Gomes, Peter

The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

Jesus came preaching, but the church wound up preaching Jesus. Why does the church insist upon making Jesus the object of its attention rather than heeding his message? Esteemed Harvard minister Peter J. Gomes believes that excessive focus on the Bible and doctrines about Jesus have led the Christian church astray. "What did Jesus preach?" asks Gomes. To recover the transformative power of the gospel—"the good news"—Gomes says we must go beyond the Bible and rediscover how to live out Jesus' original revolutionary message of hope:

"Dietrich Bonhoeffer once warned against cheap grace, and I warn now against cheap hope. Hope is not merely the optimistic view that somehow everything will turn out all right in the end if everyone just does as we do. Hope is the more rugged, the more muscular view that even if things don't turn out all right and aren't all right, we endure through and beyond the times that disappoint or threaten to destroy us."

This gospel is offensive and always overturns the status quo, Gomes tells us. It's not good news for those who wish not to be disturbed, and today our churches resound with shrill speeches of fear and exclusivity or tepid retellings of a health-and-wealth gospel. With his unique blend of eloquence and insight, Gomes invites us to hear anew the radical nature of Jesus' message of hope and change. Using examples from ancient times as well as from modern pop culture, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus shows us why the good news is every bit as relevant today as when it was first preached.

The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

Biblical studies have historically been consigned to theological schools and church groups. In The Good Book, Peter Gomes, pastor of Harvard University's Memorial Church and a professor of theology, has written a vivid, common sense and wise analysis of what the Bible means for us today. As an African American gay man, Gomes is interested in re-viewing the biblical passages on sexuality and race, but The Good Book is much more than a revisionist look at controversial biblical passages. Gomes is interested in rediscovering how the Bible can find a place in our emotional and political lives, as well as in our religious beliefs.

"The Bible and the social and moral consequences that derive from its interpretation are all too important to be left in the hands of the pious or the experts, and too significant to be ignored and trivialized by the uninformed and indifferent.

Why is the Bible so often used as a tool for division and exclusion? And why are so many intelligent and compassionate people embarrassed to say they find wisdom and comfort in the Bible? In this groundbreaking book, the man Time magazine called one of the seven best preachers in America provides answers to these questions and shows what the Bible says about topics that concern Lis all, including joy, suffering, evil, and goodness. With compassion, humor, and insight, lie gives readers the tools and understanding they need to make the ancient wisdom of the Bible a dynamic part of their modern lives.

Sermons: Biblical Wisdom For Daily Living

Reading a book of sermons should not have the same impact as hearing them preached from the pulpit. After all, listening to the mellifluous tones of a preacher speaking heartfelt words is an irreplaceable experience. But reading sermons provides a different experience, one that can be just as powerful. As Peter J. Gomes, author of The Good Book points out in his inspiring collection simply entitled Sermons, by looking at the discourses, the reader is able to form a special connection with the words and the preacher who offers them by taking control of the text. The reader may stop to refer to the Bible or pause at length to ponder how the words relate to him or her. However, this caveat Gomes offers on the differences between written and spoken sermons is ultimately unnecessary. These texts, transcribed straight from Gomes's preachings, have an oral quality to them that allows the reader to "hear" the words as Gomes "speaks" them, giving his ideas that much more force.

In his introduction, Henry Louis Gates Jr. describes Gomes as "a cross between Cotton Mather and Martin Luther King Jr. [Gomes], clearly, was a man of words, but a man of words with a difference." The Harvard preacher gives us no less--words that make a difference--in his compilation of 40 sermons, each built upon the Christian calendar, taking us from Advent to Christmas. (The number is no accident, 40 being an important biblical number: the great flood lasted for 40 days, the children of Israel wandered for 40 years; Jesus fasted for 40 days. ) The range of sermons--from "The Art of Impatient Living" to "Growing Up" to "Acts of Reconciliation"--offer biblical wisdom in a modern context, using current references such as Donald Trump, artist George Segal, and Julia Child. Political and social history, humor, and wit infuse the sermons making them relevant and interesting to today's audience. Gomes offers his readers a pathway to the Bible, opening to them the happiness and inspiration it can bring to their daily lives. --Jenny Brown

The man Time magazine hailed as one of America's finest preachers presents a collection of forty timeless addresses to guide us through the year. With his characteristic eloquence and compassion, quoting from scripture as well as from T.S. Eliot and Woody Allen, Gomes offers us the tools we need to understand the wisdom of the Bible and the joy and inspiration it can bring to everyday life.

House of Worship: Sacred Spaces in America

The Good Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need

Peter J. Gomes believes that today's college students have it in them to be the greatest generation. The Good Life, a manifesto by the minister at Harvard University, debunks the idea that today's college students are spoiled, materialistic, and morally complacent. Reflecting on 30 years of ministry to undergraduates, Gomes writes, "What has impressed me ... about these young people ... is their moral curiosity, their desire to know, to be, and to do good." Drawing on stories of Gomes's relationships with students, as well as his knowledge of philosophy, theology, and the Bible, The Good Life offers guidance for finding the treasure promised by its title. Some readers will question how much Gomes's personal experience really says about American culture at large (the first chapter begins, "Harvard Yard is never more grand than it is on Commencement Day."). But much of The Good Life is of near universal value, such as Gomes's distinction between "plausible lies" that define the good life in secular culture and the "fantastic truths" that bring true joy. --Michael Joseph Gross

The author of the New York Times bestseller The Good Book champions the recovery of the Western moral tradition.

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The author of the New York Times bestseller The Good Book champions the recovery of the Western moral tradition. "

The Best American Spiritual Writing 2006 (The Best American Series)

Philip Zaleski, an acclaimed writer and the editor of the series, has once again assembled an outstanding collection of thirty-five pieces that range far and wide in subject matter and style. In "The Cellular Church," Malcolm Gladwell takes a look at the pastor Rick Warren, and Mary Gordon's "Moral Fiction" explores the place of value judgments in literature. Michael Chabon describes his childhood fascination with the darkness and "silliness" that pervade the world of the Norse gods, and Katherine Paterson, an award-winning children's book writer, describes how faith plays a role in her work. Miles Hoffman and Wendell Berry both decry the loss of soul, the former speaking of modern music and its dire need for a miracle, and the latter of modern agriculture, which has strayed perilously far from its roots. The range of the volume is immense, stretching from Edward Hoagland's discussion of America's social breakdown to Helen Tworkov's analysis of the inherent conflict between feminism and Buddhism to Corby Kummer's deliciously simple recipe for kosher almond cake.

The poems, too, run the gamut of human experience, with contributions from such distinguished poets as Mark Doty, Charles Martin, V. Penelope Pelizzon, Louis Simpson, C. K. Williams, and John Updike. The Best American Spiritual Writing 2006 is sure to please not only lovers of spiritual writing, but also those who long for writing that illuminates a vast range of issues beyond our immediate line of sight.

Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living

With his characteristic eloquence and compassion, Peter J. Gomes offers a new collection of his most important sermons, which draw on the wisdom of the Bible to guide us through the year and enrich our daily lives.

John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, and Sermons (HarperCollins Spiritual Classics)

John and Charles Wesley led the Methodist revival that swept eighteenth–century England and America and changed the face of Christianity forever. Their spirituality synthesized a unique blend of elements from the church fathers, Catholic mystics, and Protestant Reformers. This selection includes John's incisive writings on the spiritual life as well as the famous hymns of Charles, giving vibrant expression to the faith of the Wesleys.

"About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." –– John Wesley

With Love and Prayers: A Headmaster Speaks to the Next Generation

The Varieties of Religious Experience

"I am neither a theologian, nor a scholar learned in the history of religions, nor an anthropologist. Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the religious propensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution. It would seem, therefore, as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you to a descriptive survey of those religious propensities."

When William James went to the University of Edinburgh in 1901 to deliver a series of lectures on "natural religion," he defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." Considering religion, then, not as it is defined by--or takes place in--the churches, but as it is felt in everyday life, he undertook a project that, upon completion, stands not only as one of the most important texts on psychology ever written, not only as a vitally serious contemplation of spirituality, but for many critics one of the best works of nonfiction written in the 20th century. Reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, it is easy to see why. Applying his analytic clarity to religious accounts from a variety of sources, James elaborates a pluralistic framework in which "the divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions." It's an intellectual call for serious religious tolerance--indeed, respect--the vitality of which has not diminished through the subsequent decades.

One of America's greatest philosophers, William James was "original, exciting, and cosmopolitan...a major philosophical planet who...drew all...other pragmatic luminaries into his powerful field" (Morton Hunt). In this still timely classic, James examines the range of religious phenomena: conversion, repentance, mysticism, saintliness, the hopes of reward and the fears of punishment.

"The Varieties of Religious Experience is certainly the most notable of all books in the field of the psychology of religion and probably destined to be the most influential [one] written on religion in the twentieth century," said Walter Houston Clark in Psychology Today. The book was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in June 1902. Reflecting the pluralistic views of psychologist-turned-philosopher William James, it posits that individual religious experiences, rather than the tenets of organized religions, form the backbone of religious life. James's discussion of conversion, repentance, mysticism, and hope of reward and fears of punishment in the hereafter--as well as his observations on the religious experiences of such diverse thinkers as Voltaire, Whitman, Emerson, Luther, Tolstoy, and others--all support his thesis. "James's characteristic humor, his ability to put down the pretentious and to be unpretentious, and his willingness to take some risks in his choices of ancedotal data or provocative theories are all apparent in the book," noted Professor Martin E. Marty. "A reader will come away with more reasons to raise new questions than to feel that old ones have been resolved."