Oliver Barclay

Barclay was born on 22 February 1919 in Kobe, Japan.[2] He was a member of the Barclays family;[3] his father was Joseph Gurney Barclay, a CMS missionary, and one of his great-great-grandfathers was Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, a politician, reformer and brewer.[2] His mother was his father's second wife, Gwendoline Watney, granddaughter of the brewer James Watney.

Barclay was educated at Durnford School, a preparatory school in Dorset, England, and at Gresham's School, then an all-boys private school in Norfolk, England. In 1938, he matriculated into Trinity College, Cambridge to study natural sciences. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1941. Then a pacifist, he remained at Cambridge to study for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in zoology rather than fight in the Second World War. His doctoral supervisor was James Gray, and he completed his PhD in 1944 with a thesis titled "The locomotory mechanisms of lower tetrapods".[1]

Barclay converted to Christianity through Frank Houghton, an Anglican missionary with the China Inland Mission. He later developed his conservative evangelical beliefs via the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU).[1]

Intending on an academic career, Barclay unsuccessfully applied to become a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge after his completed his doctorate in 1944.[1] In 1945, he was employed as an assistant secretary of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Evangelical Unions (IVF): this was intended as a two-year temporary position, but he would spend his whole career with the organisation.[1] Among his early actions was securing Tyndale House in Cambridge, which had once belonged to the Barclay family, as an independent centre for biblical research.[5] During this time, he also helped found the Research Scientists' Christian Fellowship which grew out of a 1944 conference.[1]

In 1953, Barclay was made the first IVF Universities Secretary,[6] with an aim to lessen the hold of liberal Christianity on university theology departments.[5] Controversy was raised when the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union invited Billy Graham, assisted by Barclay's university friend John Stott, to speak at the university in 1955: the opposition accused Graham of bringing fundamentalism into a place for the advancement of learning and modern scholarship.[2] In 1961, he was promoted to deputy general secretary of the IVF.[1]

In 1964, Barclay succeeded Douglas Johnson as General Secretary of the IVF.[6] He also served as chair of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) from 1971 to 1979.[2] Under his leadership, the IVF expanded its reach into polytechnics and further education colleges, and expanded its itinerant evangelists from fourteen in 1965 to forty by 1980.[1] To reflect this expansion, the IVF changed its name to the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) in 1975.[5] He retired as general secretary of the UCCF in 1980.[1] He remained active, however, serving as honorary vice-president of IFES from 1983 to 1991 and was co-founder of the Science and Christian Belief academic journal in 1989.[2][5]

On 25 June 1949, Barclay married Dorothy Margaret Somerville Knott (1914–1964), a consultant surgeon. Together they had one daughter and three sons: the youngest son, John M. G. Barclay, became a biblical scholar.[1] Dorothy died of cancer in 1964.[1][6] On 30 October 1965, Barclay married for a second time to Daisy Emma Hickey (born 1916), a teacher.[1]

Barclay died on 12 September 2013 at his home in Leicester, England; he was aged 94.[1]

• Barclay, Oliver R. (1974). Reasons for faith. London: Inter-Varsity Press. ISBN 978-0851103761.
• Barclay, Oliver R. (1977). Whatever happened to the Jesus Lane lot?. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press. ISBN 978-0851103969.
• Barclay, Oliver R., ed. (1984). Pacifism and War (When Christians Disagree). Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press. ISBN 978-0851107271.
• Barclay, Oliver R. (1985). The intellect and beyond. Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books. ISBN 978-0310332916.
• Barclay, Oliver R. (1997). Evangelicalism in Britain 1935-1995: a personal sketch. Leicester: Inter-Varsity. ISBN 978-0851111896.
• Barclay, Oliver R.; Horn, Robert M. (2002). From Cambridge to the world: 125 years of student witness. Leicester: Inter-Varsity. ISBN 978-0851114996.