The Loochoo Naval Mission (1843–1861) was a

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

mission society dedicated in the Christian outreach to outlying

Ryukyu Islands The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Geography of Taiwan, Taiwan: the Ryukyu Islands are divided into the Satsunan Islands (Ōsumi Islands, Ōsumi, Tokara Islands, Tokara and A ...

. At the time, the islands were a sovereign nation but are now part of Japan. The work of the mission was significant both in the history of the

Ryukyu Kingdom The Ryukyu Kingdom was a kingdom in the Ryukyu Islands from 1429 to 1879. It was ruled as a Tributary system of China, tributary state of Ming dynasty, imperial Ming China by the King of Ryukyu, Ryukyuan monarchy, who unified Okinawa Island t ...

and as the first recorded

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

and Protestant mission activity in the Japanese archipelago.

History

Begun in February 1842, by a small group of British Royal Navy officers led by Lieutenant Herbert Clifford and Commander Henry Downes, the fund was operationally independent from established

mission societies such as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Church Mission Society. Lieutenant Clifford had been a member of Captain Basil Hall's 1816 Royal Navy expedition to the Ryukyu Islands. The mission's first lay mission leader, medical doctor Bernard Jean Bettelheim, landed in the Ryukyu Islands in on April 30, 1846. accompanied by his wife, his two young children, a tutor named Sarah Speight James, and a

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

translator. Bettelheim's arrival was not a welcome development for the Ryukyuan authorities or much of the local population; when offered temporary shelter, he promptly took up permanent residence in the Gokoku-ji temple and refused to leave for the next seven years. Bettelheim did provide medical care to local residents and made considerable progress in learning the local language, but was not reported to have made any Christian converts in the years he lived on the island. Bettelheim was eventually succeeded in 1854 by Rev. George Harman Moreton. The work of the Loochoo mission effectively came to a close in 1861 when the balance of funds were given to the Church Mission Society with the aim of financing further Christian outreach in Japan.

References

{{reflist Anglican Church in Japan Foreign relations of the Ryukyu Kingdom Religious organizations established in 1843 History of Christianity in Japan Foreign relations of England