He supported inter-faith dialogue and served as secretary to the Council of Churches in New South Wales from 1926[3] to 1929, when he was elected president.
[6] He qualified Doctor of Divinity at the Presbyterian College, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, with the publication of his Religion and Reality in, the Light of the Christian Soul in 1935.
[9]After countless burials, he officiated at his first cremation in 1928, and was immediately converted to this more hygienic method of disposing of human remains which, he observed, was also less distressing to the relatives.
[11] The Catholic Church and its approval of games of chance for fundraising were particular targets of Bell's sermons while, according to his critics, turning a blind eye to greater evils.
In 1948 he won Rotary International's Paul Harris Memorial Fellowship, which he used to fund a year's tuition at Harvard University.