Truth Wins Out will miss Rev. Peter J. Gomes, a celebrated openly gay minister who taught at Harvard and authored books countering anti-gay biblical abuse. Our hearts go out to the friends and family of this incredibly influential pastor.
The work of Gomes has helped shape the mission of Truth Wins Out. For example, we are in total agreement on the danger presented by the growth of religious fundamentalism:
“Religious fundamentalism is dangerous because it cannot accept ambiguity and diversity and is therefore inherently intolerant,” Gomes declared in an Op-Ed article for The New York Times in 1992. “Such intolerance, in the name of virtue, is ruthless and uses political power to destroy what it cannot convert.”
In his 1996 best-seller, “The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart,” Mr. Gomes urged believers to grasp the spirit, not the letter, of scriptural passages that he said had been misused to defend racism, anti-Semitism and sexism and to attack homosexuality and abortion. He offered interpretations that he said transcended the narrow context of modern prejudices.
“The Bible alone is the most dangerous thing I can think of,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “You need an ongoing context and a community of interpretation to keep the Bible current and to keep yourself honest. Forget the thought that the Bible is an absolute pronouncement.”
Amen.
If heaven exists, I’m sure you are there. I am also certain that you won’t be the least bit surprised by the absence of leading religious right figures that were so certain of their holiness.
We have lost a giant…and a good and decent man that helped show most of us (most Americans, and and ever more religious world…the US and demographically dying Europe being the exceptions) that believing, and being gay, were not exclusive. I know a lot of straight people who changed their minds about gay people and our basic rights, and basic decency, after studying the writings of this man.
He was a giant, he was kind ( I had the honor of meeting him, and he was kind to everyone he met) and he will be missed.
Except by some on the far right, who, true to form, loathed him. But, perhaps in a final, if unintentional, salute to him, they feared him and the men and women like him more than ANY of their opponants (the activists on our side). That fear says a lot about them, and him, and just how valuable he was.
A beautiful man. I knew him only briefly through the DVD “The Bible Tells Me So” But I found him simple and profound and very conveing of the Lord Jesus’ spirit of love and honesty.
Long live Brother and Rev. Peter J. Gomes. And thank you! ……….see you THERE!
Love in Jesus,
Charles
“The Bible alone is the most dangerous thing I can think of,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “You need an ongoing context and a community of interpretation to keep the Bible current and to keep yourself honest. Forget the thought that the Bible is an absolute pronouncement.”
I’m so glad that a Christian minister came to the conclusion Jews have known since the beginning. Ask a minister on the street what the Talmud is and they’ll probably just blink.
The buy-bull is evil.