William Ridley (bishop)
| William Ridley | |
|---|---|
| Bishop of Caledonia | |
 |
|
| Church | Church of England |
| See | Caledonia |
| In office | 1879-1905 |
| Personal details | |
| Born | c. 1836 Devonshire, England |
| Died | 25 May 1911 England |
William Ridley (22 July 1836 – 25 May 1911) was an English missionary for the Church of England in Canada and served as Bishop of Caledonia.
Ridley was from Brixham Devonshire, England, and was the son of a stonemason. He was a carpenter before attending the Church Missionary Society's Islington Training School and being sent, in 1866, to missionize among Afghans in what was then the province of Peshawar in India. His rough time there, plagued by disease and low morale, lasted only three years. Next he served as priest of the Anglican church in Dresden from 1867-1872.
Returning to England, he became vicar of St Paul's Church in Huddersfield from 1874-1879. In 1879 Ridley was created Bishop of the newly created Diocese of Caledonia in northern British Columbia, and he and his wife Jane set out for Canada. His appointment involved ensuring that missions under the Church Missionary Society (CMS) adhered to Anglican doctrine. This put him in direct conflict with William Duncan, the charismatic lay missionary in charge of the Tsimshian mission at Metlakatla, a utopian Christian community which was drifting from Anglican orthodoxy in the direction of Duncan's own low-church evangelicalism.
In particular, Duncan refused to offer his parishioners holy communion on the grounds that it would whet their appetite for recently abandoned "cannibalistic" practices. Duncan also objected to Ridley's commitment to translating catechism into the Tsimshian language, which he eventually did, in collaboration Odille Morison, a Tsimshian. This became the so-called "Ridley orthography," the language's first practical spelling system. The Ridley-Duncan feud was fierce. At one point, Ridley's attempts to dislodge Duncan from Metlakatla led to a near-fistfight with Duncan's key convert, the Tsimshian chief Paul Legaic.
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