John Taylor (bishop of Winchester)

For other people named John Taylor, see John Taylor (disambiguation).

John Vernon Taylor (11 September 1914 – 30 January 2001) was an English bishop and theologian.

Taylor was educated at St Lawrence College, Trinity College, Cambridge, St Catherine's Society and Wycliffe Hall at Oxford, and the Institute of Education.^[1]

His father, John Ralph Strickland Taylor, had been Bishop of Sodor and Man from 1943 to 1954.

He was ordained in the Church of England in 1938.,^[2] After five years of Christian ministry in England,three of them as curate of St Helen's in the diocese of Liverpool, he moved to Mukono, Uganda, as a missionary working in theological education. He returned to England in 1954 and worked for the International Missionary Council. In 1959 he became Africa Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, and in 1963 he succeeded Max Warren as its General Secretary, remaining in post until 1973. He then served as Bishop of Winchester from 1974 to 1984, succeeding Falkner Allison, an old fashioned Evangelical much loved by all parties within the diocese.

He was the first priest to be consecrated directly to the See of Winchester since William Day in 1595, and was respected throughout the diocese and beyond mainly by liberals and modernists, but failed to gain the trust of Anglo-Catholics. A product of Wycliffe Hall,with connections with All Souls, Langham Place, he was nevertheless a liberal evangelical rather than a conservative one. When first consecrated, he initially caused some amusement by refusing to wear a mitre and ordering that it be carried in front of him on a cushion in processions. After that one occasion he revert to custom and wore it.

In the Diocesan contribution to Parish Magazines he wrote a series of articles entitled "Rose Window", which among other views asserted that Christ did not intend to found a church and that the new eucharistic rites in the ASB together with the New Mass of the Roman Catholic Church were the work of the Holy Spirit. From the pulpit he campaigned vigorously against the Book of Common Prayer and in favour of the Alternative Service Book. He achieved some notoriety by suggesting that a service to be said after abortion be added to the ASB.

The most notable of his books were The Go-Between God (1972) and The Christlike God (1992), both of which remain in print.

Bibliography

The Primal Vision: Christian Presence amid African Religion (London: SCM 1963; New Edition, SCM Classics 2001)
The Go-Between God: The Holy Spirit and the Christian Mission (London: SCM 1972; New Edition, SCM Classics 2002).
For All the World (1966)
Enough is enough (London: SCM: 1975)
The Growth of the Church in Buganda: An Attempt at Understanding (1980)
Weep Not for Me: Meditations on the Cross and the Resurrection (1986)
The Christlike God (London: SCM 1992).
Bishops on the Bible: Eight Bishops on the Role and Relevance of the Bible Today (1994)
A matter of life and death (London: SCM 1986)
Kingdom Come (1989)

Posthumous collections:

The Easter God and his Easter People (2003)
The Incarnate God (2006)

Biographical:

Poet, Priest and Prophet by David Wood.

External links

Obituaries

Christian Mission with John V Taylor

http://web.archive.org/web/20041118014037/http://www.geocities.com/ccom_ctbi/CCOM_documents/waterloo_seminar_dwood_mission_with_jvt.htm

References

^ ‘TAYLOR, Rt Rev. John Vernon’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 accessed 24 March 2008
^ ‘TAYLOR, Rt Rev. John Vernon’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 accessed 24 March 2008 states that he was ordained deacon in 1956 and priest in 1957, which is an error as Crockford's Clerical Directory states that he was made deacon in 1938 and priested in 1939 ,it also states correctly that he was Curate of All Souls, Langham Place from 1938 until 1940

Church of England titles
Preceded by Falkner Allison	Bishop of Winchester 1975–1985	Succeeded by Colin James

Bishops of Winchester since 1908

Herbert Ryle • Edward Talbot • Frank Woods • Cyril Garbett • Mervyn Haigh • Alwyn Williams • Falkner Allison • John Taylor • Colin James • Michael Scott-Joynt • Tim Dakin

Office holders in the Diocese of Winchester

The Bishop of Winchester • The Bishop of Southampton • The Bishop of Basingstoke • The Dean of Winchester • The Dean of Guernsey • The Dean of Jersey The Archdeacon of The Channel Islands The Archdeacon of Winchester The Archdeacon of Bournemouth

Persondata
Name	Taylor, John Vernon
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	11 September 1914
Place of birth
Date of death	30 January 2001
Place of death