TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031692/0316610.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 3.8 KB | 83 lines

                                                                                RELIGION, Page 49

Christians Spar in Harvard Yard


Does it matter that the campus chaplain is gay? Some
conservatives say it does, and he should resign.


    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."

    -- By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by David M. Gross/Boston.