Bob Jones Sr.

Bob Jones Sr.

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Robert Reynolds “Bob” Jones Sr. (1883–1968). Born on October 30, 1883, in Skipperville, Alabama, to William Alexander and Georgia Ann Jones, Bob Jones Sr. was an American Methodist evangelist, educator, and founder of Bob Jones University. The youngest of 12 children in a farming family, he converted to Christianity at age 11 during a brush arbor revival and began preaching at 12, ordained by the Methodist Church at 15. Largely self-educated due to poverty—he read extensively but never finished high school—he held his first revival at 13, drawing crowds with fiery, practical sermons. By his 20s, he was a leading Southern evangelist, preaching to millions across the U.S., averaging 10,000 attendees nightly, and reportedly leading 100,000 conversions. In 1927, after clashing with Methodist bureaucracy, he became independent and founded Bob Jones College in Lynn Haven, Florida, moving it to Cleveland, Tennessee, in 1933, and Greenville, South Carolina, in 1947, renaming it Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist bastion. Known for opposing liberalism and Catholicism, he influenced figures like Billy Graham, who briefly attended his school. Jones authored books like Comments on Here and Hereafter (1942) and Cornbread and Caviar (1948), his autobiography. Married to Mary Gaston Stollenwerck in 1908 until her death in 1948, then to Fannie May Holmes in 1951, he had one son, Bob Jones Jr. He died on January 16, 1968, in Greenville, saying, “The door to heaven is Jesus Christ, and there’s no back entrance.”
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