Chiseled above the entrance to Boston’s historic Old South Church is a verse from Revelation that can stand as a congregational motto and, for senior minister Nancy Taylor ’81 M.Div, a personal credo.
“Behold, I have set before thee an open door,” it reads.
That image of openness—both mandate and command—is a continual signpost to her own sense of Christian identity, civic virtue, and interfaith endeavor.
“That verse from Revelation is literally carved in stone, big and bold,” says Taylor, a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council at YDS.
Not just a landmark
Old South Church, a United Church of Christ congregation now 345 years old, has roots stretching deep into colonial New England’s faith, including the turbulence of the 17th century witch trials. Today, with about 1,000 members, it is engaged headlong in 21st century challenges of providing good news and healing in a perilous time.
“Our building is a National Historic Landmark—yet our stewardship is not to protect it from the world but to open it, make people feel welcome in God’s house,” she says. “Our sanctuary is open and free to the public seven days a week. We, and our building, are porous to the city, permeable to the world.”
“So the church is two entities. We are both a historic leadership institution in Boston and also a very contemporary congregation.”
Each month some 12,000-15,000 strangers walk through Old South Church’s open door—tourists from all over the world, individuals who spontaneously stop in to pray for a deceased loved one, homeless people in difficult straits, immigrants looking for guidance, pedestrians who see the free hot coffee offer on cold days.
“We’re conscious of providing a radical Christian witness: All are welcome. This requires a commitment, because we also want the place to be safe. Our ushers, greeters, and sextons are trained to be welcoming but watchful.”
Peals, psalters, progressive witness
The big dangerous world arrives daily at the church’s doorstep. Old South Church stands near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, performs a Blessing of the Athletes service before the run, then peals the church’s Great Bell as each of the four elite winners cross the finish line. In April 2013, the marathon bombings erupted just outside the doors. The church wasn’t damaged, but it was within the FBI’s crime scene perimeter and so was closed off for eight days.
In the frantic chaos and aftermath, Taylor and the church stayed busy with material support and spiritual witness. This year the congregation’s Old South Knitters (some 30 weavers, knitters, and crocheters) organized a Marathon Scarf Project. Members collected handmade scarves in the color of royal blue and yellow, the marathon’s official colors, and distributed them among the 35,000 participants in the 2014 run. The scarves wrapped the runners in courage, she says.
“When the world is a wreck, we’re here to witness to another way. A mark of our ministry is a sense of urgency and clarity about the Christian message. The stakes are high—life and death, good and evil. Old South Church is committed to a high-stakes discipleship.”
The church made national headlines last year also when it sold a first-edition copy of the 1640 Bay Psalm Book for some $14 million, the highest price ever for a printed book auctioned for sale. The church still owns one other copy of the 1640 psalter.
Proceeds will be funneled into the church’s $23 million endowment to ensure long-term funding of ministries of mercy, justice and beauty, including commitments to dialogues on race and attention to HIV/AIDS.
“Old South Church had the extraordinary opportunity to convert an historic treasure into 21st century ministries,” she says. “After a long, deliberative process the church overwhelmingly agreed to do so. It was a decision for the future, a decision informed by Christian discipleship and thoughtful stewardship, a defining moment for us assuring that Old South’s progressive Christian witness will continue long into the future.”
Beauty in clear-glass windows
Taylor grew up in Long Island, regularly attending an Episcopal church. “It was church every Sunday. I was interested in liturgy, in the places where the veil is thin,” she says.
She earned a B.A. from Macalester College in Minnesota before coming to YDS. She wanted to be a theologian. But then she started getting exposure to the tough and needy lives of people she met through field ministry placements, in jails and prisons and inner-city neighborhoods.
“I was meeting people who needed to believe in a big, big story, a vision outside themselves, and I wanted to share it with them.”
So she changed her mind about pursuing systematic theology. But there was a problem: she was still Episcopalian and her bishop at the time did not support women’s ordination. She started going to UCC congregations in New Haven and there she found her true home.
“I still love the Episcopal Church, the sense of holiness found there, but I discovered beauty in the clear-glass windows in the UCC church on the green, and in the laughter and joy of people there. And there was a woman minister at the front. I thought: Wow, this works!”
Ordained in the UCC, she learned the real rudiments of being a minister in her first post—three tiny churches in rural Maine.
“That’s where I learned to be a pastor, a ministry of compassion and presence. I started a youth group and food pantry, but mostly it was about knowing people, a lot of visiting and listening.”
Later she led churches in Idaho and Connecticut. From 2001-2005, she served as president of the Massachusetts Conference of the UCC before coming to Old South Church, the colonial spiritual home of Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Phillis Wheatley.
High stakes, beloved community
For years Taylor has been known for her leadership and support of YDS alumni life. In 2009, she received the school’s annual award for Distinction in Congregational Ministry.
About her days at YDS, she says: “Who is not made a better person after a year of reading Dante Alighieri with Peter Hawkins? I watched as Letty Russell, fresh from the trenches of East Harlem Protestant Parish, and Margaret Farley chipped their way through glass ceilings. A full year of New Testament with Abe Malherbe, refectory conversations with ecumenical colleagues, and the full height and depth of the University at our disposal; I was like a kid in a candy store. As promising foresters, attorneys, and MBAs learned their craft just down the hill from us, I was imprinted by the splendid presence of Henri Nouwen on the one hand and the bright, sharp, prophetic utterances of Cornel West on the other.”
A sense of both the private and public dimensions of sin and redemption enlivens her idea of the gospel message.
“Sin is individual—lying, cheating, stealing—but it’s also collective and systemic—human trafficking, poverty, injustice. Jesus was always focused on our communal life together. The Lord’s Prayer—what happens in heaven can happen on earth—that’s the message from Jesus, Peter and Paul, and that’s our message now. The stakes for Christ’s beloved community are that high.”
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