The Very Reverend Robert Taylor, 49, dean of St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral since 1999 and the first openly gay Episcopal dean in the country, remembers the message from the pulpit in his native South Africa in the 1970s.
The young man dealing with his emerging gayness heard the Bible being used to buttress apartheid and condemn homosexuality.
There came what Taylor calls "a terrible moment of clarity" - the convergence of institutional racism with homophobia in the name of God.
"What do I do with that truth?" Taylor asked himself. "How does this allow me to enter into the life of somebody else who is very different from me?"
Taylor's self-examination begged a larger question: "What am I afraid of, in you or myself?"
With his gentle yet focused manner, Taylor cuts a compelling figure in famously under-churched Seatttle.
He opposed apartheid at home and paid for it with the price of exile. Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu was his mentor and remains his friend. Taylor's job calls for a parochial focus - he's shepherd to a flock of more than 2,000 members of the St. Mark's congregation, after all - but a critical component of his vision is international.
Taylor represents a challenge to Seattle, where political correctness is second nature and Nordstrom's great return policy is gospel.
"We're very nice," he says of the city he's come to love. "Sometimes nice is the cover for not naming our fears or going deeper."
Taylor sees St. Mark's as a commons for Seattlelites of any religious persuasion. Or none. The cathedral, anchoring the north end of Capitol Hill, has historically been this city's nexus for Anglophile culture. The building - gray, heavy, cavernous - has an offhand, medieval beauty. Behind the altar the west window, like a cosmological eye, invites the worshiper to contemplation.
Clearly, this is a place to go deeper.
And wider. Taylor refers to his congregation as a "glorious mix" of people.
The St. Mark's congregation, in turn, appears to be receptive to his call. Last May, when Taylor ascended the pulpit after losing the election for bishop of the Diocese of California, he was given a standing ovation.
Taylor would stay in Seattle, after all.
Youth and exile
Taylor was born in Capetown, South Africa in 1958. His father worked as an accountant and his mother as a secretary. The family, which included an older brother, attended Anglican services on the big liturgical days like Christmas and Easter. Taylor counts his grandmothers as formative religious influences. His maternal grandmother, part Russian and part Palestinian, told him stories of the Holy Land. His paternal grandmother took him to church where they prayed together.
The young boy also noticed that these beloved figures did not get along - an early example, perhaps, for the future priest's awareness of conflict and his passion for resolution.
In 1973 Taylor matriculated at cathedral school in Capetown. If Taylor had heard his share of apartheid-is-good from the pulpit, it was at cathedral school where he encountered clergy preaching a different message.
We don't understand apartheid being the will of God, he remembers hearing.
"I was captivated by that," Taylor recalls.
Back problems forced spinal surgery. While recuperating Taylor read deeply on the subject of apartheid. A second, unsuccessful surgery left him with the possibility of never walking again. He was prayed over in chapel. There was a laying on of hands. The 15-year-old recovered.
Taylor did some traveling on behalf of the church to speak about his healing experience. His effort took him into black communities where he saw the destructiveness of apartheid close up. He made friends with a young black woman but the pair was forbidden to meet in public.
Church grounds and people's homes became a kind of safe haven for the mixing of races.
"That experience grounded how I'd think about God," Taylor says.
For all the intellectual and spiritual uncertainty of a young gay man who aspired to the clergy, Taylor saw through the hypocrisies of his society.
"One wants to be on this journey through life that is life giving. I grew up in a land where everything was designed to create prisons," he says.
The funeral for Stephen Biko in 1997 proved to be a catalyst for Taylor's life to come.
Biko, founder of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa, died at the hands of police while in custody. More than 30,000 people filled a stadium for Biko's funeral. Police helicopters hovered menacingly overhead. Tensions were high. Taylor was one of the few white people in attendance. Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke to the crowd about peacefully undoing apartheid.
"He had the entire stadium in the palm of his hand," Taylor remembers.
Taylor's white face in the crowd stood out in newspaper photos the next day. From then on, police were on his tail. They intercepted his mail and eavesdropped on his phone calls. Taylor was just 19.
After earning his bachelor's degree from Rhodes University Taylor faced mandatory military service. He contemplated prison instead. Tutu, now his mentor, urged Taylor to leave the country - a South African prison was no place to be.
And so, bags in hand, Taylor arrived in New York City in 1980, a 22-year-old exile. He earned his Master of Divinity degree at Union Theological Seminary in 1984 after his ordination the previous year.
From 1989-1999 Taylor served the Episcopal congregation in Peeksville, N.Y. His tenure was marked by community outreach, including services for childcare and the elderly and HIV/AIDS support. Taylor was also credited with revitalizing the congregation.
"I went through years of living within and without the closet," Taylor says of those days. "Many people knew I was gay."
There was no ambiguity about his sexual orientation when interviewed by the St. Mark's search committee.
"I was very clear in the interview process at the outset that I am a gay man and had a partner," Taylor says.
'His passion for social justice ...'
Midge Bowman, executive director of the Frye Art Museum, served on the search committee.
Bowman speaks of Taylor's charisma and "a simple goodness about him that draws people. There is a coherence to his personality."
John Hoerster, chancellor, or lawyer, for St. Mark's, chaired the search committee. Hoerster said the committee felt, with the high standards they had set, that it would take something of a miracle to find the right candidate.
Taylor fit the bill.
"Robert is very gracious, thoughtful, kind," Hoerster observes. "His passion for social justice is one of the things that attracted us."
Taylor's passion for social justice translated into Tent City taking up temporary residence on cathedral grounds. In 2001 Taylor was appointed chair of the Committee to End Homelessness in King County. The county adopted its 10-year plan last year.
St. Mark's Church in the World Ministries program's stated mission is to "work for justice, reconciliation and peace among all people."
Its various committees include an AIDS Care Team, Ecology/Spirituality Group, Ending Racism Group, Habitat for Humanity, Human Sexuality Group, Palestinian Concern Group, an Earth Ministry and others.
"Part of what I love in Seattle is this very strong sense of an emerging international city," Taylor says. "In Seattle there is a growing number of people who understand we're part of God's handiwork."
Two other topics are dear to Taylor's heart: "We can't talk about the future without talking about the environment and economic justice."
The war in Iraq is never far from Taylor's mind, either.
"I was deeply aware of the spurious evidence to justify the very serious decision to go to war," he says. "I remember feeling a deep sadness about it. Most people felt empathy for America" (after Sept. 11).
Taylor's challenge to go deeper means taking the religious impulse beyond aesthetic experience.
The extremity of his experience in South Africa, his sickness and healing, his anti-apartheid stance, his emerging gayness in an intolerant land, taught him much. In the safe-haven churches and private homes where he met black people Taylor remembers seeing, in the face of the Other, the image of God.
"All spirituality leads to compassion," Taylor says.
St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral is at 1245 10th Ave. E.[[In-content Ad]]
