Malcolm Boyd, Episcopal priest and gay Christian pioneer, dies at 91

Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopal priest and pioneer among gay Christians, died February 27 at the age of 91.

Boyd was an A-list producer in Holly­wood until he gave up that life in 1951 to become an Epis­copal priest. He was one of the Free­dom Riders in 1961 and worked in Alabama and marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma.

In 1977, he came out as a gay man, and in the 1980s and 1990s he ministered to those affected by HIV/AIDS.

Boyd wrote 28 books, including Are You Running with Me, Jesus?

Boyd also wrote for the Chris­tian Century on prayer and social issues. In a personal essay in 1974, he wrote about growing up in New York, then moving as a teenager to Texas and Oklahoma.

“I reject the self-righteous claims of both half-moons, the social gospel and the personal gospel. Each is inadequate without the other,” he wrote. “Christ is re­duced to a perpetual caricature of an angry young man overturning money-changers’ tables inside the temple; or else he is locked—locked—inside a stained-glass window (where, blue-eyed and blond-haired, he gazes limply at the dew-wet grass at his bare feet).” —Religion News Service with added sources