Ordinary Man, Extraordinary Mission: The Life and Work of E. Stanley Jones
by Stephen A. Graham
Category: Biography & Autobiography

2007 John Pollock Award for Christian Biography (Beeson Divinity School, Samford University) For more than half a century, E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973) was arguably the most widely known and universally admired Christian missionary and evangelist of the twentieth century. He went to India as a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1907 and later became an itinerant evangelist. Equally concerned for social justice and spirituality, Jones supported Indian aspirations for independence, and was sensitive to Indian religious traditions. He founded two Christian ashrams (religious retreats) in India, one at Sat Tal and the other in Lucknow (where he also founded a psychiatric center). He wrote nearly thirty books, most notably The Christ of the Indian Road (1925). This is a paperback book with a photo section. Dr. Graham has written a chronological account of the life and ministry of E. Stanley Jones's life for a broad audience. Jones's life is set in the context of the historical, political, and religious events of his day. In particular, Jones's life and ministry will be set against the backdrop of the Christian missionary movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the aftermath of WWI; the different phases of the Indian independence movement; the origins of Japanese imperialism and militarism in the Pacific during the 1930s and 1940s; and finally, American domestic and international politics following WWII.