John Mott

Biography

Mott was born in Livingston Manor, Sullivan County, New York, on May 25, 1865, and his family moved to Postville, Iowa, in September of the same year. He attended Upper Iowa University, where he studied history and was an award-winning student debater. He transferred to Cornell University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1888. He was influenced by Arthur Tappan Pierson one of the forces behind the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, which was founded in 1886.

In 1910, Mott, an American Methodist layperson, presided at the 1910 World Missionary Conference, which was an important milestone in the modern Protestant missions movement and some say the modern ecumenical movement.

Mott and a colleague were offered free passage on the Titanic in 1912 by a White Star Line official who was interested in their work, but they declined and took the more humble liner the SS Lapland. According to a biography by C. Howard Hopkins, in New York City the two men heard what happened to the Titanic, looked at each other and remarked that, "The Good Lord must have more work for us to do."

After touring Europe and promoting ecumenism, Mott traveled to Asia where, from October 1912 to May 1913, he held a series of 18 regional and national conferences, including in Ceylon, India, Burma, Malaya, China, Korea and Japan.

He also worked with Robert Hallowell Gardiner III to maintain relations with the Russian Orthodox Church and Archbishop Tikhon after the Russian Revolution.

From 1920 until 1928, Mott served as the WSCF Chairperson. For his labors in both missions and ecumenism, as well as for peace, some historians consider him to be "the most widely traveled and universally trusted Christian leader of his time".