Gardner Taylor: poet laureate of the pulpit - Cover Story

Christian Century, Jan 4, 1995 by Michael Eric Dyson

Gardner Taylor is the greatest preacher living, dead or unborn," Wyatt Tee Walker proclaimed as he introduced Taylor at a service marking Walker's 25th anniversary as pastor of Harlem's Canaan Baptist Church. Among black Baptists, the pastoral anniversary is an often lavishly orchestrated event, joining praise and pocketbook in feting a congregation's spiritual head. But on the crisp October morning of his celebration, Walker shared the spotlight with the man Time magazine in 1980 dubbed "the dean of the nation's black preachers." David Dinkins, then mayor of New York, also spoke at the service, and declared that Taylor's preaching could be described in only two ways: "good and better."

These free-flowing encomiums might seem the natural excesses of a feel-good service. But they mirror the sentiments of many - black and white, religious and secular, preaching authorities and laypeople - who have been entranced, even transformed, by Taylor's oratorical gifts.

Taylor himself is more modest. When I mentioned Time's declaration he deflected the tribute with characteristic humor. "You know what they say a dean is, at least of eastern schools?" he asked. "Somebody too smart to be president, but not smart enough to teach." He smiled, shrugged his shoulders in self-deprecation and deadpanned, "So much for being dean."

His humor and lack of hubris, combined with his preaching genius, have won the energetic 74-year-old Taylor a legion of admirers during his half century of ministry. Most of his career has been spent as pastor of Brooklyn's 14,000-member Concord Baptist Church of Christ. He made that pulpit perhaps the most prestigious in black Christendom before retiring in 1990 after 42 years of service. The imposing, block-long gray brick church is a massive monument to black Christianity's continuing vitality. Under Taylor's leadership, Concord built a home for the aged, organized a fully accredited grade school (headed for over 30 years by Taylor's wife, Laura), and developed the Christ Fund, a million-dollar endowment for investing in the Brooklyn community

For Taylor, his success is an example of how God works in human life. "It is as if God said `I'm going to take this unlikely person from the Deep South and I'm going to open opportunities for him to show [the world] what I can do,'" he says.

Taylor was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1918, the only son of the Rev. Washington and Selina Taylor. "My father was a huge, tall ebony man who had no trace of anything but Africa in him," Taylor says. "And he was extraordinarily arrogant about it." By contrast, his mother "looked white." After her husband's death, Selina Taylor attended "normal school" to become a teacher, later earning a degree from Southern University through extension courses. In one of this four books of sermons Taylor writes that despite his parents' lack of formal education, they "had a natural feel for the essential music of the English language wedded to an intimate and emotional affection for the great transactions of the scriptures." The same is true of their son.

Although his father died before Taylor was 13, his influence, more than that of any other preacher - especially his eloquent declamation and his wide range of reference - marks his son's preaching style. "Dad didn't finish high school, but he read voraciously. Sixty years ago, he spoke about Darwin's survival of the fittest and the battle of Thermopylae."

"Wash" Taylor enjoyed a wide reputation among Louisiana blacks for his brilliant preaching. Carl Stewart, Gardner Taylor's lifelong friend and a former basketball coach at Southern University, has for the past five years hosted a Baton Rouge radio show devoted exclusively to broadcasting the younger Taylor's sermons. Stewart illustrates Wash Taylor's preaching appeal by telling the story of a discussion between two Louisianans about an upcoming funeral. "`Hey, are you going to the funeral today?' one person asked. His friend said, `Who's dead?' and the other fella retorted, `It really doesn't matter. Wash Taylor is preaching."'

Despite his father's influence, Taylor had hopes of becoming a lawyer. With that in mind he attended Louisiana's Leland College. "Clarence Darrow fascinated me," he says. And because an aunt who helped raise him held the ministry in contempt, Taylor confesses that his view of religion wasn't exalted. "I thought preaching was a foolish way for people of normal intelligence to waste their lives."

But Taylor's plans changed dramatically when he survived a deadly automobile accident in which two men died. Taylor experienced his "call" in that event, discerning God's claim on his life: "I thought that God must want me to be his lawyer." Instead of enrolling at the University of Michigan Law School where he had been admitted, Taylor went to the now-defunct Oberlin School of Theology. At Oberlin he read avidly, following writers ranging from Heywood Broun to Walter Lippmann. Their "literary styles affected me," he says. He also served as pastor of a church in nearby Elyria, Ohio, and after graduation he pastored one in Baton Rouge, before being summoned at the tender age of 30 to Brooklyn's Concord Baptist Church, then with a membership of more than 5,000.