Malcolm Boyd

Malcolm Boyd
Boyd in a 2010 interview
Born	June 8, 1923 Buffalo, New York, U.S.
Died	February 27, 2015 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cause of death	pneumonia
Occupation	Priest
Spouse(s)	Mark Thompson

Malcolm Boyd (June 8, 1923 – February 27, 2015) was an American Episcopal priest and author. He was active in the Civil Rights Movement as one of the Freedom Riders in 1961 and as a minister. Boyd also was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. In 1977 Boyd "came out", revealing that he was homosexual and becoming a spokesman for gay rights.

In 1965, Boyd published a book of prayers, Are You Running with Me, Jesus?, which became a bestseller. In 2005 it was published in a 40th-anniversary edition. In 2013 he served as a poet/writer in residence at St. Paul Cathedral in Los Angeles.

Boyd was born in 1923 in Buffalo, New York, the son of Beatrice Lowrie, a fashion model, and Melville Boyd, a financier and investment banker whose own father (also named Malcolm) was an Episcopal priest. Boyd was raised as an Episcopalian (his maternal grandfather was Jewish).

In the early 1930s Boyd's parents divorced; his mother retained custody of him. Boyd moved with his mother to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and then to Denver. During his time in college, despite early spiritual interests, he decided he was an atheist. In the 1940s Boyd moved to Hollywood and rented a room in $15.00 a week boarding house on Franklin Avenue. He owned few possessions and only one shirt, but was eventually given a position at a large agency and became a Hollywood junior producer. He began moving up in the Hollywood world, eventually founding PRB, a production company, with Mary Pickford, becoming her business partner. At the same time, amidst all the abundance and glamour of Hollywood, he found himself looking for meaning in different places, including churches.

In 1951 Boyd began studying to become a priest at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. He graduated in 1954 and was ordained a deacon. In 1955 he continued his studies abroad in England and Switzerland and returned to Los Angeles for ordination as a priest. 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. In 1959 Boyd became Episcopal Chaplain at Colorado State University. 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. Boyd recalled in an interview with The Lavender effect that the San Francisco Chronicle once called him "Marlon Brando in a collar," due to his Hollywood connections and attractive appearance.