The Barclay Press office is located in Newberg, Oregon, near the campus of George Fox University. Since 1959, Barclay Press has served the Friends Church through the publication of books, pamphlets, curriculum, and periodicals. For its first 42 years Barclay Press was owned and operated by Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends. In 2001 the curriculum publication ministry of Evangelical Friends International (operating as George Fox Press) merged with Barclay Press. The reorganized Barclay Press is governed by a board of directors with broad geographic representation from evangelical Friends.
Friends have always placed importance on publications. Early Friends were called “publishers of truth.” This concern for effective communication continues as Barclay Press seeks to deliver publications that stimulate positive change in the life of the reader.
However, the ministry of Barclay Press is not exclusively for the Friends Church. Robert Barclay (for whom the business is named) addressed his Apology “to the Clergy, of every kind into whose hands these theses may come, . . . whether Episcopal, Presbyterian, or otherwise.” The targeted attention Barclay Press gives to the great commission, spirituality, and social responsibility is a Christian message not exclusive to Friends.
Robert Barclay, after whom Barclay Press was named, was one of the few “Quaker aristocrats” of the first half-century of the Friends movement. He was born to a wealthy Scottish family in 1648, brought up as a strict Calvinist, and educated at a Roman Catholic college in Paris where he became proficient both in Latin and French. Robert Barclay became a convinced Friend at eighteen years of age after visiting his father in prison and coming under the influence of a fellow prisoner, John Swinton, who was a Quaker.
With the benefit of family wealth, Robert spent a good deal of time in scholarship at the family estate in Ury. In 1676, at the age of 27, he published in Latin the work for which he is most famous, An Apology for the True Christianity Divinity, being an Explanation and Vindication of the Principles and Doctrines of the People Called Quakers. Barclay's Apology, as it's known today, is still the best and most thorough defense of Friends principles that has ever been written.
In addition to his scholarly work, Barclay made an extensive evangelistic trip to Europe with George Fox, William Penn and George Keith and served for a time, in absentia, as governor of the colony in East Jersey. He and his wife are ancestors of the Barclays of the famous banking firm and the Gurneys of Earlham.