Bruce Barton was born in a small town named Robbins, Tennessee on August 5, 1886. His father William was a traveling Protestant minister on a small town circuit. Barton's religious upbringing and his subsequent ideology effected the remainder of his life immensely. Although not a pious follower of Christian virtues, his fundamental beliefs and faith never wavered. Contradictory belief and behavior is a reoccurring theme in Barton's life, but it is important to note that it is almost impossible to find ill words said of him, much less any reports of insincerity on his part. As Stephen Fox puts it, "A strong but unexacting Christianity became Bruce's own touchstone" (1984).Valedictorian of his class at Amherst College in 1907 and voted most likely to succeed, Barton was preparing to go on to graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin and a career as a professor of American history. After a bout of depression and a summer of recovery working in construction in Montana, he decided to move to New York to work in publishing rather than pursue graduate studies.
In New York, he found work for P.F. Collier, a publishing firm that owned Collier's Weekly among other things. Initially, his job was supervisor of the door-to-door salesmen of the firm's books. Here, his unexacting Christianity is evident again. Although he hoped for better behavior, he was not opposed to his salesman using unscrupulous methods to get sales.