Jones, Bob

(1883–1968)

   Missionary and Educator.

   Jones was born in Alabama and found his vocation early, holding his first evangelistic meeting at the age of fifteen. He was educated at Southern University in Greensboro, North Carolina, and became a Methodist preacher. In 1924 he determined to found a new university based on a fundamentalist understanding of the Bible. Today the Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, is highly successful, with a modern campus and a dedicated student body. In the past it has been associated with highly conservative politics, racial segregation and conservative evangelical theology. Jones himself pursued his career as an evangelist and it was estimated that during his lifetime he preached more than twelve thousand sermons.

   J.D. Hunter, American Evangelicalism (1983);

   G. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980).