On Easter Sunday afternoon, the Reverend Gardner Calvin Taylor, age ninety-six, slipped away from this world to a better one, for “a taller town than Rome and an older place than Eden,” as he was wont to refer to heaven. His passing marks the end of an era in the history of the American pulpit. Often called the “dean of black preachers,” in reality Taylor transcended racial, social, and denominational categories. At his death, tributes poured in from all across the spectrum—from President Obama to conservative Southern Baptists. What made Gardner Taylor so great?
Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1918—the same year Billy Graham was born—Taylor was the son of a Baptist pastor and the grandson of slaves. As a young boy, he would listen to the stories of those who had survived the dark night of human bondage. “You could almost still hear the echo of hounds baying on the trail of runaway slaves,” he recalled. Such stories shaped Taylor’s view of the world and gave him a social conscience that would inform his life’s work.
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