John R. Mott

Life

Mott was born in Livingston Manor, New York, and as a child moved with his family to Postville, Iowa. At sixteen he entered Upper Iowa University, a Methodist-affiliated school, and in 1885 he transferred to Cornell University. He is said to have been weighing a career in law or in the family lumber business when, in January 1886, a lecture by J. Kynaston Studd changed his course. That summer he attended the first international, interdenominational Christian student conference as a representative of the Cornell YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association). At this conference he became one of the hundred students who pledged themselves to foreign missionary service. During his college years he was also influenced by Arthur T. Pierson. He graduated in 1888 and in 1891 married Leila Ada White. He remained a Methodist layman throughout his life. He died in Orlando in 1955 and was buried in Washington National Cathedral.

Ministry and Achievements

• Student missionary movement: The pledges made at the 1886 conference gave rise in 1888 to the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM), which Mott led until 1920. The title of his book The Evangelization of the World in This Generation became a widely used missionary watchword in the early twentieth century.
• The YMCA and the student federation: Beginning in 1888, he served as a traveling secretary visiting college YMCAs across North America. From 1915 to 1928 he was general secretary of the International Committee of the YMCA of North America, and in 1926 he became president of the World Alliance of YMCAs. In 1895 he organized the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and served as its general secretary until 1920.
• Missionary conferences and church unity: In 1910 he chaired the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. The conference is regarded as an important milestone for modern Protestant missions and for the ecumenical movement (the movement for church unity and cooperation). In 1921 he became chairman of the International Missionary Council, and he was deeply involved in the founding of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948; the WCC named him its honorary president for life.
• Scope of activity: He is said to have crossed the Atlantic more than one hundred times and visited eighty-three countries. In all, he raised more than $300 million for causes that included relief work during World War I.
• Nobel Peace Prize: In 1946 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Emily Greene Balch in recognition of his contribution to peace through founding and strengthening international Christian student organizations.

Influence on the Korean Church

• When young Koreans petitioned for the establishment of a YMCA in 1899, Mott sent D. W. Lyon as an investigator and P. L. Gillett as organizing secretary. For this reason, histories of the Korean YMCA count him, along with Underwood, Appenzeller, Gale, and Hulbert, among those who laid the foundation of the Korean YMCA.
• During a visit to Seoul he met with members of the royal household, missionaries, and YMCA workers, and he also held meetings for Koreans. On this occasion he announced that John Wanamaker of the United States had donated $40,000 toward the construction of the Seoul YMCA building.
• He is said to have played a decisive role in the founding of the Korean National Christian Council (Chosŏn Christian Federal Council) in 1924. Korean YMCA sources regard this body as the forerunner of the National Council of Churches in Korea. Mott visited Korea in 1925 and 1929 to support this cooperative movement.

Assessment

Within the ecumenical movement, Mott is widely regarded as its founder. In his Nobel lecture, he summed up his life in terms of his efforts to bind all nations, races, and denominations together in friendship and cooperation. In evangelical missions circles, he is remembered as a missionary mobilizer who led large numbers of students and laypeople into world missions.

Mott's work spanned both the missionary movement and the church unity movement. Consequently, in the Korean church, where views on the WCC are sharply divided, the way he is presented can vary depending on which of these strands is emphasized. He is not widely known among ordinary church members and is introduced mainly at missionary conferences and in the teaching of mission history.