Stanton L. Jones

Stan (Stanton L.) Jones is a Christian clinical psychologist who was recently designated as Provost Emeritus and Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Wheaton College. Beyond his scholarly, teaching and administrative work, his most widespread impact has been through the widely read "God's Design for Sex" five-book series (NavPress) co-authored with his wife Brenna. Over a million copies of the five books have been purchased by parents. Stan and Brenna became concerned long ago about the disacomfort so may Christian parents feel about teaching their kids about sex, discomfort that too frequently leads to silence, and wrote this series to put effective, concrete tools in the hands of parents worldwide. THe books have been favorites of parents for decades.

More on his career outside of Christian family sex education: Over his Wheaton career, Stan served 15 years as faculty member (1981-1996), 20 as Provost (1996-2016), and then a final 3 years back on the faculty. During his term as Provost, he oversaw the hiring and continuing development of Wheaton’s full-time faculty including the continual strengthening of the institution’s Faculty Faith and Learning Faculty Development Program and the establishment of over a dozen new endowed faculty Chairs; he also championed the establishment of Wheaton’s second doctoral program: the Ph.D. in Biblical and Theological Studies.

Before his appointment as Provost in 1996, he was Rech Professor of Psychology and Christianity and Chairperson of the Wheaton College Psychology Department. Dr. Jones received the B.S. degree in Psychology from Texas A & M University in 1976, the M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1981) degrees in Clinical Psychology from the American Psychological Association (APA) accredited program at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, and completed an APA accredited Predoctoral Clinical Internship at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Veteran Administration Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi. He has been a Research Fellow of the Pew Evangelical Scholars Program, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago and the University of Cambridge. He previously served a three-year term as a member of the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association, the central governing body of the APA.

Dr. Jones’ scholarly work has focused on conceptual approaches to the relationship of psychology and religious faith, Christian perspectives on psychotherapy theories, and human sexuality. He has published about a dozen books and over 85 scholarly and popular articles and book chapters. His most recent book, a Christian overview of the field of psychology published by Crossway, is entitled Psychology: A Student Guide. He also wrote four books published by InterVarsity Press: Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation (with Mark Yarhouse), Homosexuality: The use of scientific research in the Church’s moral debate (with Mark Yarhouse), Psychology and Christianity: Four views (with Eric Johnson), and Modern Psychotherapies: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal (with Richard E. Butman). His article, “A constructive relationship for religion with the science and cooperation with religion by secular psychologists and appeared in the March, 1994, issue of the American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the discipline of psychology with a distribution of over 100,000.