Jones's boyhood was on a Wisconsin farm, and after service in the Civil War, he had to struggle hard to work his way through Meadville Theological School. As pastor at Janesville, Wisconsin, he developed his involvement with the Western Unitarian Conference (WUC), becoming its secretary in 1875 and a full-time missionary secretary in 1880. From that position he led western Unitarianism in a radical direction, founding the periodical Unity to help foster his efforts.

Jenkin Lloyd Jones was the leader of the Unity Men, the radically modernist element in Midwest Unitarianism of the later nineteenth century. Jones had a forceful personality and was a tireless worker; he combined these traits to lead the Western Unitarian Conference on a largely independent path from Boston Unitarianism. He stressed an absolutely creedless "ethical basis" as the common element in the churches he wanted to bring together, a theological position that left Christology, and some believed even theology, in the background. He was also a pioneer in religious education, embodying his liberal views in Sunday-school work.

Although Jones was the most powerful western figure in the denomination, he encountered friction from the American Unitarian Association (AUA) because of his independent course and friction within the WUC because of his theological radicalism. In 1882 Jones reorganized the Fourth Unitarian Society in Chicago as All Souls Church, and a decade later he played a central role in the World's Parliament of Religions, which brought together a number of world religious leaders. The conference seemed a step toward Jones's dream of a universal church for humankind. He ended his career as director of the Abraham Lincoln Centre in Chicago, where he continued to be a voice of reform. In his last years, he spoke as a pacifist in opposition to World War I.

From The Unitarians and the Universalists by David Robinson (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1985)