John Taylor

Who was John Taylor?

John Vernon Taylor was an English bishop and theologian.

Taylor was educated at St Lawrence College, Trinity College, Cambridge, St Catherine's Society and Wycliffe Hall at Oxford, and the Institute of Education.

His father, John Ralph Strickland Taylor, had been Vice-Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and then Bishop of Sodor and Man from 1943 to 1954.

He was ordained in the Church of England in 1938., He spent five years engaged in Christian ministry in England,. He then felt drawn to overseas missionary work; unable to do so immediately because of wartime travel restrictions, he obtained a teaching qualification at London University. In 1945, with the ending of World War II, he moved to Mukono, Uganda, as a missionary working in theological education. He returned to England in 1954 and worked for the International Missionary Council. In 1959 he became Africa Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, and in 1963 he succeeded Max Warren as its General Secretary, remaining in post until 1973. He then served as Bishop of Winchester from 1974 to 1984, succeeding Falkner Allison, an old fashioned Evangelical much loved by all parties within the diocese.