Christians Spar in Harvard Yard

By Richard N. Ostling

Amid all of Harvard's colorful and controversial characters, the Rev. Peter John Gomes seems an unlikely target for moral rebuke. Since 1974 he has served as minister of the university's Memorial Church and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals. Although worship attendance has been voluntary at Harvard for a century, collegians crowd the sanctuary each Sunday to savor his eloquent, engaging and scholarly sermons, which are typically more concerned with spiritual growth than with social activism.

But now Gomes finds himself in the middle of a very public furor over the most private aspects of his life. He placed himself squarely in the line of fire last November when he stood on the steps of Memorial Church and told a cheering crowd, "I am a Christian who happens as well to be gay." The extraordinary gesture was prompted by a special 56-page issue of a conservative student magazine called Peninsula, devoted to denouncing homosexuality as destructive for individuals and society. The magazine backed up its stand in part by citing Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures. Gomes says he had to speak up because Peninsula represented "moral mugging" and a "particularly virulent form of homophobia."

During the uproar that followed the special issue's appearance, students and faculty members came forward to declare their homosexuality. But it was Gomes' revelation that triggered by far the most heated response. Last month a 50- member student group called Concerned Christians at Harvard was formed for the specific purpose of winning Gomes' resignation as chaplain. It launched a campaign of prayer vigils, publicity and pamphleteering. "The reason we are asking Gomes to step down is not because he is homosexual," says founder Sumner Anderson, "but because he teaches that homosexuality is not sinful within the Christian church."

Last week there were rumblings among a few alumni that Gomes must go, or "Harvard fund-raising efforts will be significantly handicapped," predicts Gavin Quill, class of '85, a marketing analyst in Boston who wants Gomes out. But so far the chaplain's job does not appear to be in jeopardy. The conservative Christians are far outnumbered -- or at least outmaneuvered -- by Harvard's well-organized gay and lesbian community. At Harvard Divinity School, a bastion of liberalism, Dean Ronald Thiemann argues that Concerned Christians expresses "little more than a literalist interpretation of Scripture, without any theological sophistication." Anderson scoffs at that. "It does not take a Ph.D. to understand that the Bible condemns the act of homosexuality."

Although the American Baptist Churches, of which Gomes is a member, has no stated policy on homosexuality as yet, last June it issued a statement of concern that condemns homosexual practice. As for university officials, President Neil Rudenstine says it is not the school's task to "apply a doctrinal test concerning issues that may be controversial but that are a part of current theological debate, where reasonable people of different religious persuasions hold different views."

Gomes is now taking a crash course in the implications of the issue. The church, he says, has forced homosexuality "into patterns that are not healthy or productive. What I am hearing from many is that we want to be faithful and good and believing and devout people who happen to be homosexual. I say that is not impossible; it is desirable."

With reporting by David M. Gross/Boston