G.F. Taylor

George Floyd Taylor was born on August 10, 1881, in Duplin County, North Carolina. He had a severe birth injury that made it difficult to speak and walk, and made him an unlikely candidate for being a leading force in the early Pentecostal movement. Growing up on a farm near Magnolia, NC, Taylor showed a strong appetite for both intellectual and religious knowledge. His 1901 diary, for example, records his voracious reading in preparing to enroll at the University of North Carolina and frequent attendance at local Baptist, Methodist, Holiness, Presbyterian, and Universalist churches—as many as three on one Sunday. Taylor eventually settled on A. B. Crumpler’s new Holiness Church of North Carolina as closest to “the Bible Way.”

Taylor left college after one year for financial reasons and began his quest for a meaningful ministry in the growing Holiness Movement. In 1903, soon after experiencing sanctification as a “second blessing,” Taylor accepted his first pastorate and immediately opened the Rose Hill Holiness School. He also began sending articles to various Holiness periodicals, realizing that (he reflected in 1917) “parallel to my call to ministry was the conviction that I must write, so much so that I am unable to separate the two.” Taylor continued to pastor when needed but increasingly spent most of his considerable energy on evangelizing, educating, and editing on behalf of the Holiness cause—and, after 1907, the burgeoning Pentecostal revival that split the movement.

Taylor’s embrace of Pentecostal teachings radiating from Azusa Street cost him his roles as pastor and principal in Rose Hill. But he shortly relocated across the state to Falcon, NC, where he opened a Holiness school in 1907. He also helped his denomination embrace glossolalia as the initial evidence of a “third blessing.”

Taylor evangelized broadly that year, often conducting whole services in tongues followed by interpretation. He produced the first book-length theological defense of the Pentecostal revival, The Spirit and the Bride, but it took until May 1908 to find a publisher. His book articulated great confidence in the newly restored “spiritual gifts” to guide the end-times church, but by the time it was in print, Taylor had been criticized as a “fanatic” for allowing totally Spirit-led services. He started calling for greater balance but later regretted that by over-reacting to the critics, he “quenched the Spirit” and lost the “gift of interpretation.”

Taylor played a vital role in keeping his Holiness Church of North Carolina in the Pentecostal camp (despite Crumpler’s opposition) and led their merger with Fire-Baptized Holiness Church in 1910-1911. He served as General Superintendent of the resulting Pentecostal Holiness Church from 1913 to 1917, but negotiating church politics brought the tender-hearted Taylor more tears than joy. He stepped out of denominational leadership into his greatest roles: accepting the editorship on the church’s new weekly paper, The Pentecostal Holiness Advocate, in 1917, and founding Franklin Springs Institute (now Emmanuel University) after the church moved its headquarters to Georgia in 1919. He also continued publishing a full line of Sunday School literature.

In all three roles, Taylor shaped the knowledge of his church in ways that continued long after his passing at 53 years of age, on November 16, 1934, in Franklin Springs. Before his death, he also realized two long-held dreams: completing multiple degrees at Chapel Hill and writing a first-hand travel account of the Holy Lands.

For Further Reading:

Vinson Synan, “George Floyd Taylor: Conflicts and Crowns.” In Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders, ed. James R. Goff, Jr. and Grant Wacker, 325-345. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002.
H. Stanley York, George Floyd Taylor: The Life of an Early Southern Pentecostal Leader. Maitland, FL: Xulon Press, 2013.
The International Pentecostal Holiness Advocate, online repository (1917-1934) @ https://pentecostalarchives.org/.

George Floyd Taylor (1881–1934)

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