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 . 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". == Personal life and legacy ==