Charles F. Boss, Jr.

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1888, Boss became an American Minister and Peace Leader. Boss was highly educated, studying at a number of institutions, including George Washington University (1915-16), Harvard Graduate School (1921), American University (1928-29), and Northwestern University (1928-29). He received a Bachelor of Religious Education Degree at Boston University, where he studied from 1920-22. He was awarded an honorary LL.D. by Adrian College in 1946.

Boss began his work in the M. E. Church in 1916, and he served several churches in Maryland. Before entering Boston University, he married Hazel Stuart Price. After leaving Boston, he returned to Maryland where he became the Director of Religious Education of the Baltimore Conference from 1922-26. Boss worked as Superintendent of Church School Administration of the General Board of Education from 1926 to 1928, and he was Director of the same board’s Bureau of Research.

In addition to his work in Religious Education, Boss also worked for the cause of international peace. From his position in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., he developed a decidedly cosmopolitan outlook. He was elected as Executive Secretary of the Board of World Peace of the M. E. Church in 1926, and he acted in that position until his retirement in 1960. Boss was part of a project to develop alternate civil service opportunities for conscientious objectors during the Second World War. The board assisted and defended conscientious objectors, and it raised funds to cover the cost of methodist objectors working in Quaker, Mennonite, and Brethren projects.

Before and after the war, he was a leader at the World Conferences of Christian Youth (1939 in Amsterdam and 1947 in Oslo). Boss worked in the National Council of Churches Department of International Affairs, and he was an observer at the San Francisco Carter Conference of the United Nations in 1945. In 1953, he established the first Methodist office at the U.N. in the Carnegie Peace Center. Until his retirement, he worked in New York offering a number of seminars on the U.N. He died at the Methodist Hermitage in Alexandria, Virginia in 1965.

Selected Titles:

1925. Commission on World Peace of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

1938. The Methodist Peace Fellowship.

1946. Conscription and the Christian Testimony (Address at the Sixteenth Annual Conference on Preaching, Boston University).

1946. Goose-step Legislation: Shall the United States Adopt Peacetime Compulsory Military Training?

1947. Seek First: A World for Your Sons and Mine.

1947. World Peace Mission to Europe.

1949. The Local Church Organized for Action.

Sources:

“Charles F. Boss, Jr.” The Encyclopedia of Methodism (Duke, 1974).