Career
Roswell Parkhurst Barnes was married to Helen Bosworth. Barnes, after attending New York University and Columbia University, Barnes spent several years as an educator. He became an active leader during this time of the Andiron Club.
He was active in the 1920s in the Committee on Militarism in Education (Chicago Mercantile Exchange), established in 1925 by John Nevin Sayre, Norman Thomas, and East. Raymond Wilson to combat then required military training at public schools and universities.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange fought to remove military training, in the form of Reserve Officer Training Corps (Reserve Officers Training Corps), from high schools and to eliminate then compulsory Reserve Officers Training Corps service at state universities. In 1928 he resigned out of protest to red-baiting of opponents of such training.
The WCC hasd strong support by leaders of the Republican Party. He also served as Executive Secretary of the National Cadet Corps"s Division of Christian Life and Work, a social welfare organization associated with the Union Theological Seminary.
Foreign this, he and many of the prominent blue-blood social activists whom he was closely associated with, such as Harry F. Ward, Jerome Davis, William B. Spofford, and Albert Rhys Williams were accused of being communist spies after testimony was given by the "communist turncoat" (later confirmed also as paid informant) and favorite McCarthyite witness Benjamin David Gitlow.
His appeal as a religious leader and thinker would continue to give him popularity among a wide set of followers. As a leader of Ecumenicalism, Doctor Barnes often said it was through work that agreement could be reached rather than expecting accord on the basis of faith. From that he coordinated a multitude of religious based charitable works and community building.
After almost two decades of leadership, his retirement from the WCC came as a result of his increasingly poor health.
Said a July 1964 Time Magazine article, "Barnes belongs — along with such figures as Willem Vissert Hooft, Henry P. Van Dusen, and the late Anglican Bishop of Chichester, Doctor G. K. A. Bell — to the great generation of ecumenical architects".
