Washington National Cathedral

The Sunday Forum: Critical Issues in the Light of Faith

The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, host

The Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes visits Washington National Cathedral to discuss “The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus” with Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III.

The conversation briskly turns to secularism, specifically at Harvard, where Gomes has spent 28 years. Gomes shares his early impression that people at Harvard were not so much hostile toward religion as they were indifferent or condescending. He came to perceive, beneath that, a “manifest need for the God experience.” Over time, as enrollment grew more diverse, people of widely varied religious backgrounds came to Harvard, impelling a more lively discussion.

Gomes has observed other generational changes among young adults. In earlier decades, many college students “lost” their religion at college. Today, young people arriving at college have no religion to lose, because it has not figured in their family lives or education. “Religion is not something they came with,” Gomes summarizes. “It’s something that, in many cases, they discover while they are there.”

In recent years, Gomes has written several books to fill gaps in public knowledge about religion. The Good Book introduces the Bible to educated people who know “next to nothing about the Bible,” but who nonetheless spread ideas about the Bible.

Gomes’s most recent book is The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. He says, “The scandal is, we know the truth” about Jesus, “but we can’t handle it.” Jesus, the disturbing revolutionary, the radical, the Christ enthroned, has told us everything we need to know, but we have failed to act on his message. We humans err when we “domesticate” Jesus, reducing him to a private little guru or a dashboard figurine. Gomes further asserts that Jesus might not recognize the church as the outgrowth of his ministry.

“You pose the question, ‘Is God a Christian?’ That is to say, do we Christians have a special hold on God?” Lloyd probes.

Gomes responds that congregations are always shocked when he says, “God is not a Christian…If God is what we claim,…the creator of everything, not just a local, private deity, then somehow God has taken on board areas of the world of which we know next to nothing.” God must have a plan in mind not only for Christians and Jews, but also for Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and others. “To proclaim that is to magnify the greatness of the Lord…the universal identity of the creator…That’s something worth worshiping.” He adds, “God is not a celebrity” or a tribal deity.

“Jesus manifests God to us. He may not manifest God to others,” Gomes states. “God speaks many more languages than we do.”

About The Rev. Peter J. Gomes

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1942, the Rev. Prof. Peter J. Gomes is an American Baptist minister ordained to the Christian Ministry by the First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Since 1970 he has served in The Memorial Church, Harvard University; and since 1974 as Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church.

A member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and of the Faculty of Divinity of Harvard University, Professor Gomes holds degrees from Bates College (A.B., 1965), and from the Harvard Divinity School (S.T.B., 1968); and thirty-three honorary degrees: New England College, Waynesburg College, Gordon College, Knox College, The University of the South, Duke University, The University of Nebraska, Wooster College, Bates College, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, Trinity College, Bowdoin College, Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, Colby College, Olivet College, Mount Holyoke College, Furman University, Baker University, Mount Ida College, Willamette University, The State University of New York at Geneseo, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Ursinus College, Wagner College, Lesley University, Williams College, Virginia Theological Seminary, Morris College, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hamilton College, Union College, Tuskegee University, and Lasell College. In 2006, he was given The Preston N. Williams Award by Harvard Divinity School, and Harvard University in 2001 presented him with The Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award. He is an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, The University of Cambridge, England, where The Gomes Lectureship is established in his name.

Widely regarded as one of America’s most distinguished preachers, Professor Gomes fulfills preaching and lecturing engagements throughout America and the British Isles. In 2005 he presented a series of sermons in St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, England, in the presence of Their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall; and in 2004 he gave the Convocation Address at Harvard Divinity School. In 2002 he served as Hein Fry Lecturer for the Evangelical Lutheran Seminaries in the United States.

In 2001 he was Missioner to Oxford University; in 2000 he delivered The University Sermon before The University of Cambridge, England, and The Millennial Sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, England; and in 1998 he presented The Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching, in Yale Divinity School. Named Clergy of the Year in 1998 by Religion in American Life, Professor Gomes participated in the presidential inaugurations of Ronald Wilson Reagan and of George Herbert Walker Bush. His New York Times and national best-selling books, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart, (1996); and Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (1998), were published by William Morrow and Company, Inc.; The Good Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need was published in 2002 by HarperSanFrancisco, which published Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living in spring 2003. In 2005, The Backward Glance and the Forward Look was published by WordTech. He has also published ten volumes of sermons as well as numerous articles and papers.

Professor Gomes serves on the advisory board of The Living Pulpit. In addition, he serves as Harvard University trustee of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and as trustee of The Roxbury Latin School and of Bates College; and he is a member of The Massachusetts Historical Society, The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and a sometime Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts, London, England. Former acting director of The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University, he is past president of The Signet Society, Harvard’s oldest literary society; and former trustee of Wellesley College, of The Public Broadcasting Service, and of Plymouth Plantation. He is past president and trustee of The Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Profiled by Robert Boynton in The New Yorker, and interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes, The Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes was included in the summer 1999 premiere issue of Talk magazine as part of its feature article, “The Best Talkers in America: Fifty Big Mouths We Hope Will Never Shut Up.”