John Peter Jones

Background

John Peter was born on September 4, 1847 at Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales, United Kingdom, the youngest of the eight children of Peter and Sarah (Williams) Jones.

Education

Jones secured his primary education at Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales.

Having saved over a thousand dollars from his wages, he entered the Western Reserve College, then located at Hudson, ranking third in his class. In the fall of the same year he entered Andover Theological Seminary, Andover, Massachussets, from which he graduated in 1878.

Career

At the age of twelve, Jones went to work in the coal mines. In 1865, he visited the United States for a year, where, after returning to Wales for a brief stay, he took up his residence. Toward the end of 1866 he went to work in the mines of Pennsylvania and later, in those of Ohio.

At Shenandoah City, Pennsylvania, he identified himself with a Welsh congregation, and at Youngstown, Ohio, he often preached in his native tongue to the Welsh miners. He discovered thereby that he had the "gift" and decided to devote his life to the Christian ministry.

On August 20, 1878, he was ordained to the Congregational ministry. During his college days his attention had been turned toward India by the work there of a distant relative and notable missionary, Jacob Chamberlain, and while at Andover he had applied to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions for appointment to that field.

On September 7, 1878, he and his wife sailed from New York and arrived at Madura, South India, on December 16. From the autumn of 1879 until early in 1883 Jones was stationed in Manamadura, an important center in the native state of Sivaganga, Madura District. There he learned Tamil and had oversight of ten congregations, three of which were composed entirely of Christian communicants. In 1883 he was transferred to Pasumalai (near Madura), to take charge of the Seminary and its associated schools.

Owing to the death of the Rev. John Russell, he was moved into Madura to take charge of the station and to serve as secretary-treasurer of the Mission. In 1884 he opened Madura's first Christian high school, and within two months three hundred pupils were enrolled, many of whom came of the best Hindu families. He continued energetically the station's program of evangelism in the town and among the outlying villages, instructing his evangelists, however, to preach without abusing the gods of Hinduism.

The last period of Jones's missionary career, from 1892 to 1914, was spent in Pasumalai, where a theological school had grown from one of the departments of the seminary and in 1892 had become an important institution. He served primarily as its principal, thus assuming charge of the training of pastors, teachers, and catechists for the entire Mission.

He collaborated with Rev. J. C. Perkins in the introduction of annual harvest festivals throughout the Mission, and was chosen first president of the South India Christian Endeavor Union (organized, Pasumalai, 1897), in which capacity he traveled over India and Burma. The management of the Mission Press fell to his lot, and the editorship of the Mission periodical, Satyavartamani.

He retired from the Madura Mission in 1914 and spent the remaining two years of his life on the faculty of the Kennedy School of Missions, Hartford, Connecticut. He died in Hartford.

Achievements

• John Peter Jones was an influential prolific writer, who produced many books, including - in Tamil - an outline of Christian theology, a textbook on Christian evidences, and a life of Christ. His writings - India's Problem, Krishna or Christ (1903), India, its Life and Thought (1908) - contributed to early twentieth-century reflection on the theology of religion. Besides, he opened Madura's first Christian high school He was decorated by the British Government with the Kaisar-i-Hind medal, and in 1909 he was one of twelve "apostles" selected from the fields of the American Board to conduct in America a "Together Campaign" on the Board's behalf.

Works

More photos

• book

  • India's Problem Krishna or Christ

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • India, its Life and Thought

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Pasumalai: a half century record of a mission institution

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • The modern missionary challenge; a study of the present day world missionary enterprise, its problems and results

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Views

Quotations: Jones insisted on a more generous approach: “Even what we would regard as the greatest error…is really but an over-emphasis on the truth, a perversion of a glorious doctrine, and I believe that there are many (non-Christian) doctrines…which can be brought into subservience to the thought of Christ. ”

Connections

On August 13, 1878, at Hudson, he was married to Sarah Amy, daughter of one of the college professors, Henry B. Hosford. Four sons and two daughters were born to them.

Father:

Peter Jones

Mother:

Sarah (Williams) Jones

Spouse:

Sarah Amy

father-in-law:

Henry B. Hosford

coworker:

J. C. Perkins