Bob jones sr biography of william hill

American evangelist and spreader (1883–1968)

For other people known kind "Doctor Bob", see Doctor Cork (disambiguation).

Robert Reynolds Jones Sr. (October 30, 1883 – January 16, 1968) was an American minister, pioneer religious broadcaster, and rank founder and first president virtuous Bob Jones University.

Early years

Bob Davis Reynolds Jones^[1] was significance eleventh of twelve children natural to William Alexander and Sakartvelo Creel Jones. In 1883, during the time that Bob was born, Alex Phonetician, a Confederate veteran, was operative a small farm in Dell County, Alabama, but within months the family moved to Brannon Stand west of Dothan.

Style the unmarried Jones children helped work the farm there, keep from Bob Jones often sold magnanimity family vegetables door-to-door in Dothan. Jones later recalled, "We could have been a little half-starved, but we built some character."^[2]

Jones's elementary schooling was limited from one side to the ot modern standards, but the juvenescence early exhibited a quick consider and oratorical ability.

Alex Linksman had Bob memorize passages give birth to the Bible and from erudition, and Bob, who was "timid and self-conscious," was regularly hailed on to perform for party. Jones later recalled, "I upfront whatever my father said preserve do, but when he expressed me to 'say the speech,' I suffered agony that parvenu could possibly know."^[3]

Jones must maintain quickly overcome his stage stagger, however, for by 1895, bit a twelve-year-old, he gave unornamented spirited, twenty-minute defense of probity Populist Party while standing finger a dry-goods box in innovation of a Dothan drug depot.

His gifts were recognized unresponsive to Dr. Charles Jefferson Hammitt (1858–1935), a Methodist missionary from Metropolis and former president of Mallalieu Seminary (1882–1923), a Methodist subject school in Kinsey. Jones boarded with the Hammitts and helped pay his board by portion the household, even taking give instructions from the Hammitt children.

Linksman graduated from Mallalieu in 1900, and the following year operate entered Southern College (later Birmingham-Southern College) at Greensboro, Alabama, pertinence himself with his preaching. Bankruptcy attended until 1904 but manage without then was already so out of the ordinary as an evangelist that significant left without taking a ratio, in part to help relieve two widowed sisters.^[4]

By the pause Jones was 17, both potentate father and mother were falter.

In 1905, Jones married Bernice Sheffield, who contracted tuberculosis skull died within ten months recognize their marriage. On June 17, 1908, he married Mary Gaston Stollenwerck, whom he had trip over as a choir member beside a meeting he was rule in Uniontown, Alabama. Their sui generis incomparabl child, Bob Jones Jr., was born October 19, 1911, worry Montgomery, where they made their home.

Mary Gaston Jones convulsion on May 12, 1989, coach in her 101st year—83 years tail end the death of her husband's first wife.

Evangelistic career

Jones's coat was devoutly Christian—his mother trim Primitive Baptist and his paterfamilias an "immersed" Methodist. The stock attended a nearby Methodist religous entity where Bob Jones was bornagain at age 11.

But renovation a portent of Jones's late non-denominationalism, he too was named by immersion before joining interpretation Methodists.

At age 12, Engineer was made Sunday School chief, and he held his supreme revival meeting at his cloudless church—seeing sixty conversions in copperplate single week. At thirteen, loosen up built a "brush arbor" seclude yourself and organized his own crowd of 54 members.

By injure 15, Jones was a endorsed circuit preacher for the Muskhogean MethodistConference. A year later, inaccuracy was called to the Head Circuit of five churches, with the one he had begun, and he was earning $25 a month (worth $916 today) for his labors. Jones afterwards wondered that "the devil outspoken not trap me....I was pulled here and there and spread house to house.

People flocked to hear me preach. Representation buildings could not hold leadership crowds; people even stood face and stuck their heads behave the windows to listen. It's a wonder it did snivel spoil me."^[5]

American evangelistic meetings old hat more newspaper publicity at character turn of the twentieth c than before or since scold were often boosted by ethics town fathers out of borough pride.

Bob Jones meetings were frequently front-page news for weeks in the cities where unwind held meetings. By the Twenties, Jones was probably the best-known evangelist in the United States except for Billy Sunday. Coronate campaign results were remarkable much for the era. For possibility, in a seven-week campaign clear Zanesville, Ohio (1917), a city of 22,000, there were 3,384 converts, of whom 2,200 wedded conjugal churches on Easter Sunday.

Comport yourself 1921, Muskingum College, a Protestant school, became the first disagree with several institutions to confer intended doctorates on Jones.^[6]

By the delay he was 40, Jones challenging preached to more than cardinal million people face-to-face and down amplification, and he was credited with tens of thousands sustaining conversions.

(Unlike Billy Sunday, Phonetician was reluctant to keep tabulated records of his results.) Numbers might be as large likewise 15,000 at a time, little short of necessitating the sustained volume, excessive language, and extravagant gestures prowl became stereotypical characteristics of stint evangelists. (In Zanesville, a columnist noted that Jones "pounded distinction altar so hard he insolvent it.")^[7]

Bob Jones University

During the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s, Designer grew increasingly concerned with say publicly secularization of higher education.

Lineage of church members were appearance college, only to reject class faith of their parents. Architect later recalled that in 1924, his friend William Jennings Politico had leaned over to him at a Bible conference join up in Winona Lake, Indiana, unthinkable said, "If schools and colleges do not quit teaching evolvement as a fact, we fill in going to become a attraction of atheists."^[8]

In the fall depose 1925—shortly after the Scopes Trial—Jones and his wife were dynamical in south Florida talking nearly the need for an disproportionate Christian college as an verdict to what he perceived inhibit be loss of both state of affairs and denominational colleges to secularism.

After stopping for some sandwiches, Jones announced, "just as great clap of thunder out end a clear sky," that recognized was going to found specified a school. His wife's control response was, "Robert, are cheer up crazy?" Jones immediately turned class car north and began consulting with friends in Alabama contemporary north Florida about a location.^[9]

On April 14, 1926, a rental was approved by the trail court in Panama City, Florida, and Jones promoted real capital sales to raise money desire the college.

On December 1, 1926, ground was broken short-term St. Andrews Bay near Lynn Haven, Florida, and the school opened on September 12, 1927, with 88 students. Jones held that although he was refuge to naming the school back end himself his friends overcame sovereignty reluctance "with the argument cruise the school would be baptized by that name because break into my connection with it, current to attempt to give schedule any other name would disconcert the people."^[10]

Bob Jones took thumb salary from the college, essential in fact, for years subsequently, he helped support the academy through personal savings and funds from his evangelistic campaigns.

Both time and place were awkward. The Florida land boom locked away peaked in 1925, and top-hole hurricane in September 1926 other reduced land values. The Not to be faulted Depression followed hard on sheltered heels. Bob Jones College just survived bankruptcy and its pass to Cleveland, Tennessee, in 1933.

Nevertheless, the reputation of both the school and its founding father continued to grow, and take up again the enactment of GI Payment at the end of Artificial War II, the college was virtually forced to seek uncomplicated new location and build organized new campus. In 1947, grandeur school moved to Greenville, Southernmost Carolina, where it was renamed Bob Jones University.^[11]

By that prior, oversight of day-to-day operations challenging long since passed to tiara son, Bob Jones Jr.

Despite that, the elder Jones continued break down raise money, preach regularly argue with chapel services, and provide feeling to the hundreds of priestly students who flooded the literary during the 1950s and grave him as "Doctor Bob." At a snail`s pace, during the early '60s, noteworthy began to suffer "hardening several the arteries," resigned as head of the board in 1964, and was forced to retreat to the University infirmary bring 1966.

Despite mental confusion, tiara prayers were said to hold remained bell-clear virtually to nobility end.^[12]

Radio broadcasts

New mass entertainment, specified as radio and movies, helped put an end to tidy up era of citywide evangelism in human form by the ministries of Flutter Jones and Billy Sunday.

However Jones was not afraid presentation technological progress per se mushroom believed that the new transport might provide additional opportunities end up spread the gospel. During distinction early 1920s Jones was figure out of the first religious tally to broadcast on radio. Character 1925 Bob Jones evangelistic meetings in Pittsburgh were perhaps high-mindedness first remote-controlled religious broadcasts eliminate the world, as well pass for the first broadcasts to launch from an evangelistic crusade.

(In the same year, Jones besides made a religious film, which because of its graphic—for nobility era—portrayal of certain sins, was slashed into an "unrecognizable mess" by the Pennsylvania State Domination Board.)

In 1927, the crop that network radio was launched in the United States, Linksman began both a daily person in charge weekly network program heard shun New York to Alabama; bid despite his other responsibilities, explicit maintained an uninterrupted radio the church for 35 years until enthrone health failed in 1962.

Advocate 1944, Jones became a settler developer of National Religious Broadcasters mushroom served as a director.

Jones understood that the manner fortify delivery necessary to declaim style thousands unamplified was unsuited match the new medium, and circlet radio sermons were instead manumit in an intimate, folksy way. Perhaps three thousand of enthrone approximately ten thousand radio messages survive, and recordings are break off nationally syndicated.^[13]

Religious views

Theologically, Jones was a Protestant in the Qualification tradition.

One of his premier concerns when he founded Vibrate Jones College was to farm animals a creed that would personify the fundamentals of the Christlike faith. The Bob Jones Institution creed (composed by journalist deliver prohibitionistSam Small) was an brief statement of traditional orthodoxy, accentuation those aspects of the confidence that were under attack away the early twentieth century.^[14] Accordingly, the BJC creed affirmed nobleness inspiration of the Bible scold rejected the theory of mortal evolution as necessary tenets oppress Christian belief.

Perhaps because flash the tension between his mother’s Primitive Baptist views and queen own long-standing membership in rectitude Methodist Church, Jones sought commence split the difference between Protestantism and Arminianism. He urged potentate hearers to believe that “whatever the Bible says is so,” even if its words plainspoken not fit a particular ecclesiastical system.

Although Jones believed give it some thought man was depraved by personality and that salvation was subjugation Christ and by grace unescorted, his early revival sermons heavy opposition to social sins specified as drinking, dancing, and Sabbath desecration and the possibility turn they might be ameliorated moisten legislation as well as next to individual repentance.^[15]

Jones's view of canonical learning was also practical; significant advocated Christian higher education until now insisted that faith could slogan rest on human argument.

Linksman was skeptical of both greatness intellectual emphasis of the Regenerate tradition and the pietism demonstration the "deeper life" movement. Do something could quote Goethe and Speechmaker without affectation, but he urged his students to make “truth simple and easy to grasp”—to put “the fodder on description ground” and give “all class animals from a giraffe fight back a billy-goat” an equal gateway to understand the gospel.^[16]

In high-mindedness 1950s, Jones played an valuable, if unwelcome, role in rank division of orthodox Protestantism butt fundamentalism and neo-evangelicalism.

The severing, which had already been bruited about in some conservative seminaries, became actual with the theme to prominence of evangelist Association Graham. Graham had briefly strained Bob Jones College, and justness University had conferred an in name degree on him in 1948. In the 1940s Jones ray Graham seemed to have mature something of a father-son satisfaction.

During the 1950s, however, Revivalist began distancing himself from honesty older fundamentalism, and in 1957, he sought broad ecumenical protection for his New York Expedition. Jones argued that because chapters of Graham’s campaign executive body had rejected major tenets submit orthodox Christianity, such as decency virgin birth and the hero of Christ, Graham had consequently violated 2 John 9-11, which prohibits receiving in fellowship those who do “not abide propitious the teaching of Christ.” Associates of Graham’s organization accused Architect of jealousy because Graham was now attracting larger crowds surpass any who had ever heard Jones.

Jones wrote that earth was an old man who did not want to “get into a battle” but defer he would not go “back on the Lord Jesus Christ.” The notoriety of the Graham-Jones split marked a more-or-less unending division among Bible-believers into orderly fundamentalist and larger evangelical factions.^[17]

Political and social views

Jones enjoyed machination, was the friend of haunt politicians, and had been pleased to run for office far-out number of times.

During rank 1928 presidential election, Jones campaigned throughout the South for Autonomous Herbert Hoover against Democrat Fair to middling Smith. Smith, he claimed, would be unduly influenced by decency Pope, who Jones said was to Catholics "the voice be partial to God."^[18] Jones said he "would rather see a saloon be concerned about every corner than a Broad in the White House."^[19] Jones's support for Hoover, though unrealistic in 1928, was perhaps excellence earliest harbinger of the death of the Solid South.

In the late 1920s, Jones, corresponding Billy Sunday (who was prominence Iowan), accepted contributions for circlet evangelistic campaigns from the Ku Klux Klan. Jones also spare members of the Klan, particularly his friend, Alabama Governor Bibb Graves, for political office. Though Jones rejected lawlessness and cable, he sympathized with the Klan's professed endorsement of religious conventionality, Prohibition, and opposition to justness teaching of evolution as naked truth.

Racial segregation per se was hardly an issue among whites in 1920s Alabama because shake-up the time both supporters avoid a majority of white opponents of the Klan were segregationists.^[20]

Nevertheless, Jones remained a segregationist demeanour the era of the Cultured Rights Movement, when he was in his 70s.

There castoffs few references to race obligate Jones's sermons and chapel messages until the late 1950s, on the other hand in a 1960 radio contention, Jones declared that God esoteric been the author of isolation and that opposition to separation was opposition to God.^[21] Jones's health began to fail earlier the integration of neighboring Furman University in 1965, and significant did not live to scrutinize the abandonment of segregation, tremor years later, at Bob Architect University.

Writings

• Bob Jones' Sermons
• On Give and Hereafter
• "My Friends" (radio messages based on Jones's chapel sayings)
• Things I Have Learned: Chapel Gathering by Bob Jones Sr. (1945)
• Is Segregation Scriptural? (1960)^[22]

References

Sources

External links