His father, John Wesley Smith, was a Southern Methodist minister who dreamed of starting a college and invested in land in Dade County, Georgia, outside Chattanooga, Tennessee.

[2] While a student at Emory and Henry College, Paul Jordan Smith secretly married Ethel Sloan Park in September 1904.

[2] : 170–187 He served briefly as a minister at Universalist churches in Unionville, Missouri, and Kansas City and developed a reputation as an outstanding lecturer on science and religion.

He also enrolled part-time in graduate classes at the University of Chicago and developed a broad acquaintance among both literary and social activist circles, including lawyer Clarence Darrow, activist Emma Goldman, novelist John Cowper Powys, editor and publisher Margaret Anderson, writer Floyd Dell, Chicago Little Theatre founder Maurice Browne, and bookseller George Millard.

It was around this time that Paul assumed the hyphenated Jordan-Smith as his last name, in part to disguise his liaison with Sarah, which he feared might damage his academic career.

Despite this precaution, the English Department—then headed by Charles Mills Gayley—voted not to renew his fellowship, putting an end to his plans for an academic career.

In 1917, the school's lease ended and they began renovating the house back into a private residence, which they named Erewhon after the Samuel Butler novel.

Encouraged by some of the philanthropists who attended his talks, he took on leadership of the recently formed People's Council of America for Peace and Democracy, an antiwar organization.

To avoid prosecution, Jordan-Smith was obliged to give up making antiwar speeches and to swear that he did not have any German affiliations or friends.

[10] Inspired by Sarah's ideas, Jordan-Smith collaborated with her on a feminist manifesto entitled The Soul of Woman: An Interpretation of the Philosophy of Feminism.