John Haynes Holmes (1879-1964), American clergyman, was one of the foremost figures of the Social Gospel movement in 20th-century American Protestantism.

John Haynes Holmes was born in Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 29, 1879, the son of an unsuccessful but bookish businessman. Raised in Malden, Mass., young Holmes was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, where he received his degree in 1904. That year he married Madeleine Baker. From 1904 to 1907 he served as minister to the Third Religious Society of Dorchester and then accepted the pastorate at New York's Unitarian Church of the Messiah. He served as president of the General Unitarian Conference and of the Free Religious Association in the years before World War I, but in 1919 he resigned his ministerial fellowship in the Unitarian Church. His congregation followed their independent minister, changing the name of their church to the Community Church of New York. Under Holmes's guidance the...