On Harvard, the Church and Coming Out

"The world has changed," muses Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer professor of Christian morals, as he leans back in his brown leather armchair, in his office in Memorial Church. "And I've changed with it."

Gomes has been a minister of Memorial Church since 1970, and from the pulpit he has seen the University pass through an often chaotic two decades. All the while, he says, the University has remained, as the last lines of "Fair Harvard" would have it, "calm, rising through change and through storm."

Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III says Gomes's sense of history and tradition makes him a steadying influence in the University. "I think he's one of the most constant things at Harvard," Epps says.

"When I came back as an officer in 1970, right after the troubles of 1969, the University was in a terrible state; people were not talking to other people, the faculty was fractured and divided, students were broken down into warring political factions," Gomes continues. "Harvard Square had become a war zone with buildings with steel grates and metal bars keeping people from trashing them."

In an effort to reconcile these various groups, then-President Derek C. Bok appointed a faculty commission, chaired by Gomes. The initial goal of the Gomes Commission, as it came to be called, was to discuss the establishment of a Third World center. The committee decided against that initial plan in favor of a more encompassing organization, and thus established the Harvard Foundation.

"Its purpose was to affirm and enhance, identify and encourage the varieties of cultural and ethic experiences at Harvard, not making everybody conform to one norm, but also not encouraging a separatist mentality, which is what a Third World center tends to do," says Gomes. "We felt that the richness Harvard was beginning to experience through its diversity of students should not be accidental but intentional."

The Harvard Foundation, a multi-cultural organization, has now become a model for other universities across the country, says Gomes. But in the beginning the enterprise was rather risky, he says, because nobody had done it here or anywhere else.

"I got a lot of political flak," says Gomes. "The faculty resisted initially because they thought they were making concessions to a student political movement; the students resisted initially because it wasn't what they had asked for, so we steered a course between those rocks."

Gomes says he has seen many changes in attitudes among constituents of the University. And he believes there is still continuing activity in many directions.

"I don't believe people are less interested in the world or less concerned, and I have never accepted the wrath that my generation has placed on yours, that is that your people are indifferent and don't have any moral scruples," Gomes says. "It's a '30-something' anxiety about growing old."

Gomes has seen the views of many causes shift. And he is relieved to see what he deems an increasing intolerance for the "last permissable prejudice": homophobia.

"In one sense, it's hard to tell because the subject was never discussed 20 years ago, it simply didn't exist in people's consciousness, it was snickering in back rooms and gossip and innuen-does and sly remarks, but no sort of open discussion," he remarks. "I think that has changed much for the better."

Gomes feels that that faculty, staff and students whose homosexuality is "a fact of life, not just a lifestyle or an abstraction," should be able to identify their sexual orientation publicly, and thus feel more empowered to address their concerns. "People should not be intimidated into a deadly silence," says Gomes. "I want people to be able to address it."

Until recently, Gomes says, he had attempted to separate his private life from his public duties as a member of the Harvard faculty and as the minister of Memorial Church. But with the release of Peninsula's 56-page attack on homosexuality, he says, he felt moved to defend both himself and the church.

"It was more the fact that I had made a distinction in my life between a public person with many duties and having a very private life, and I'd decided to maintain my private life. Even now, in spite of all this, I do not relish discussing my sexuality in the newspapers," says Gomes. "There's a big badge on me now that says 'homosexual,' and I'm not ashamed of that, but I'm a great deal more than that."

However, Gomes says that he felt morally obligated to come forward because "firstly, religion was used in such a strident and perverse way to orchestrate an attack against homosexuality, and, secondly, there were so many students who were hurt by this, grievously wounded. I would hope that I would have the courage to speak out whatever happened."

Furthermore, Gomes insists that his coming out is completely consistent with everything that he has ever preached. "I've not taught strict adherance to the Bible. I'm not a fundamentalist or a literalist," he says. "My position last week was perfectly consistent with everything and anything that I've ever preached."

Preaching

Gomes's preaching has been an essential part of many ceremonies at Harvard. At the beginning of the academic year, Gomes delivered a prayer at the inauguration of President Neil L. Rudenstine.

"We hadn't had a public inauguration since 1909 so there was no one alive at Harvard who remembered the president being inaugurated publicly," Gomes says. "I think it came off with style. It wasn't pompous. But it had pomp."

However his prayer caused some controversy. Some students said that the prayer failed to include all the religions represented at the University.

In response to this criticism, which he calls uninformed and unjustified, Gomes says, "What I tried to do on that occasion was not simply pray in the language of my own tradition but to try to go beyond that tradition to the source of all traditions.

"I am a Christian because that is the way in which I see the world, but I do not believe that the God to whom I pray is only the God of Christians, because the God to whom I pray has to be the God of everything and everyone."

Gomes has been named one of America's seven greatest preachers by Time magazine. He spoke at the inaugurations of former President Ronald W. Reagan and President Bush. Describing the feeling he had before his sermon at the Bush inauguration, he says, "The work of this republic was happening peacefully, and I was a part of it for just a brief moment."

As well as being a part of national history, Gomes has been a dynamic and constant figure in the history of the University.

"He is the quintessential Harvard," says Epps. "He understands more of its history than perhaps anyone else."

Indeed, Peter Gomes has been, as well as made, the University's history. He has worked with and held leadership positions in more organizations than most other Harvard scholars. But his two loves at Harvard apart from the Harvard Foundation, are Phillips Brooks House and the Signet Society. At PBH, Gomes was chair of the faculty committee for 12 years.

"That committee saw the House just explode into tremendous volunteer activity, and now some 45 percent of undergraduates are involved in some sort of volunteer life and Phillips Brooks House was at the center of all that," he says. "I have a very warm spot in my heart for Phillips Brooks House."

And at the Signet, Harvard's oldest literary society, he was the president of the associates of the governing body for 10 years.

Speaking of all his involvements, Gomes says, "All of them gave me a window into the college."

Aside from his roles in student organizations, Gomes has been a professor and mentor to many. He currently teaches two courses at the Divinity School, and an Extension School course called, "Harvard, Institution and Idea."

Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of the Afro-American Studies Department and DuBois professor of the humanities, regards Gomes as an important leader in the University and as his spiritual adviser.

"There's nothing I couldn't speak to him about," says Gates. "And yet, I feel speechless in his presence."