Barclay Fowell Buxton, Japanese Christians, and the Japan Evangelistic Band

Abstract

Barclay Fowell Buxton, a missionary in Japan from 1890 to 1903, was appointed by the Church Missionary Society by special arrangement as an independent missionary. When Alphaeus Paget Wilkes joined him in Japan (1897), they organized (1903) the Japan Evangelistic Band (日本伝道隊, Nihon Dendōtai). Buxton attracted young Japanese people wanting to learn his spirituality, theology, and approach to evangelism. This network made important contributions to Japanese Christianities, as his friends and disciples adapted and promoted these understandings. Building on the work of Miyakoda, Kudō Hiroo, Mullins, Bebbington, Randall, and Bundy, this essay examines the religious orientation of Buxton in the British Radical Holiness movements, as well of his Japanese disciples and colleagues. It argues that the locus of the significant continuities between Buxton and his Japanese colleagues was in the Radical Holiness movements in the United Kingdom.