By Martin Kilson

A memorial service will be held tomorrow at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts to honor the late Reverend Peter J. Gomes, the first black churchman to hold the historic position of chief minister to Harvard University. Reverend Gomes died February 28 after suffering a brain aneuryism and a heart attack. Here, Martin Kilson, professor of government emeritus at Harvard, remembers Reverend Gomes, who was a close friend for nearly forty years.

In the evening of February 28, 2011, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, the minister to the Harvard College Memorial Church and the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences, died. Rev. Gomes was in his 68th year, and as an academic at Harvard University he was far from the place of his youth, which was the small southern Massachusetts town of Plymouth, where during his boyhood in the 1940s he grew up in one of just several African-American families. His father, Peter Lobo Gomes, worker in the cranberry bogs, and his mother, Orissa White Gomes, was a music teacher who had graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music. He attended public schools and proceeded to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine—an institution of higher education with roots in liberal Christian social gospel activism, exemplified by the Abolition Movement ties of its founders six years before the Civil War.

Peter Gomes’ association with Harvard University began when he entered the Harvard Divinity School in 1965, gaining his degree in theology in 1968 along with winning the Divinity School’s Preaching Prize. Talented in theological studies though he was and possessing superb preaching skills, no academic position was available for Peter in theological studies at Harvard in the Fall Term of 1968. So, probably like other African-American recipients of graduate degrees in theological studies in 1968 who didn’t take up pastoral positions in a church denomination—mainly Black denominations—Peter acquired a teaching post at a Historically Black college. The college was the top-tier Black college Tuskegee Institute (now: University) in Alabama, where from 1968 to 1970 Peter was an instructor in history and was church organist as well as choirmaster. I gathered from numerous discussions with Peter regarding his academic journey as an African-American professional nearly within my own age-cohort (I was born 11 years before Peter), that he enjoyed teaching in the South and at Tuskegee Institute particularly. But an invitation from one of his academic mentors at the Harvard Divinity School to a position of “assistant minister” in Harvard College was irresistible.

Peter Gomes returned to Harvard in the Fall Term 1972 which was a rather fortuitous point in time, because the first African-American administrative officer in Harvard College was appointed as Dean of Freshmen in 1972—namely Archie C. Epps. Peter Gomes and Archie Epps had quite a lot in common. They each had studied at Harvard Divinity School—Epps in the late 1950s—but Peter completed his theology STB degree and Epps gained his Masters degree. Although Epps didn’t pursue a position in clergy affairs, he remained a person of serious religiosity which was reflected in his membership in the Harvard Memorial Church Choir and his attendance regularly at Memorial Church “Morning Prayer”. So starting in the 1972-1973 academic year, Peter Gomes and Archie Epps commenced a close friendship that lasted a lifetime.

This leads me to an interesting feature of Peter Gomes’ thirty-six years illustrious headship of Harvard Memorial Church. Namely, Peter intertwined important aspects of his inspired and skillful headship of Harvard College religious life at Memorial Church with intellectual and spiritual friendship with Archie Epps, who by the late 1970s had advanced from Dean of Freshmen to Dean of Students. Before the decade of the 1970s closed, this Gomes-Epps nexus, as it were, rebounded fruitfully for religious life at Memorial Church.

It happens that during the 1960s era of college students’ political activism (e.g., the Students For Democratic Society, the Black Studies Movement, the Women’s Movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement), the religious element in shaping the character of college students’ life had declined precipitously. Owing to my own close friendship with Archie Epps, I had a kind of “back-seat-view” of Epps’ friendship with Rev. Peter Gomes in regard to how Epps skillfully and loyally afforded Peter assistance in maneuvering the maze of Harvard College administrative-and-status networks. Above all, Epps assisted Peter’s maneuvering in behalf of both resources and authoritative clout that would be required to rebuild the religious element in shaping the character of student life in Harvard College.

This was no mean task, insofar as the Harvard Administration of President Derek Bok was, while not openly hostile to the place of Memorial Church affairs in the life of Harvard College, was not helpful either. Be that as it may, I know from numerous conversations with Archie Epps—being one his close faculty friends—that he contacted a variety of what he dubbed “elite WASP Harvard friends” to assist, however they might, Rev. Gomes in his numerous endeavors to rebuild a pluralistic religious-life dynamic at Memorial Church.

As it happened, by 1980 there were growing signs of what might be called a “Pluralistic Religious Life Renewal” at the Harvard College Memorial Church. The most prominent marker of this Renewal was an expanding undergraduate attendance at Memorial Church’s “Morning Prayer”. Another such marker was a veritable exploding attendance of both undergraduates and wider Harvard community attendance at Sunday Service. I remember Archie saying to me at one of our monthly lunches in Harvard Square in 1981 that “Peter has revitalized Memorial Church, Martin….”

Peter Gomes’ success in that regard was widely recognized in commentaries on his death. The Harvard Crimson of March 2 editorialized: “[Rev. Peter] Gomes will…be best remembered for his sermons in Memorial Church, where he would address the audience in a booming, sonorous voice and deploy a style that seemed largely pulled from another era, harkening back to the great tradition of Baptist oratory.

Another commentary on the theme of Rev. Gomes’ religious revitalization endeavors was made by Professor Harvey Cox, a faculty colleague at the Harvard Divinity School, who emphasized that Gomes had regularly filled the pews in Memorial Church. “While attendance at some college churches has dwindled,” Cox remarked, “it has not at all at Memorial Church”. The reason was self-evident said Cox, noting that “Part of the reason for this is the eloquence of Peter’s preaching and his [pluralistic] welcoming attitude”.

And rounding out the many commentaries commemorating Gomes’ “Pluralistic Religious Life Renewal” in Harvard College, was one by Professor Preston Williams, a faculty colleague at the Divinity School who, like Dean of Students Archie Epps, was a hands-on contributor in Rev. Gomes’ religious renewal at Memorial Church. In an interview with The Harvard Crimson, he said, “I think [Rev. Gomes]…is the greatest of the clergymen that Harvard has had. When it comes to the matter of Christian morals, he did a number one job for the University. What he did was for the University and not simply the Protestant community within the University.”

No doubt Professor Williams was referring to both Peter’s scholarly contribution and his personal or soulful contribution. The former included a co-authored book on the Pilgrims—The Books of the Pilgrims (1975)—and an intellectually scintillating exegesis on the Gospels—The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News (2007).

Gomes’ “soulful contribution” was also nothing short of magnificent. The aspects of Peter’s “soulful contribution” that interest me here evolved through two phases. First, in Harvard College’s 1980-1981 academic year Rev. Gomes joined with Associate Professor Allen Counter in the Biology Department to co-found the Harvard Foundation For Intercultural And Race Relations. The idea of the Harvard Foundation—germinated by Dean Archie Epps– involved fashioning students-initiated programs of multicultural expressions (music, dance, and intellectual), and mounting a variety of performances for those programs .

Insofar as African-American students constituted the first cohort of non-White students to gain a sizable presence in Harvard College by the 1980s—a presence that was academically reflected in the establishment of an African American Studies Department in the Harvard College Curriculum— it was prescient of Gomes and Counter to present the idea of the Harvard Foundation to the Harvard Administration. President Bok’s Administration—in a spirit of keen foresight— adopted the idea of the Harvard Foundation, and under the administrative headship of Professor Counter it has fulfilled the goal of spiritually-knitting-together students’ multicultural patterns in Harvard College.

Gomes’ second “soulful contribution” involved a kind of epiphany event when, during the 1991 Spring Term, Peter was in attendance at a student event in front of Widener Library – with many faculty and administrators attending – which was a protest against a series of nasty homophobic articles published in a conservative undergraduate magazine. Dorothy Austin, Gomes’ assistant minister at Memorial Church, said at his death that “He was a scholar, a preacher, a teacher and a public intellectual who…at important moments…stood up for things that mattered—for freedom, for liberty, and for equality….” Well, that 1991 Spring Term afternoon was one of Gomes’ “important moments”—an epiphany moment, a soul transforming moment.

As Rev. Dorothy Austin, Gomes’ assistant minister at Memorial Church, related this epiphany moment: “As he stood there and watched various people come out in front of the crowd, I remember him saying. ‘This is the time to speak up’. That led the way very powerfully in the movement.”

And “speak up” Rev. Peter Gomes did. He announced that “I am a Christian who happens as well to be gay.” Furthermore, for the next decade, Rev. Gomes cut a special path in the leadership ranks of America’s gay and lesbian activists. His speech at a mass rally at the Massachusetts State House in 2004 to support legislation favoring gay marriage, electrified the audience. Gomes continued to underscore his commitment to the civil rights of gay Americans: “I now have an unambiguous vocation,” he said, “a mission—to address the religious causes and roots of homophobia. I will devote the rest of my life to addressing the ‘religious case’ against gays.” One of his most vigorously astute formulations in this regard was a 1992 Op-Ed article in The New York Times. There, Gomes “took-off-academic-kid-gloves”, as it were: “Religious fundamentalism is dangerous because it cannot accept ambiguity and diversity and is therefore inherently intolerant. Such intolerance, in the name of virtue, is ruthless and uses political power to destroy what it cannot convert.’ [my emphasis]

Ironically, by the time Gomes’ seminal New York Times article appeared, he had undergone a metamorphosis in his inner ideological and political makeup. It seems that when the intellectually astute Peter Gomes gained his STB degree from the Harvard Divinity School in June 1968, he had already fashioned his identity on the conservative side of the American political spectrum. This translated, for Peter, into a political preference for the Republican Party which, given his superlative oratory talent, would bring him unique opportunities such as participation in the Republican presidential inaugural ceremonies for two presidents. He pronounced the benediction for President Ronald Reagan and delivered the National Cathedral sermon for President George H.W. Bush.

On the other hand, for a theologian intellectual with generic-liberal sensibilities like Rev. Gomes, it must have been rather incongruous locating himself on the Republican side of the political spectrum. Especially in an era when our country is experiencing highly contested political culture dilemmas—such as greed-riddled corporatism vs. high class inequality, religious fundamentalism vs. women’s rights, cultural conservatism vs. gay rights, etc.

I believe in the Christian virtue of redemption, being as I am from a long lineage of African Methodist clergy, back to the 1840s. I also know that Gomes strongly believed in the Christian virtue of redemption. So thanks to that epiphany event in Harvard Yard during the 1991 Spring Term—that identity reshaping experience— he grasped the marvelous virtue of Christian redemption for his own soul. Among other things, Gomes shed his Republican ties and voted for President Obama in the 2008 Election.

Peter Gomes was a gracious, loving, and generous soul, and the Harvard community will miss him. For as Harvard’s President Drew Gilpin Faust remarked on his death: “Peter Gomes was an original. Through his wisdom and appreciation of the richness of the human spirit, Reverend Gomes has left an indelible mark on the institution he served with unmatched devotion and creativity.”

Martin Kilson in 1969 became the first African-American to hold a full-professorship in Harvard College. He retired in 2003 and is Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government –Emeritus.