Spirit of Missions and other journals. Reports of VTS graduates who wanted to or served as overseas missionaries, including Augustus Lyde, Henry Lockwood and Francis Hanson, inspired him. Williams also heard about VTS graduate Bishop William Boone, who a decade earlier had returned to the United States after his wife's death and finally persuaded the Foreign Mission Board to sponsor his work in China. In 1844, the General Convention elected Boone Bishop for China (after the Opium War and 1842 treaty opened Shanghai to foreign missionaries) and he and three recent VTS graduates sailed to China (arriving in June 1845). In 1851 Rt. Rev. Boone accepted another two recent graduates.