Province II Bishops Elect Taylor To Virgin Islands
Episcopal News Service. October 16, 1986 [86224]
NEWARK (DPS, Oct. 16) -- The bishops of Province II, meeting here in mid-October, elected the Rev. Egbert Don Taylor to succeed the Rt. Rev. Edward M. Turner as bishop of the Diocese of the Virgin Islands.
The election ended months of deadlock that included two successive diocesan conventions and over 30 ballots which failed to name a new bishop. Bishop Richard B. Martin was then made bishop-in-charge of the diocese and an agreement worked out to hand over the election to the province's House of Bishops.
Taylor, 49, was elected on the first ballot with an overwhelming majority of the bishops' votes. He shared that ballot with the Rev. Austin Cooper, rector of St. Andrew's, Cleveland, and the Rt. Rev. Alfred Reid, bishop suffragan of Montego Bay, Jamaica.
A native of Kingston, Jamaica, Taylor has been rector of the Church of the Holy Cross in Decatur, Ga. since 1978. He was educated at Kingston College, the University of the West Indies and the University of Toronto, receiving M.A. and S.T.M. degrees.
Taylor was ordained to the diaconate in September 1960 and to the priesthood in October of the following year. He served in the Anglican Church of his native country until 1974, when he was received into the Episcopal Church and became rector of St. Philip's Church, Buffalo, in the Diocese of Western New York, where he remained until he was called to Holy Cross. By coincidence, it is the bishop who received him, the Rt. Rev. Harold B. Robinson, who, as current president of Province II, presided over Taylor's election as bishop of the Virgin Islands.
The author of Living in Today's World Without Christ (1981), Taylor has also served on the Presiding Bishop's Commission on Evangelism and as chair of the Commission on Black Ministry.
Taylor and his wife, Rosalie Ann, married in December 1973, have one child.
The Diocese of the Virgin Islands, with its headquarters on St. Thomas, comprises the American and British Virgin Islands.