The Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton

Denomination: The Episcopal Church (TEC)
Organization: The Chautauqua Institution

The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor of the Chautauqua Institution, is recently retired as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. Before his election as bishop in 2008, he was canon pastor of Washington National Cathedral and director of its Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage. In his over forty-three years of ordained ministry, he has served as a college chaplain, parish priest and professor of homiletics and liturgy at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

Bishop Sutton speaks widely on Christian spirituality, racial justice, nonviolence, and environmental sustainability. He co-founded Contemplative Outreach of Maryland and Washington (COMW), an ecumenical network of those committed to the daily practice of centering prayer, and is a contributor to the books, The Diversity of Centering Prayer, and Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace: Challenging the Epidemic of Gun Violence.

Recognized nationally as a thought leader on issues of racial reconciliation and reparations, Bishop Sutton testified before the US Congress with author Ta-Nehisi Coates and actor Danny Glover for the establishment of a national bipartisan commission to study and make recommendations for addressing reparations as a restitution for slavery and racial discrimination. He has appeared on National Public Radio, Fox News, PBS, The Chautauqua Institution and several other educational and religious institutions on the necessity of taking concrete actions of justice in order to achieve racial reconciliation in America.

His board memberships include the Institute for Christian, Jewish and Islamic Studies, the Institute for Sustainable Communities, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Bishops United Against Gun Violence.

Bishop Sutton is married to Sonya Subbayya Sutton, director of music at the Falls Church in Virginia, and immediate past president of the Association of Anglican Musicians.