Dean's Blog

The History of the Christian Church in Japan

Church in JapanSunday October 14th marked the relaunch of Living Room Dialogues and  we were honoured to have as our speaker HE Shigeki Kumi, the Japanese Ambassador, who joined us with his wife Tomoko, who is well known to the Monday ladies homegroup. His subject was the History of the Christian Church in Japan. With some carefully selected slides he gave a masterly summary of the extraordinary history the Christian Church in his country, and in particular highlighted how the Christian community held together during the two hundred and fifty years totally cut off from the outside world when Christianity was an illegal religion. Without priests local communities appointed people to take responsibility for baptism and others to take responsibility for the catechism and so held the community together. We had more than forty people attending the evening – a record- which was something of a challenge for both eating arrangements and seating. At the Evensong, prior to the Living Room Dialogue, it was very encouraging to have over 60 attending which certainly lifted our worship.