Roswell Parkhurst Barnes

Reverend Roswell Parkhurst Barnes (1901 – 1990[1]) was an American theologian and Christian religious leader, advocate and author in the 20th century.

Barnes moved away from fashionable Presbyterian pulpits to concern himself with an array of social justice and political issues, in many cases being ahead of his time.

[1] He served with the aid of Charles Phelps Taft II - son of President William Howard Taft - who supported the ecumenical movement and Barnes' belief for a need for a blueprint for the Protestant community to affect the world, and to serve as a counterpoint to Catholicism's increasing popular influence led by Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

He also served as Executive Secretary of the NCC's Division of Christian Life and Work, a social welfare organization associated with the Union Theological Seminary.

For this, he and many of the prominent blue-blood social activists with whom he was closely associated, 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.