Robert V. Taylor

Robert V. Taylor (born c. 1958 in Cape Town, South Africa) is a priest in the Episcopal Church USA and an activist for social justice. He was installed in 1999 as dean of St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle, making him the first openly gay Episcopal dean in the United States and, at the time, the highest-ranking openly gay priest in the Episcopal Church.

As a young man in South Africa, Taylor was an anti-apartheid activist. His apartment was raided by government forces in 1980, and he was threatened with compulsory military service. Unwilling to support the apartheid regime, he sought counsel from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who advised him to flee the country and pursue his priestly studies in America. Tutu assisted him and remained his friend and mentor thereafter.

He received his Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1984, having previously earned a Bachelor of Arts at Rhodes University.

Taylor served as parish priest at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Peekskill, New York, from 1989 to 1999, where he introduced significant outreach ministries including child care, services for the elderly, and HIV/AIDS ministers, and was credited with strengthening membership.

In 1999 he was elected Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle making him the highest ranking openly gay clergy priest at the time. In Seattle, he co-founded "Faith Forward", an interfaith initiative on public policy, politics, and spirituality. He was an organizer of "Seeds of Compassion", which drew over 150,000 attendees to an interfaith series of events on compassion during which he hosted a dialog between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. He initiated a countywide response to homelessness, becoming the founding chair of the Committee to End Homelessness in King County, which has united 35 jurisdictions, foundations, social service agencies, corporate leaders, interfaith leaders, and others in a unified effort to end homelessness.

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