Rev. Adam Russell Taylor is president of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community. Follow him on X @revadamtaylor.
Taylor previously led the Faith Initiative at the World Bank Group and served as the vice president in charge of Advocacy at World Vision U.S. and the senior political director at Sojourners. He has also served as the executive director of Global Justice, an organization that educates and mobilizes students around global human rights and economic justice. He was selected for the 2009/2010 class of White House Fellows and served in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs and Public Engagement. Taylor is a graduate of Emory University, the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. Taylor also serves on the Independent Sector Board, the Global Advisory Board of Tearfund UK, and is a member of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellowship. Taylor is ordained in the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention and serves in ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va.
Speaking Topics
- Human rights and global poverty
- Racial justice
- Voting rights
- Climate justice
- Economic justice
- Immigration
- Peace and nonviolence
- His most recent book, A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community
Speaking Format
- Virtual and in-person events, also available for preaching
Languages
- Fluent in English
Past Notable Events
- Tufts University’s Russell Lecture
- United Church of Christ General Synod Gathering Keynote
- Children’s Defense Fund Staff Retreat Keynote
- Parliament of the World Religions
- Christian Community Development Association Keynote Panel
Posts By This Author
In Our Flawed Democracy, Voting Is a Renewable Resource
When we say the upcoming election is the most consequential election in our lifetime, it is not hyperbole or political spin, but a reflection of just how stark the choices have become and the perilous nature of the crises that our communities, our nation, and our world faces.
Finding Our Spiritual Vibranium
This season of inescapable Black death has been on a traumatizing repeat cycle — from the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on our community to the senseless and brutal deaths at the hands of police violence — so in that moment my mind and spirit couldn’t process or take another loss, particularly of a Black man who embodied such regal strength and aspirational hope.
This Gets Worse: What Happens If Congress Fails to Act on Pandemic Relief
We must continue to demand that our elected officials secure a deal that adequately helps all who need it, especially as current reporting suggests that the two sides are still far apart on what should be in the final bill.
Trump's Dangerous Election Rhetoric
This morning President Trump posted the following unconscionable tweet regarding our upcoming election that dishonors Congressman Lewis’ legacy and poses a direct threat to our democracy:
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
The Challenge Civil Rights Giants Leave Us
I spent many hours just looking at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The words that kept coming to me were “courage” and “gratitude,” and the question that surfaced was: What bridge we will now have to cross?
Does the GOP Only Want to Win Elections Through Voter Suppression?
VOTER SUPPRESSION IS real, and voter fraud is an exaggerated myth. America should be alarmed about these basic truths, because the reality of voter suppression and the dangerous lie of voter fraud represent a real threat to the legitimacy of the November election and the health of our democracy, which was sick long before the devastating arrival of COVID-19.
In June, Georgia’s primary exposed glaring problems and injustices that do not bode well for the November general election. People in Atlanta—particularly the parts that are predominantly African American—experienced onerous waiting times due to failures with new voting machines, ill-equipped poll workers, and the secretary of state’s failure of leadership. This followed the debacle in Wisconsin, where the Republican-controlled legislature insisted on an in-person primary at the height of the pandemic, forcing people to choose between their health and their right to vote.
The U.S. prides itself as being a beacon of democracy, and yet instead of making it easy for every eligible citizen to vote, some elected officials are erecting barriers to make voting more difficult, which they try to justify with spurious claims of voter fraud. For example, in April President Trump admitted why he and many Republicans oppose the expansion of voting by mail, saying that “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” In other words, according to Trump, making it easier for people to vote, even amid a pandemic, disadvantages Republicans.
For Heaven’s Sake, 'Wear a Damn Mask'
How did wearing a mask become a partisan act rather than a public health imperative? Tragically, even wearing a mask has fallen prey to our culture wars and political polarization.
The Struggle for Voting Rights Has Not Ended
Good Trouble is a timely and deeply moving film, particularly in this moment of national awakening and reckoning around police violence and systemic racism, and as we approach what feels like the most consequential election in my lifetime.
‘A Change Is Gonna Come’: Reimagining Public Safety
Transforming our policing and reimagining public safety will require much more dialogue, bridge-building, and, ultimately, sustained public pressure.
The Church and the Bible Are Not Presidential Props
Last night, Donald Trump used and abused a church, and a Bible, as presidential props for a photo-op. In a violent and authoritarian act, the president of the United States took the space of a church and used a picture of a Bible to make a political move.
Political Delay and Denial Has Always Been Deadly
AMERICA ENTERED THE COVID-19 crisis in a dangerously divided and polarized place, politically and culturally. But by embracing our interdependence, protecting the weakest members of our society, and showing equal concern for one another, we can emerge from this crisis more unified and committed to reimagining and rebuilding a radically more just and healthy nation and world.
This crisis has the potential to force us out of our selfish hyperindividualism; it instead calls us to demonstrate solidarity and love for our neighbor by protecting ourselves and others by sheltering at home and practicing physical distancing for as long as is deemed necessary for the sake of everyone.
Two decades ago, I preached my first sermon, which reflected upon 1 Corinthians 12 and spoke to the imperative to heal the global body from the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which at that time was ravaging the continent of Africa and felt insurmountable. I believed then that the AIDS crisis and our response to it would define my generation, just as the coronavirus will likely be a defining moment for a new generation. I believe there are lessons we can glean from the AIDS pandemic that can help us get through the current crisis.
George Floyd Deserved to Breathe Free
I can’t breathe.
These were George Floyd’s desperate cries for help as he gasped for breath and clung to life due to the senseless brutality of four police officers in Minneapolis, one of whom, Derek Chauvin, had his knee and weight crushing Floyd’s neck.
A Test of Global Leadership
Nearly 20 years later, we must again push our government to expand global aid to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. As Christians, the moral imperative is clear. But in order to convince the powers at be, we must also argue that protecting the American economy and our national public health requires that we move from investing millions to investing billions — perhaps even trillions — in order to mount an adequate global response.
This Planet Can’t Breathe
IN 2018, CLIMATE SCIENTISTS reached a consensus that, based on current global emissions, we have roughly 12 years to dramatically reverse course before we cause irreparable harm to our planet and our way of life. These and other predictions cause me to lose sleep at night, particularly when I think about the world that my two sons will inherit.
But this alarming trend is not inevitable, nor are we powerless to change course. Preventing the worst consequences and putting the planet on a zero-carbon trajectory will require a revolution of social and political will. Catalyzing this revolution will require new language, new metaphors, and new messengers.
“I can’t breathe.” These were the prophetic words said by my pastor, Rev. Howard John-Wesley, in a sermon in which he made the case that we are on the brink of ecological destruction. He preached about the thousands of species that go extinct every year. He emphasized that Americans constitute 5 percent of the world’s population but burn 25 percent of the world’s fossil fuels. These and other trends of conspicuous consumption and abuse are driving us toward global catastrophe.
The Time to Act Like a Community Is Now
As I write this piece, my sons are not at school but home with me, because their elementary school decided to start Spring Break three days early to slow possible transmission of the virus and keep the community as safe as possible. While this has caused some inconvenience, I realize just how fortunate I am — I can work from home when needed and I have access to both sick leave and personal days. This is not the case for the majority of workers in the country. Congress will likely be voting soon on the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which would provide urgently needed funding and provisions for free testing, three weeks of paid sick leave, unemployment insurance, supplemental food stamps, and nutritional support to kids who depend on school lunch. I’m hopeful and prayerful that the White House and Congress can transcend politics in this moment and pass this bill, because the virus knows no party and a bolder response is overdue.
Your Right to Vote: The Imago Dei Imperative
Voter suppression tactics jeopardize the very legitimacy of the 2020 election. They also represent an assault on human dignity and imago dei, because as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so aptly put it, “So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote, I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact — I can only submit to the edict of others.”
When Your Nation Is Stuck in a Spiritual Desert
LENT IS A season of introspection and reflection as we prepare for Easter. By observing the 40 days of Lent, we replicate Jesus’ sacrifice and withdrawal into the desert for 40 days.
When I was 16, my mom accepted a new job at the University of Arizona, and my parents made the untimely decision to uproot our family and move from the Pacific Northwest to the Arizona desert just before my last year in high school. As a result, I know something about deserts.
Deserts are not simply physical places—they are also spiritual and emotional seasons in our lives. What the physical desert does to the body, the spiritual desert does to our soul, making us feel drained and depleted. In moments of spiritual desert, we can feel disoriented and alienated from God. St. John of the Cross referred to these as dark nights of the soul—times when “we feel a spiritual drought and estrangement from God.”
Nations can also go through what feel like periods of desert. America seems stuck in a dire one now. The current political crisis represents a test of our democracy and of the witness of the church. U.S. Christianity is also facing desert times as younger Christians abandon the church in record numbers.
In Times of Crisis, Christians Must Seek and Act on the Truth
We can respect a diversity of Christian opinion around whether impeachment is the necessary and only remedy to the president’s actions and whether the president’s offenses rise to the constitutional level of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” But what I can’t understand or respect are direct efforts to subvert the truth, deflect attention, and defend the indefensible.
We Need the Beloved Community Now More than Ever
THIS SUMMER, WHILE working on a forthcoming book, I spent a great deal of time thinking, praying, and wrestling with identifying a moral vision and narrative that would be capable of uniting our country and counteracting its perilous levels of polarization. When I look back over American history, “the beloved community” stands out as perhaps the most hopeful and transformational moral vision, one that I believe can be recast and reimagined to unite most Americans around a bigger story of us. The beloved community combines civic ideals with deep spiritual and religious values—that’s why it’s a vision that can resonate across religions and with those who check “none of the above” on religious-identification surveys.
The term was coined in the early days of the 20th century by the philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce. However, it was Martin Luther King Jr., as well as other leaders in the civil rights struggle, who popularized the term. Dr. King spoke about the beloved community in a 1956 speech he gave at a rally following the Supreme Court decision desegregating buses in Montgomery, Ala. King said, “the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of [people].”
Why A 1949 Classic Is Required Reading in 2019
Howard Thurman’s seminal and seemingly timeless book Jesus and the Disinherited, published in 1949, should be required reading in every seminary—maybe even in every church.
Thurman served as a moral anchor of the civil rights movement. His career spanned the breadth of the movement, from his tenure as a professor of religion at Morehouse College and his service as dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University to pastoring the nation’s first multiracial, interfaith church, The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, and becoming the first black dean of Boston University’s chapel. A visionary religious leader and thinker, he was a guide and inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, Marian Wright Edelman, Bayard Rustin, Jesse Jackson, and many others in the struggle for civil rights, justice, and freedom.
Thurman has also had a profound impact on my own faith journey, particularly in inspiring and sustaining my commitment to faith-rooted activism.