E. Stanley Jones was perhaps the most significant missionary
of the twentieth century. He was certainly the most influential
Methodist missionary since Francis Asbury. While he is a relatively
unknown figure today outside Methodist and missionary circles, from
the 1920s through the 1960s he was a towering religious figure in
many countries around the world, most notably the United States,
Japan, and India.
Born in 1884 Jones experienced a conversion to Christianity
when he was seventeen years old. Following graduation from Asbury
College, Jones landed in India in 1907, at the age of twenty-three,
as a missionary with the Methodist-Episcopal Church. His work as a
missionary began as the English-speaking pastor of the Methodist
Church in Lucknow. By the end of the 1930s his preaching ministry
expanded to Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, Burma, Malaya, the Philippines,
China, and Singapore. He was elected to the episcopacy of the
Methodist-Episcopal Church in 1928 but withdrew his name the
morning after his election.
