W. David O. Taylor is an Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of several books, including A Body of Praise (Baker Academic, 2023), Open and Unafraid (Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins, 2020), and Glimpses of the New Creation (Eerdmans, 2019). In 2016, he produced a short film on the Psalms with Bono and Eugene Peterson. An Anglican priest, he lives in Austin, Texas, with his children and artist wife, Phaedra, with whom he has produced three sets of illustrated prayer cards (here, here, and here), and you can usually find him on Twitter (@wdavidotaylor) or Instagram (@davidtaylor_theologian).
Phaedra Jean Taylor was raised on the rocky shores of northern Scotland, where a love of all things old seeped into her bones. She completed her BFA in sculpture at the University of North Texas, where she was also awarded the Most Outstanding Student in the Visual Arts award. She interned at the Chinati Foundation, in Marfa Texas. Since then she has been exploring the disciplines of encaustic painting and watercolor. Her work has been exhibited in juried, group, and solo exhibitions, and is held in private collections of various individuals around the globe. Phaedra lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, Anglican priest and theologian, David Taylor, and two children, Blythe and Sebastian. Together they make creative liturgical resources for families and church communities.
“Whatever it is that I am doing in the name of peace, I’m doing it in the name of the Prince of Peace. But then we experience some distortion of our faith if we’re only in sequestered prayer or only in the autonomous kind of action mode. It takes a village to become the kind of person where prayer and peacemaking work well together. I don’t think I can do that on my own. I don’t think I’m designed to do it on my own. Ideally, God wants the community to bear that burden.”