[1][2][3] His formative experiences as a Christian missionary and educator in early 20th-century Imperial China shaped his life's work.

His mother and father both attended Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, where they graduated in 1878.

[5] From 1909 through 1910, Latourette served as a traveling secretary for the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions.

He began to study the Chinese language, but in the summer of 1911 he contracted a severe case of amoebic dysentery and was forced to return to the United States.

[5] In 1916, he accepted a position at Denison University, an institution with Baptist affiliations, in Granville, Ohio.

At the Yale Divinity School, the "Latourette Initiative" is a proactive program to preserve and provide access to the documentation of world Christianity.

[9] Latourette was the author of over 80 books on Christianity, Oriental history and customs, and theological subjects.

[3] He also wrote and spoke out about issues of his time, as for example, when he warned his fellow Americans in 1943 about the unwanted consequences of revenge after Japan should eventually lose the war they started with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.