BOYD, MALCOLM 1923-

THE ESPRESSO PRIEST

Media Background

Malcolm Boyd was ordained to the Episcopal ministry in 1951 after abandoning a promising career as a packager of shows for radio and television, during which he had served as the first president of the Television Producers Association of America, His studies included a year at Oxford and a year at Union Theological Seminary, where he studied under Reinhold Niebuhr. As the Protestant chaplain at Colorado State College, at the end of the decade he aroused controversy when he took himself and his message into the coffeehouses in Fort Collins because, he said, that was where young people who needed religion were. He resigned and moved to Wayne State University, where he again attracted notoriety with plays about social issues which he wrote and staged. His critics charged that they were obscene. In 1965 his eighth book, a collection of prayers called Are You Running with Me, Jesus?, became a best-seller. Boyd then moved to a new audience, reading his prayers and meditations in night-clubs such as the Hungry in San Francisco and to Charlie Byrd's jazz guitar music at both the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and the Broadway United Church of Christ in New York. He was committed to the civil rights movement and from 1964 to 1968 he functioned as "chaplain-at-large" to American universities.