Bob Jones Sr.

==Political and social views==
Jones enjoyed politics, was the friend of many politicians, and had been encouraged to run for office a number of times. During the 1928 presidential election, Jones campaigned throughout the South for Republican [[Herbert Hoover]] against Democrat [[Al Smith]]. Smith, he claimed, would be unduly influenced by the Pope, who Jones said was to Catholics "the voice of God."<ref>Bob Jones, ''The Perils of America'' (1934), a sermon published as a red, paper-bound booklet.</ref> Jones said he "would rather see a saloon on every corner than a Catholic in the White House."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Okrent |first1=Daniel |title=Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition  |date=11 May 2010 |publisher=Scribner |isbn=978-0743277020  |at=loc 5786(Kindle) |author-link=Daniel Okrent }}</ref> Jones's support for Hoover, though quixotic in 1928, was perhaps the earliest harbinger of the demise of the [[Solid South]].

In the late 1920s, Jones, like [[Billy Sunday]] (who was an Iowan), accepted contributions for his evangelistic campaigns from the [[Ku Klux Klan]]. Jones also supported members of the Klan, notably his friend, Alabama Governor [[Bibb Graves]], for political office. Although Jones rejected [[Civil disorder|lawlessness]] and [[lynching]], he sympathized with the Klan's professed endorsement of religious orthodoxy, [[Prohibition]], and opposition to the teaching of evolution as fact.  [[Racial segregation]] per se was hardly an issue among whites in 1920s Alabama because at the time both supporters and a majority of white opponents of the Klan were segregationists.<ref>Johnson, 138; Turner, 12. Jones defended Klan positions in the 1920s, but there is no evidence that he ever became a member: “’I am not a member of the Ku Klux Klan,’ Mr. Jones said, ‘Col. [[William Joseph Simmons|William J. Simmons]], imperial wizard of the klan, a former Methodist preacher, is a close personal friend of mine and he approached me to join the klan.  He told me it was a patriotic organization and that it had never been a party to lawlessness. I did not join.’” ''El Paso Times'', September 30, 1922, 2.</ref>

Nevertheless, Jones remained a segregationist into the era of the [[Civil Rights Movement]], when he was in his 70s. There are few references to race in Jones's sermons and chapel messages until the late 1950s, but in a 1960 radio address, Jones declared that God had been the author of [[Racial segregation|segregation]] and that opposition to segregation was opposition to God.<ref>Turner, 225, 369</ref> Jones's health began to fail before the integration of neighboring [[Furman University]] in 1965, and he did not live to see the abandonment of segregation, six years later, at Bob Jones University.