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| Title |
Obituary - John Vernon Taylor 1914-2001 |
| Short Title |
Obituary - John Vernon Taylor 1914-2001 |
| Publisher |
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/feb/07/guardianobituaries |
| Source ID |
S568 |
| Text |
The Rt Rev John Taylor
Bishop whose Christian view of the world embraced all faiths
Alan Webster
The Guardian, Tuesday 6 February 2001 21.43 EST
John Taylor, who has died aged 86, was Bishop of Winchester between 1975 and 1985, chairman of the Church of England Doctrine Commission from 1978 until 1985, and one of the great missionaries of his generation. Convinced that Christians should leave their church boundaries to listen and think much harder, he pleaded with a startled General Synod to "go into no man's land, for the strange meeting, as Wilfred Owen would have described it".
Taylor's God was cosmic and also worshipped by non-Christians. He felt that there were many, like the novelist George Eliot, who saw that God was to be experienced outside the church.
Yet the gentle thinker was startlingly decisive. As Bishop of Winchester, he agreed to hand over a redundant Southampton church to a Sikh congregation. He quoted Japanese Christians and French Roman Catholic bishops who had allowed non-Christian bodies to take over unneeded churches. He met stiff opposition - better to bulldoze it for a supermarket than to let immigrant non-Christians use the building, was some synod members' view.
Speaking about instability in marriage, he wished the Church had been more forceful about the disgraceful housing and grinding unemployment which put harsh strains on relationships. He criticised the Church Commissioners' African and housing policy. Some felt him too idealistic - but it was an irony that after his retirement, the Church Commissioners lost £800m on unwise American property investment.
Taylor's father was the vice-principal of Ridley Hall, an evangelical theological college in Cambridge, and went on to be principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and then Bishop of Sodor and Man. His son was educated at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate; Trinity College, Cambridge; St Catherine's Society (now college) and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford; and London university's Institute of Education.
From 1938-40, John Taylor was curate of All Souls in London's West End, and curate-in-charge at St Andrew's church in St Helen's, Lancashire, from 1940-43. In 1945, he was appointed warden of Bishop Tucker College in Mukono, Uganda. He saw that African independence, political and religious, should be welcomed by western Christians.
Back in Britain in 1954, he was a research worker with the International Missionary Council until 1959. He then became African secretary, and afterwards, general secretary of the Church Missionary Society until his appointment as Bishop of Winchester.
What struck candidates, clergy and laity in London and Hampshire was his gentle liberality. He believed the media, especially television, gave the gospel new opportunities. His African Passion Play was beautifully filmed in the 50s, and his Winchester Cathedral Passion and Resurrection (1981) drew on his skills as an actor and poet.
Taylor was always producing plays and reviews, and publishing books. The Primal Vision (1963) had been groundbreaking on African understanding of religion. His other books on Africa, including Growth Of The Church In Buganda (1958), and Christianity And Politics In Africa (1957), showed a fresh appreciation of how Africans saw and practised faith in the gospel.
His two most influential books, The Go-Between God (1972) and Enough is Enough (1975), in some ways more visionary than the church appeared to be, reached a younger generation. The church's wealth in Britain and the United States - in contrast to much of the third world - needed the lifestyle plea which Taylor made. His gentleness, humility and artistic gifts fused in this shy and prophetic thinker.
He died in Oxford after losing his sight, and is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.
• John Vernon Taylor, priest, born September 11 1914; died January 30 2001 |
| Linked to (1) |
John Vernon Taylor, Bishop of Winchester |
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