Frank Joseph Rawlinson 樂靈生 was born in 1871 in Langham, Rutland County, England. In 1889, he and his younger brother came to the United States, and Rawlinson became a member of a Baptist church in Baltimore. He studied at Bucknell University from 1895 to 1899, after which he married Carrie Dietz and entered Rochester Theological Seminary. He graduated in 1903; that same year he was ordained, became a U.S. citizen, and was appointed as a missionary to China under the auspices of the Southern Baptist Convention. He arrived in Shanghai on October 16, 1902, and began work with the Central China Mission.

In June 1911, Rawlinson secured a place on the editorial board of The Chinese Recorder (教務 雜誌), and in 1914, he was appointed to the executive committee of the China Continuation Committee. In 1917, while on furlough in America, his wife died; later that year, Rawlinson married Florence Lang, earned an M.A. from Teacher's College of Columbia University, and was awarded an honorary D.D. from Bucknell University. From 1918 he lectured at the Nanking University School for Missionaries, and from 1921 regularly lectured at the North China Union Language School in Beijing. His liberal views on Christian and Chinese beliefs antagonized the Southern Baptist Mission Board, however, and in 1921 he was dismissed from his pastorate of Grace Church in Shanghai.

In May 1922, Rawlinson was accepted to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and left his former mission affiliation. He became involved with the National Christian Council of China and edited their Chinese Christian Yearbook from 1922. From 1924 to 1925 he studied and lectured as a McFadden Mission Fellow at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s he continued lecturing, writing, and serving as editor of The Chinese Recorder. On August 14, 1937, during a Japanese attack on Shanghai, Rawlinson was killed when a bomb was accidentally dropped on a busy intersection by a damaged Chinese plane.