Biography
Jones was born in Cleveland, Tennessee, the son of Fannie May (Holmes) and Bob Jones Jr. He moved with his family to Greenville, South Carolina in 1947 when Bob Jones College built a new campus and became Bob Jones University. [1] Because his father was a connoisseur of the arts, Jones early visited Europe and the Levant on his father's summer tours. As a teenager, Jones was given minor roles in campus Shakespeare performances and a major role in the film version of his father's novel Wine of Morning. Likewise, as the son and grandson of well-known fundamentalists, Jones met many politicians and notable preachers in his youth.
At fifteen, his father rusticated Jones to a summer camp sponsored by Ernest Reveal, a BJU board member and the founder of the Evansville Rescue Mission, where Jones preached and otherwise participated in the camp's evangelistic ministry to children experiencing poverty from the Evansville area. Jones credited this experience with having had a significant impact on his later career.
Jones completed his bachelor of arts (1959) and master of arts (1961) in speech from Bob Jones University and took additional courses in speech and drama at Northwestern University and New York University. He also received honorary degrees from two small Bible schools and a seminary.
Although less intellectually gifted than his father, Jones did excel academically. Unlike his father, though, Jones also developed an interest in athletics — basketball as a young man, and later skiing, hunting, and other outdoor sports. Jones enjoyed flying and considered a military career.
Nevertheless, by the end of his undergraduate years, Jones believed that he had been called to "help perpetuate the ideals and standards" of the school his grandfather founded. Jones served as a teaching assistant in the speech department and then as a dormitory supervisor. Between 1961 and 1971, his father provided him with a growing administrative role in the university, including preaching for campus services. Jones also accepted an increasing number of off-campus speaking invitations.
Unlike his father, Jones became genuinely interested in the mechanics of university administration, although his training for his college presidency was, like his father's, informal at best. To help with business judgments, Jones eventually appointed a personal friend and former businessperson, Bob Wood, as vice president. Rather shy and "reticent to initiate conversations with strangers", Jones was also a highly competitive, 'Type A' personality who regularly worked sixteen hours a day during his presidency. [2] In conjunction with the university's 70th-anniversary celebration, Governor David Beasley presented him with the Order of the Palmetto. [3]
Jones inherited the Bob Jones University presidency as its enrollment increased. However, the school also began to face the federal government's opposition to its racial policies. During the early 1980s, Jones was frequently interviewed by the media, arguing that the university's racial policies were protected by First Amendment rights. Nevertheless, Jones had difficulty finding a route of escape from the positions on race that his predecessors had adopted during the period of segregation in the early twentieth-century South, and which he had endorsed in his youth.
In December 2014, as part of a BJU-commissioned investigation to determine if students had "received inadequate help when they reported to a BJU representative that they had been abused or assaulted at some point in their past," G.R.A.C.E. (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), an independent Christian organization, reported that Jones III had "repeatedly demonstrated a significant lack of understanding regarding the many painful dynamics associated with sexual abuse" [4] and recommended BJU take "personnel action" against him. [5]
Until her death in 2019, Jones was married to Beneth Peters, an author and seminar speaker, whom he had gotten to know when she played Roxane to his Christian in a campus performance of Cyrano de Bergerac . They had three children. In March 2020, he married Karen Rowe, a member of the BJU English faculty. [6] Jones's younger son, Stephen, replaced him as president of BJU in May 2005 when Jones took the title, "Chancellor."
Jones remains chair of the International Testimony to an Infallible Bible and chair of the board of directors of the Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery. Jones continues to speak regularly for churches, schools, evangelistic campaigns, youth rallies, and other religious gatherings in his eighties. [7]
