Paget Wilkes

1871-1934. Missionary to Japan.* Son of an Anglican clergyman, he was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, was deeply influenced by the activities of the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, and left to serve in Japan under the Church Missionary Society in a group led by the Rev. Barclay Buxton in 1897. Here Wilkes felt unduly restricted by orthodox Anglicanism and founded the interdenominational Japan Evangelistic Band, pledged to aggressive evangelism and the distinctive holiness doctrines associated with the Keswick Convention* movement. In 1903 the headquarters of the work was centered at Kobe, under the name of the “One by One Band.” The whole of Wilkes's active life was spent in Japan, but his name became widely known through his books, of which the best known were The Dynamic of Service (1920), The Dynamic of Faith (1921), and The Dynamic of Redemption (1923). Though he seldom visited England, when he did come to Oxford or Cambridge he strongly urged students to offer for missionary service.