Edgar Dewitt Jones - Writings

Writings

A prolific writer, perhaps his most important book was The Royalty of the Pulpit (Harper, 1951). This book is a study of Yale University's "Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching" from 1872 until 1950. He served as a correspondent for a time with the Detroit News, and wrote a regular column for the paper entitled "Successful Living."

Beyond his leadership in the religious community, he was a student of Abraham Lincoln, collecting memorabilia and papers, and hosting an annual Lincoln dinner that featured as speakers eminent students of Lincoln. His Lincoln Collection can now be found at the Detroit Public Library.

His writings include:

  • The Inner Circle (1914)
  • The Wisdom of God's Fools (1916)
  • Fairhope, The Annals of a Country Church (1917)
  • The Tender Pilgrims (1917)
  • Ornamented Orthodoxy (1918)
  • When Jesus Wrote on the Ground (1924)
  • The Wisdom of Washington and the Learning of Lincoln (1924)
  • Blundering into Paradise (1932)
  • American Preachers of Today: Intimate Appraisals of Thirty-two Leaders (1933)
  • The Great Business of Being Christian (1938)
  • Lincoln and the Preachers (1948)
  • The Royalty of the Pulpit (1951).
  • Sermons I Love to Preach (1953).

His living descendants are his grand children Paul Dewitt Jones, Jack Franklin Jones, Thomas Johnson Sherrard and John Edgar Sherrard, each having children of their own.

  • This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Thurston, H. T.; Moore, F., eds. (1905). "article name needed". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.

References:

"Jones, Edgar Dewitt," by Clinton Holloway, in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004).

"Biographical Sketch of Edgar Dewitt Jones," in Moore, W. T. (editor), The New Living Pulpit of the Christian Church (St. Louis: Christian Board of Publication, 1918). Online edition at

Willis R. Jones, "Two into One," (speech given at Central Woodward Christian Church (1975)

Notes:

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