Reflections on the Life of the Late Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes - Part One

Reflections on the Life of the 

Late Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes – Part One

On a crispy Saturday morning in October of 2006 along with a group of clergy colleagues who comprised the Nashville Institute of Clergy Excellence, I traveled to Memorial Church at Harvard University to meet with the famed and inimitable Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes.  As a part of a continuing education colloquium which emphasized experiential learning, we traveled throughout the major cities (Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago) of the United States to meet with clergypersons who are “succeeding” in their ministerial contexts.  Meeting with Reverend Professor Gomes was an obvious choice for our group of nine pastors who held twenty-five degrees, had more than a century of combined ministerial experience and shared a commitment to maintaining an authentic and intellectually respectable Christian identity within the twenty-first century context of religious, cultural and ideological pluralism of the global village.   Previously, I had watched a 60 Minutes feature segment on his unparalleled service as the Minister of the Chapel and the Plummer Professor of Christian Morality.  Previous to this visit, he wrote a bestseller, The Good Book, which although scholarly remains accessible to lay people with an interest in biblical origins and intellectually respectable ways of practically applying biblical principles within a contemporary context.  Moreover, Reverend Gomes essentially started a huge firestorm in the academic and ecclesiastical communities when he publicly acknowledged his sexual preference as a homosexual.  Ripe with several understandable perceptions and perhaps prejudices derived from the foregoing facts, I arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts intrigued about meeting the “real” Professor Gomes.

I wondered whether Professor Gomes would personify a caricature of himself.  How would an African-American man with New England origins authentically exist at Harvard University without mimicking the affectations of the dominant culture?  My question arises from my personal experience of attending and graduating from a New England boarding school in northern Massachusetts.  Rather vividly, I recall the pressure to conform thereby living indifferently to my extremely rich Southern upbringing as an African-American male.  What an amazing amount of myopia?  Nevertheless, my suspicions were much unfounded.  At the end of the nearly three hours that my colleagues and I spent with Professor Gomes, l realized I had met one of the most self-assured and self-confident persons I have ever encountered.

As our conversation with Reverend Gomes progressed, I was amazed increasingly by his wonderful, enviable, challenging and incredible sense of self-acceptance.  I had not witnessed this authentic sense of self and existential understanding in another individual.  Assuredly, I know persons with rather pronounced egos that project a mask of self-determination and chutzpah.  Once you hear their stories, learn more about their personalities and observe inconsistencies between principles and practices, it is evident such individuals lack the inner gravitas and self-
acceptance they would like people to believe they have.  To my very pleasant surprise, Reverend Professor Gomes genuinely exemplified self-acceptance.  Resolving my previous misperceptions were unmerited, I asked Professor Gomes a question.  "Professor Gomes, I sense an incredible sense of self-confidence and self-acceptance in you.  When did that come for you?" 

Looking slightly startled by the question, Reverend Professor Gomes solemnly replied "l have always known my worth." Implicitly, he declares he had never had to fight to ascertain and validate his self-worth.  Incredulous!  Incredible!  Simply amazing!  Astounding!  How wonderful!  The existential war relating to self-determination is not a non-negotiable rite of passage for each human being.  It is not necessary to question your worth before you resolve your incalculable personal worthiness.

Parenthetically, I thought Reverend Gomes' parents must have been remarkable people.  Immediately, I attributed his lifelong self-acceptance and self-worth to his parents.  Assuredly, they taught him and instilled an unquestionable self-worth within him.  As an African-American male growing up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Professor Gomes would have been isolated from African-Americana.  In a possibly provincial New England town where most residents rarely had any social interactions with people of color, Reverend Gomes did not experience the dread of cultivating, defining and solidifying a sense of self within such meager social and collective reinforcements.  Apparently, his parents empowered him with an invaluable psychological and spiritual foundation.  I cannot explain his answer without crediting his parents for their superlative accomplishment in rearing their son who simply and straightforwardly asserts his unique self.