Malcolm Boyd

Malcolm Boyd (born June 8, 1923) is an American Episcopal priest and author.

Early life

Boyd was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Beatrice Lowrie, a fashion model, and Melville Boyd, a financier and investment banker whose own father was an Episcopalian minister.^[1][2][3] Boyd was raised Episcopalian (his maternal grandfather was Jewish).^[4][5]

In the early 1930s Boyd's parents divorced and his mother retained custody of him.^[6] Boyd moved with his mother to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and then to Denver.^[6] During his time in college, despite early spiritual interests, he decided he was an atheist.^[6]

Secular career

In the 1940s Boyd moved to California and eventually became a Hollywood junior producer.^[7] He began moving up in the Hollywood world, eventually founding PRB, a production company, with Mary Pickford.^[7] At the same time, amidst all the abundance, he found himself looking for meaning in different places — including churches.^[7]

Priesthood

In 1951 Boyd began studying to become a priest at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California.^[8] He graduated in 1954 and was ordained a deacon.^[8] In 1955 he continued his studies abroad in England and Switzerland and then returned to Los Angeles for ordination as a priest.^[8] During 1956 and 1957, Boyd studied further at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and wrote his first book, Crisis in Communication.^[8] In 1959 Boyd became Episcopal Chaplain at Colorado State University.^[8] In the 1960s, Boyd became known as "the Espresso Priest" for his religiously-themed poetry-reading sessions at the Hungry i nightclub in San Francisco, at the time of the San Francisco Renaissance poetry movement.

Activism

Boyd went on to become a prominent white clergyman in the American Civil Rights Movement. He participated as one of the Freedom riders in 1961. Later that year, he became the Episcopal Chaplain at Wayne State University in Detroit. It was while he was here that he attended an interfaith conference for racial integration in Chicago. His presence at the event is mentioned by Malcolm X in his 1963 speech "The Old Negro and the New Negro." Malcolm X references Boyd's criticism of the speakers chosen for the conference. As Malcolm X said, "Rev. Boyd believes that the conference might have accomplished much good if the speakers had included a white supremacist and a Negro race leader, preferably a top man in the American Black Muslim movement." He quotes Boyd:

A debate between them (meaning this white racist and a Black Muslim) would undoubtedly be bitter, but it would accomplish one thing: it would get some of the real issues out into the open. In this conference we have not done that. The money spent to bring these people here has been wasted. We have done nothing to solve the race problem either in our churches or in our communities.^[9]

Boyd was also active in the anti-Vietnam War movement, marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.

Homosexuality

In 1977 Boyd came out of the closet, becoming the most prominent homosexual clergy person to come out. In the 1980s Boyd met the homosexual activist and author Mark Thompson, who would become his long-time partner.^[10] They live in Los Angeles, California. Boyd serves on the Advisory Board of White Crane Institute and is a frequent contributor to the homosexual wisdom and culture magazine White Crane.

Writings

Boyd is the author of over 30 books and, as of 2013, writes for The Huffington Post.^[11]

Books

• Crisis in Communication (Doubleday, 1957)
• Christ and Celebrity Gods (Seabury, 1958)
• Focus: Rethinking the Meaning of Our Evangelism (Morehouse-Barlow, 1960)
• If I Go Down to Hell (Morehouse-Barlow, 1962)
• The Hunger, the Thirst (Morehouse-Barlow, 1964)
• Are You Running with Me, Jesus? (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965)
• Free to Live, Free to Die (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1967)
• Malcolm Boyd's Book of Days (Random House, 1968)
• The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Stone and Other Fables (Harper & Row, 1969)
• As I Live and Breathe (Random House, 1969)
• My Fellow Americans (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970)
• Human Like Me, Jesus (Simon and Schuster, 1971)
• The Lover (Word Books, 1972)
• The Runner (Word Books, 1974)
• The Alleluia Affair (Word Books, 1975)
• Christian: Its Meanings in an Age of Future Shock (Hawthorn, 1975)
• Am I Running with You, God? (Doubleday, 1977)
• Take Off the Masks (Doubleday, 1978; rev. ed. HarperCollins 1993, White Crane Books 2008)
• Look Back in Joy (Gay Sunshine Press, 1981; rev. ed. Alyson, 1990)
• Half Laughing, Half Crying (St. Martin's Press, 1986)
• Gay Priest: An Inner Journey (St. Martin's Press, 1986)
• Edges, Boundaries and Connections (Broken Moon Press, 1992)
• Rich with Years: Daily Meditations on Growing Older (HarperCollins, 1994)
• Go Gentle Into That Good Night (Genesis Press, 1998)
• Simple Grace: A Mentor's Guide to Growing Older (Westminster John Knox, 2001)
• Prayers for the Later Years (Augsburg, 2002)
• A Prophet in His Own Land: The Malcolm Boyd Reader (edited by Bo Young/Dan Vera) (White Crane Books, 2008)

Edited by Malcolm Boyd

• On the Battle Lines: A Manifesto for Our Times (Morehouse-Barlow, 1964)
• The Underground Church (Sheed & Ward, 1968)
• When in the Course of Human Events (with Paul Conrad, Sheed & Ward, 1973)
• Amazing Grace: Stories of Lesbian and Gay Faith (with Nancy L. Wilson, Crossing Press, 1991)
• Race & Prayer: Collected Voices, Many Dreams (w/Chester Talton, Morehouse, 2003)
• In Times Like These…How We Pray (with J. Jon Bruno, Seabury, 2005)

References

External links

• Malcolm Boyd (official World wide web site) .
• "Malcolm Boyd: Survival with Grace", Gay today, Bad puppy .
• "Interview with Malcolm Boyd and Mark Thompson", White Crane 
• Kawamoto, Janet (June 2008), 50th anniversary of the founding of St. Timothy's Episcopal parish (interview), Indianapolis  (of which Boyd was rector).