James Cantine

Reverend James Cantine (March 3, 1861 – July 1, 1940) was an American missionary, scholar, and traveler. While studying at New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey, he co-founded the Arabian Mission with John Lansing and Samuel Marinus Zwemer. The mission exists today as the American Mission Hospital of Bahrain. to James and Charlotte Hasbrouck Cantine. He had a sister, Catherine.

Cantine graduated with a Civil Engineering Degree from Union College in 1883.

He studied at New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he met Dr. Lansing and, with Samuel Zwemer, was inspired to perform missionary work in Arabia. He was ordained on October 1, 1889 by his classis in the Fair Street Reformed Church, Kingston, New York. He received his Doctor of Divinity (D.D.) in 1903 from Union College. at the Cantine homestead in Stone Ridge. Zwemer would join him after he completed his last year at the seminary. He studied Islam and the Arabic language in Beirut and Syria, where he met and was influenced by Henry Harris Jessup, an American Presbyterian missionary and the main editor of the Protestant translation of the Arabic Bible. Both Cantine and Zwemer visited a number of cities in the Arabia region to determine the best place for them to establish a mission.

Basrah and other initial outposts

Cantine established a mission at Basrah, and Zwemer joined him Basrah was chosen because of its location along the eastern coast that enabled easy access to the whole of Northern Arabia. Located on the Persian Gulf, it was the first mission on Arabia's eastern coast, and it was the first mission for the Reform Church in Arabia. Cantine was primarily interested in spreading Christianity, and so he created relationships with other Christian missions in the area, but he also wanted their Arabian Mission to survive and at times bowed to political pressures to do so. Zwemer was a gifted linguist, writer, and orator and became the voice of the Arabian Mission. "He had an irrepressible and aggressive personality, earnest where Cantine was tender, driving where his colleague was contemplative."

Zwemer settled in 1895

Other areas

In 1898, Cantine urgently left Basrah for Muscat because Samuel Zwemer and another colleague fell sick. Later, Muscat came to be known as "Cantine's station". In 1901, Cantine helped build a two-story building, the Mason Memorial Hospital after extensive negotiations with the ruler of Bahrain.

Elizabeth DePree, a nurse from Grand Rapids, Michigan, came to Arabia and was the first single woman to work as a missionary in Arabia. She was recruited by the mission and first studied and worked in Bahrain before coming to the mission in Oman. Cantine married DePree in 1904, and they continued their work together.

He returned to the United States, and with Zwemer, spoke about the Arabian Mission at the West End Collegiate Church on November 1, 1908, and two weeks later at the Lenox Avenue Collegiate Reformed Church, both in New York City.

Cantine and his wife opened a women's clinic in Muscat, which was staffed by Dr. Sarah Hosman.

Elizabeth's health declined and they returned to the United States in April 1926. She died in Stone Ridge on August 30, 1927. which he spoke about in the United States. Cantine was honored for his 50 years of missionary work on the October 27, 1938 by the Reformed Church at Fair Street, where he was first ordained. He was buried with his wife at the Fairview Cemetery in Stone Ridge, New York about July 5, 1940.