Roswell P. Barnes

Nationality

U.S.A.

Date of Birth

1902

Date of Death

1990

Political
Preference

Republican

Roswell Parkhurst Barnes was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. A son of a Calvinist family with generations of Presbyterian ministers, he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degree in English at Lafayette College and a bachelor’s degree of Divinity at the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. After his studies, he was an English teacher and a pastor, before he accepted his first post within the ecumenical movement. In the 1920s, Barnes was active in the American Committee on Militarism in Education. Afterwards, he rose to the function of associate general secretary of both the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, the parent organisation of the Commission for a Just and Durable Peace, from 1940 to 1950 and its successor, the National Council of Churches from 1954 to 1958. Within the CJDP itself, Barnes was a member of the Committee of Direction. Post-war, he continued in this vein as Commissioner in the Commission of the Churches for International Affairs. From 1958 until 1964, Barnes was the executive secretary of the World Council of Churches’s United States conference.