Adolf Keller

Nationality

Switzerland

Date of Birth

1872

Date of Death

1963

Political
Preference

Christian

Adolf Keller was born in Rüdlingen and studied theology in Basel and Berlin and psychology in Geneva. He served as pastor in Cairo, Stein am Rhein, Geneva and later in Zurich. Keller was one of the most important pioneers of ecumenism in the decades prior to the founding of the World Council of Churches in 1948. He founded in 1934 the Ecumenical Seminal which is the forerunner of the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey.

In 1922, Keller founded the ecumenical relief agency Inter-Church Aid, which supported churches in France and Germany in the aftermath of World War I. Keller was befriended with Karl Barth, and both became known as one of the first theologians publicly criticizing national socialism in Germany. He also called Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, and Albert Schweitzer among his closer friends. He retired from parish work and played a key role within the ecumenical Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work. Keller was second General-Secretary at the first Conference in Stockholm in 1925. He later became director of the International Christian Social Institute in Geneva. He helped in particularly Protestants minorities in Eastern Europe. As (first) Swiss-German secretary of the Swiss Evangelical Church Federation (1920-1941), he held a key position between the Reformed churches in Switzerland and the Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox churches abroad. He also represented Inter-Church Aid and the ecumenical movement during various international conferences on the future of Europe. He attended meetings of the American Commission for Just and Durable Peace in 1941 and 1942 and after the war he attended The Hague Congress in 1948. Inter-Church Aid was merged into the WCC in 1944 as the Department of Reconstruction and Inter-Church Aid.