Bernard Mayes

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Anthony Bernard Duncan Mayes (born October 10, 1929) is a retired teacher, broadcaster, university dean, lecturer and author. Born in Britain, Mayes is now a citizen of the United States of America.

After studying classical civilizations at Cambridge University, Mayes worked first as a high school teacher of Latin, Greek and history. He was then ordained as an Anglican priest. Mayes emigrated to the United States in 1958 and became an Episcopal worker-priest and director of a student house attached to Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and New York University (NYU). He then moved to the Diocese of California where he held a parish near San Francisco. While in San Francisco, Mayes founded San Francisco Suicide Prevention, later used as a model throughout the United States. Openly gay himself, Mayes organized a sexuality study center for the Episcopal Diocese of California. This ministry, originally known as the Parsonage, later evolved into the present-day Oasis organization.

During this time he was also a journalist for the BBC and other networks, and in 1968 helped organize the public broadcasting system in the United States, becoming a founding chairman of National Public Radio. He was an executive in both radio and television stations and became a consultant for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington, D.C., advising universities and communities across the country. In part due to these achievements, Mayes has been included in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Religion, and Who's Who in Entertainment. His papers are to be found in the Public Broadcasting Archive of the University of Maryland, the Special Collections of the University of Virginia, and in the Library of Congress.

In 1984 Mayes was hired by the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a lecturer in English after which he chaired the Department of Rhetoric and Communication Studies and later designed the school's Media Studies Program. In 1991 he co-founded the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual Faculty, Staff and Graduate Student Association at the University of Virginia, known as UVa Pride. From 1991 to 1999 he was an assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. In 1998 he received the University's Harrison Award for mentoring and in 1999, was given an award from the University's Seven Society.

On his retirement in 1999, the University of Virginia's LGBT alumni association, the Serpentine Society, gave Mayes a lifetime achievement award for his accomplishments and for his contributions to UVA in particular. Each year since then, the Serpentine Society has honored a distinguished graduate of UVA with a Bernard D. Mayes Award for service and leadership in the LGBT community. Mayes also received a lifetime achievement award from San Francisco Suicide Prevention.

[edit] Radio adaptations and commentaries

Mayes's dramatic works include: Homer's Odyssey, the Agamemnon of Aeschylus and Plato's Phaedo, each adapted from the original Greek; The Lord of the Rings a 1979 radio series in which he played the part of Gandalf; and several of Dickens' novels. Mayes received financial support from the National Endowment for the Arts for a dramatization of the life of Thomas Jefferson. He has also recorded several books for Blackstone Audio Books.

An illustrated collection of Mayes's lighter broadcast pieces was published in 1985 under the title This is Bernard Mayes in San Francisco. Mayes has also written numerous articles on topics in history, religion and the media.

[edit] Escaping God's Closet

In 2001, the University of Virginia Press published Bernard Mayes's autobiography, Escaping God's Closet: The Revelations of a Queer Priest, which won a Lambda Literary Award in the spirituality category.

The book tells the story of Mayes's life, culminating in his renunciation of both the priesthood and of religion. To explain this, Mayes articulates a philosophy that regards existence as a "soup" (he later dubbed the philosophy "Soupism" in lectures and elsewhere). Mayes argues in Escaping God's Closet that the state of the universe and our planet, together with the history and working of the human body, have now been satisfactorily explained by scientific methods of observation and experience to show that all things are assembled and come into being through the unending interaction, exchange and recyclement of preexisting energy. More information about Soupism can be found at http://www.soupism.net/Home/Welcome.html

According to Mayes, this implies that all things are interdependent and subject to constant, endless change. Mayes's philosophy of "soup" further asserts that that there can be neither a true beginning nor a true end of existence, and that belief in supernatural forces, gods, spirits and the soul is false, being the product of human imagination.

Mayes also argues that the interdependence, interaction and endless exchange within existence necessitate a particular ethic. This ethic is derived from the further belief that love for others, egalitarian government, universal education and respect for the planet and all that live upon it are critical for the continued health, well being and survival of the human species.