Otto Frederick Nolde

Nationality

U.S.A.

Date of Birth

1899

Date of Death

1972

Political
Preference

Republican

Otto Frederick Nolde was an American Lutheran theologian and a key figure in the creation of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA). A Professor of Christian Education at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, Nolde became a major ecumenical diplomat in the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (FCC) and later the CCIA. He rose to prominence at the United Nations Conference on International Organisation, also known as the San Francisco Conference, in 1945. As an advisor to the American delegation, Nolde attended the conference with the goal of including a human rights commission in the proposals for the UN Charter. At the Cambridge Conference in 1946 where the CCIA was established, Nolde represented the Joint Committee on Religious Liberty. Nolde’s ideas would prove to have an impact on international human rights efforts: throughout his career and international ecumenical work, he was involved in writing the clauses on religious liberty in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) and influenced the language of human rights in the United Nations Charter. He served the CCIA as Director for well over twenty years.