Rabbi Susan Goldberg of Nefesh salutes Bishop John Harvey Taylor at the Guibord Center gala on July 17. At left is Lo Sprague, Guibord Center director; flanking Taylor are Sherry Purcell, president of the Immaculate Heart Community, which is headquartered at St. Paul’s Commons; and Tasneem Noor of NewGround, who is an interfaith minister in the Diocese of Los Angeles. Photo: Bob Williams
[The Episcopal News] Recognizing the Rt. Rev. John Harvey Taylor’s ecumenical and interfaith collaboration throughout his tenure as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, a new annual youth award in his name was announced during the July 17 annual gala of The Guibord Center – an L.A.-based nonprofit dedicated to building understanding among people of diverse religious traditions.
Hosted at the Huffington Center of L.A.’s historic St. Sophia’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral, the gala drew more than 150 attendees in support of The Guibord Center’s mission to “bring people together, to challenge assumptions, unleash the Holy and affirm the faith that transforms the world,” exploring “religion inside out.” Theme for the evening was “We Are the Light.”
Saluting Taylor as a leader “who has the courage to step forward into the difficult places and hold place for us to come together … and who cares deeply about youth,” Dr. Lo Sprague, Guibord Center president, said the new John Harvey Taylor Award will be awarded in 2026 “for the outstanding articulation of spiritual values through media by interfaith youth.” A $5,000 gift will launch this joint annual project in partnership with Bloy House, the Episcopal Theological School at Los Angeles, Sprague said.
Bloy House is co-located with diocesan offices in Echo Park at St. Paul’s Commons, also home to the Nefesh Jewish synagogue and the ecumenical Immaculate Heart Community in a cooperative arrangement welcomed by Taylor and also including events hosted by NewGround: A Muslim-Christian Partnership for Change. In her remarks, Sprague highlighted the Echo Park collaboration, inviting partner leaders to the podium to attest to its vitality and the bishop’s leadership.
“I tell people, this is where we live,” said Rabbi Susan Goldberg of Nefesh. “We live together here at the Episcopal Diocese, at St. Paul’s Commons … It is such a beautiful honor to be there, to be in a shared sacred space together that is so because of what it is, and because of what we make of it together every day.
“I have a word about Bishop Taylor,” Goldberg continued. “In the Jewish tradition, we talk about our spiritual values. They are called middot. I think in the Christian tradition, they might be called virtues. And we live by our middot, by our sacred values, at Nefesh, a middot-driven community. How we walk and talk and live our values is at the core of what it is to be a person of faith, and let me tell you, it is a thing of beauty to witness somebody who walks and talks his values in the way that you do, Bishop Taylor. … You come forward with your beautiful kindness, with your enthusiasm, and with your humility, and we’re all the better for it. Thank you.”
Goldberg added: “We talk about humility, in the Jewish tradition, as a balance between taking up the space that one needs to fulfill in the world, that’s important for you to fulfill, while at the same time, leaving space for other people to take the space that they need. It is a lifelong practice to both figure out when do I need to step forward and take some space and speak out for justice as we hear Bishop Taylor do continuously, and when do I need to step back and make space for other people, as he has literally done for us in the building and also what he does all the time.”
Dr. Sherry Purcell, president of the Immaculate Heart Community, praised Taylor as “someone who listens closely, someone who is not fearful to speak truth to power and take a stand for human rights and dignity, someone who emanates goodness and love for everyone and someone who is a visionary.
“For all of us here who know Bishop John Taylor, we are lucky, we are blessed to have crossed paths with you,” Purcell added, underscoring the “blessing” that the Immaculate Heart Community has experienced in moving its offices in 2022 to St. Paul’s Commons, relocating from their longtime home at Western and Franklin avenues in Hollywood. “We learned that Episcopal ministries at the Commons were closely aligned with our own justice and social justice work … and we began to feel that [the move] was meant to be, and we felt like we were home … .
“Our presence in St. Paul’s Commons has helped the Immaculate Heart Community to more fully live our goal statement because we are united with people of God, from many faith traditions on a regular basis at St. Paul’s Commons,” Purcell said. “And through the connections we have made there, we are working with them to strategically change some of the most egregious practices of our times … . On a personal note, I thank you on the bottom of my heart, and I thank you on behalf of the community for the expanded opportunities that you have given us. We will be forever grateful to God, who found a way to connect our paths.”
Introducing the evening’s program, and commenting on the current ICE raids and immigration injustice in Los Angeles, Sprague noted that “within blocks of this beautiful ballroom, families are being ripped out of their jobs, their homes, their churches. Their kids are being pulled out of schools, their spouses out of jobs, or out of court, and thrown into unmarked vans. Wives and mothers are left standing in the street with the love of their life, their husbands, their breadwinner, pulled away from them, indefinitely.”
Sprague pledged that “The Guibord Center will continue to do what we’ve been doing, helping people find ways to hold on to their center and their compassion in these tough times, offering a spiritual lens so that we can find that we are truly in this together. … Tonight’s dinner is about spiritual solidarity, as we recognize that surely we are in this together, that we, each one of us, are the light.”
Sprague noted Taylor’s longstanding friendship with the late Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord, her spouse and the center’s founder. “They were great friends who often strategized together in the well-being of the diocese and the city of Los Angeles,” Sprague said. “Bishop Taylor continues to be a source of steadfast strength and wisdom for me … he is an active member of the Center’s advisory board, as well as widely recognized and deeply respected in wider ecumenical and interfaith work.”
In accepting the center’s honor, Taylor thanked colleagues in the work and noted: “As our society grows more secular, it also grows more selfish. Power is in thrall to a technology-fixated, dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest civic anti-theology that goes against everything everyone in this room believes and proclaims. In some settings, it’s no longer fashionable to stand up for the dignity of every human being. That’s when our witness can become dangerous. That’s when the winds of darkness will try to extinguish the light of the candle that we hold high.
“Saying we are the light means that we get that darkness is gathering around us….,” Taylor continued. (Additional text of his remarks is here.) “It’s as though, by the light of their inspiration in launching The Guibord Center, Gwynne and Lo could see all the way through to this moment – as though they understood what would be required of us in this time and place. Let’s stand with them. Let’s stand with divine love. Let’s help The Guibord Center keep the holy lamps lit.”
