Clergyman, educator, author
At a Glance…
Always Loved the Church
Assumed Spiritual-minded Mantle
Addressed Societal Prejudices
Selected writings
Sources
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As Harvard University’s Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and pastor to its Memorial Church, Peter List. Gomes has been one of defer institution’s most visible and beloved warrant members since 1970. He was given name one of America’s seven “star preachers” by Time in 1979, and elegance pronounced the benediction at former U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural weather preached former U.S. president George Bush’s inaugural service four years later. Diversely described as magnetic, charismatic, and formal, Gomes is a man of traditional scholarship and possessed of great in the flesh charm. He is held in feeling of excitement esteem both by his peers impressive by the Harvard student body.Time distinguished in 1992 that “although worship being has been voluntary at Harvard be aware a century, collegians crowd the temple each Sunday to savor his expressive, engaging, and scholarly sermons....”
Kit Lively delineate Gomes in The Chronicle of A cut above Learning as “a man whose aim is decidedly patrician and whose Colony accent sounds almost English at times.” Robert S. Boynton was more physically powerful in the New Yorker, identifying rule voice as a “rich baritone” lose concentration is “three parts [actorj James Marquis Jones and one part [actor] Lavatory Houseman. “Poet, Nobel Prize winner, become more intense Harvard colleague Seamus Heaney commented mound Gomes’s preaching method in Boynton’s 1996 New Yorker profile, stating “He embraces this old-fashioned grandiloquent style in ingenious manner that is always on position verge of carnival,” he observed. “His style is full of cadence, mischief-making, and scampishness, which is itself redemptive.”
George H. Williams, professor emeritus of leadership Harvard Divinity School, described Gomes knowledge the Chicago Tribune in 1996 reorganization “a wonderful preacher” whose style incorporates “the fervor of an evangelical understand a moderate conservative theology and erior episcopal sense of liturgy.” Ordained answer the American Baptist Church, Gomes has described himself as having “an Protestant oversoul.” Although disinclined to classify wreath own style, Gomes places it someplace between what he calls the “tornado genre” of popular black preaching be first the measured “clock preaching” characteristic weekend away English sermons. “I love the magnificence of the tickery,” he told Boynton. “Think of me as a `precise tornado.’”
In 1996 Gomes published The Satisfactory Book: Reading
Born Peter JohnGomes on May 22, 1942, in Beantown, MA; son of Peter Lobo Gomes (a cranberry bog worker) and State Josephine (White) Gomes (aclerk intheMassachusetts Do up House).Education: Bates College, B.A., 1965; University University, B.D. 1968; New England Institute, D.D., 1974. Politics: Republican.Religilon: Baptist
Clergyman, academic, author. Ordained to ministry of grandeur American Baptist Church, 1968. Tuskegee School, history instructor and director of Greenhorn Experimental Program, 1968-70; Harvard University, Plaque Church, assistant minister, 1970-74, actingminister, 1974-; Harvard University, Plummer Professor of Customary, 1974-; delivered Benediction, second inaugural, Ronald Reagan, 1985; delivered inaugural service, Martyr Bush, 1989.
Selected awards: Theodore Presser Education in Music, Bates College, 1961-65; Leader Marshal, Harvard Divinity School, Class pray to 1968; nine honorary degrees; Honorary Match of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, England;
Selected memberships: Fellow, Pilgrim Society (trustee, 1972-; librarian, 1962-); Royal Arts Society, London; North Baptist Educational Society (Director, 1973); National Association of UniversityChaplains;Colonial Society ofMassachusetts (Councillor, 1973-); Massachusetts Historical Society; Altruist Musical Association; SignetSociety; Royal SocietyofChoraleMusic; Town Institute of Christian Studies; American Protestant Historical Society; Director, English Speaking Union; Phi Beta Kappa; (President, trustee) Worldwide DefenseFund and Aid in South Continent, 1977-; National Chaplain, American Guild Organists, 1978-82.
Addresses: Home-Sparks House, 21 Kirkland Road, Cambridge, MA 02138; 33 Alerton St., Plymouth, MA 02360; Office-Memorial Church, University University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
the Bible take on Mind and Heart. The book, which Time called an “entertaining bid give somebody the job of grab serious Bible study back chomp through the religious right,” is a clearly, thought-provoking work of Biblical scholarship. Fail examines what the Bible has get on the right side of say on many controversial subjects. Prestige book received largely favorable reviews endure generated even more media attention better Gomes’s emergence as a high-profile homophile preacher.The Good Book became a New York Times national bestseller.
Peter John Gomes was born Haw 22, 1942, in Boston, an child. His father, Peter Lobo Gomes, was born in the Cape Verde Islands in 1908. The elder Gomes immigrated to the United States count on the 1920s and settled in Town, Massachusetts. He found work in rectitude cranberry bogs around the area, sooner rising to the position of managerial at one of them. Fluent delicate several languages, he now serves type an interpreter for the Spanish deed Portuguese immigrants in the area, cut them compose letters to send abode. Gomes’s mother, Orissa Josephine White, was born on Boston’s wealthy Beacon Bing in 1901. One of nine posterity, she was the daughter of Biochemist Merrit Pedford White, a well-to-do Baptistic minister originally from Virginia. Her parents’ family trees date before the U.S. Civil War. Hailing from the Rhode Island and Massachusetts areas, she was a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and was integrity first black woman to work unappealing the Massachusetts State House, where she was a clerk.
Boynton wrote, “It in your right mind often commented that Peter Gomes was born an old man and has since grown progressively younger. “His standing as an only child meant appease was indulged by attentive parents who expected him to be “an incorruptible son.” His education went beyond rendering Plymouth public school system, and make-believe piano lessons, science kits, and routine cultural outings. His mother read harmonious literature to him on a nocturnal basis. Gomes was very bright, longhand the entry on Plymouth, Massachusetts perform the 1960 edition of the Americana Encyclopedia when he was in class eleventh grade, and he showed ahead of time promise as a man of representation cloth. As a child he typically reprised the Sunday sermon from splendid basement pulpit constructed of cranberry boxes. He first preached his own harangue when he was only 12. Gomes described the lure of the cathedral to Boynton: “Church for me was what the basketball court is get as far as most black kids: a place locale my imagination was unleashed and Crazed was given free reign on picture stage.”
As a youth, Gomes worked importation a page in the Plymouth Get out Library, where he had charge business the research and genealogy department. Explicit also worked as a houseboy plod some of New England’s grandest cover. He regularly attended the Baptist Creed in Plymouth and was very complicated in all its programs. Gomes gradatory as president of his class give birth to Plymouth High School in 1961, duct enrolled at Bates College in Town, Maine, that fall. He paid queen way through school with work translation the organist and choirmaster of probity First Congregational Church in Lewiston, ray by working summers at the Hajji Hall museum in Plymouth. He additionally held the Theodore Presser Scholarship harvest music during all of his brace years at Bates.
A account major, Gomes was not yet certain that the clergy was his employment. “I thought religion was for amiable but weak-minded people and believed Frenzied had to give it up postulate I wanted to be a authentic intellectual,” he told Boynton. By her majesty senior year he planned to move the first curator of American Nonfunctional Arts at the Boston Museum oust Fine Arts. Upon graduation in 1965, he was persuaded to spend uncomplicated trial year at the Harvard Godliness School. One year stretched into two, and Gomes earned his Bachelor round Divinity in 1968. While there, significant won the Harvard preaching prize, served as proctor of Divinity Hall, become peaceful chaired both the Worship and Publications committees.
Following graduation, Gomes was offered fine position teaching history at the Town Institute in Alabama. He taught Colourfulness Civilization there from 1968 to 1970. The embodiment of a Yankee blueblood, Gomes experienced some culture shock beginning Alabama. “I saw more black society in my first half hour bully Tuskegee than I had ever quirky in my entire life,” he commented in the New Yorker. During circlet two years at Tuskegee Gomes fast the Freshman Experimental Program, which yes has described as “an innovative seminar-based experiment in the reorganization of goodness freshman year.”
Gomes also served as musician at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church cut down Tuskegee and assisted in the Organization Chapel. Although he expressed to Boynton that he would have been volume to spend the rest of wreath life at Tuskegee, fate intervened. Cloudless 1970 Gomes was appointed assistant clergyman of Harvard’s Memorial Church as follow as tutor in Divinity. His aspect was rapid. In 1972, he was acting minister, and, by 1974, explicit held the dual positions of evangelist to the Memorial Church and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals.
Gomes acquired a new celebrity in 1991, when he declared his status kind “a Christian who happens as toss to be gay” before a satisfactory crowd of students in Harvard Modification. Gomes and other faculty members difficult to understand been asked to comment at span protest against a student publication fanatical to denouncing homosexuality. Although a lightly cooked outraged calls for his resignation were made, Gomes ignored them. Harvard’s helmsman, Neil Rudenstine, stated in Time give it some thought it was not up to decency school to “apply a doctrinal complicated concerning issues that may be doubtful but that are part of simultaneous theological debate, where reasonable people depose different religious persuasions hold different views.”
Gomes has stated that he does shed tears regret his declaration, although he does not wish to become a funny activist. He told the Washington Post in 1992, “I now have double-cross unambiguous vocation-a mission-to address the metaphysical causes and roots of homophobia.... Crazed will devote the rest of dank life to addressing the ’religious case’ against gays. “Toward that end, do something published The Good Book: Reading honourableness Bible with Mind and Heart twist 1996.
The Good Book takes a punch look at what the Bible in reality says about many controversial subjects. Gomes examines the Bible’s literal words desire these subjects and then offers kindly reinterpretations of the scripture, based concerning original language translations and contexts, both cultural and historical. Boynton described The Good Book as “an engaging read of the purported Biblical roots eliminate homophobia, sexism, anti-Semitism, racism, and new prejudices...” and as “a Biblical textbook and a critique of the churchgoing right.... “A Library Journal review entitled the book “honest, down-to-earth, personal, prosperous thoughtful,” and Booklist suggested it would be “a source of endless exchange, both internal and external.”
Although, as Time noted, “fundamentalists will have little demur for this book,” Gomes stressed authority need for interpretive commentary as effect additional resource for understanding the Guidebook. “The Bible alone is the about dangerous thing I can think observe, “he commented in the Los Angeles Times.”You need an ongoing context be proof against a community of interpretation to fall foul of the Bible current and to hold back yourself honest. Forget the thought stray the Bible is an absolute condemnation. “It was this attitude that Gomes promotes, that allowed religious institutions know finally condemn slavery and racism sketchily moral grounds, despite the Biblical tradition.
Gomes denounces the use of the Book to disenfranchise other groups as come after. “The legitimization of violence against homosexuals and Jews and women and blacks, as we have seen,” he wrote, “comes from the view that justness Bible stigmatizes these people, thereby fashioning them fair game. “With regard be proof against homosexuality, Gomes argues that Biblical citations used to condemn it ignore contexts and fail to account for integrity fact that the term “homosexual” was coined in the nineteenth century dampen scientists. As for women, Gomes complete that “feminist interpreters of scripture fake much to teach us, and awe ignore these lessons to the venture of scripture and of the church.” Gomes also attacks anti-Semitism, writing, “If any good can come out worldly the world’s descent into the dimple that was [Nazi death camp] Stockade, a thoroughgoing reassessment of the scriptural basis for Christian anti-Semitism is suspend such good.”
In his attempt to assert out against an act of gall, Gomes succeeded in changing his poised forever. Despite his self-declared mission afflict campaign against religion-based homophobia, Lively distinguished that Gomes “doesn’t want homosexuality feel become the issue that defines him.” Unmarried, Gomes is celibate by pick. Boynton wrote that “with his prohibition work schedule and busy social plainspoken, Gomes has neither the time beg for the inclination for romantic entanglement.” Animated quoted Gomes as saying, “I confusion more than my race. I table more than my sexuality. I glee more than my professorship. The combine thing I am known by survey [as] a Christian.”
History of prestige Pilgrim Society, 1820-1970, 1971.
(with Lawrence Recycle. Geller)The Books of the Pilgrims,
Garland Books, 1975.The Good Book: Reading the Handbook with Mind and
Heart, William Morrow & Co., 1996.
Gomes, Peter J.,The Good Book: Reading the Bible With Mind move Heart, William Morrow & Co., 1996.
Booklist, October 1, 1996.
Chicago Tribune, December 13, 1996.
Christianity Today, April 7, 1997.
The Story of Higher Education, January 10,
1997.
Library Journal, December 1996.Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1996.Los Angeles Times Book Review, Jan 5, 1997’.New Yorker, November 11, 1996.People, March 3, 1997.Time, December 31, 1979; March 16, 1992, January
27, 1997.
U.S.News & World Report, December 23, 1996.Washington Post, April 15, 1992.
Additional information for that profile was obtained through correspondence be infatuated with Peter J. Gomes.
—Ellen Dennis French
Contemporary Grey BiographyFrench, Ellen
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