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One of the nation’s most accomplished and distinguished preachers, the Reverend Peter J. Gomes of Harvard University, will deliver the sermon at Lafayette’s annual Baccalaureate service at 10:30 a.m. on Commencement day, Saturday, May 19.
At the College’s 172nd Commencement exercises, to be held at 2:30 p.m. that afternoon, Gomes will be awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. Award-winning historian Michael Beschloss will deliver the commencement address and will receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.
Both the baccalaureate and commencement ceremonies will be held on the Quad. In case of rain, they will be held in Allan P. Kirby Sports Center.
Gomes isPlummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard and Pusey Minister in the university’s Memorial Church. Born in Boston in 1942, he is an American Baptist minister ordained to the Christian ministry by the First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Mass. Since 1970 he has served in the Memorial Church, and since 1974 as Plummer Professor and Pusey Minister.
Gomes participated in the presidential inaugurations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He is author of New York Times and national best-selling books The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (1996) and Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (1998), published by William Morrow and Company, Inc.; The Good Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need (2002) and Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (2003), published by HarperSanFrancisco; and The Backward Glance and the Forward Look (2005), published by WordTech. He has also published 10 volumes of sermons and numerous articles and papers.
Named Clergy of the Year in 1998 by Religion in American Life, he fulfills preaching and lecturing engagements throughout America and the British Isles. In 2005 he presented a series of sermons in St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, England, in the presence of the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall; and in 2004 he gave the Convocation Address at Harvard Divinity School. In 2002 he served as Hein Fry Lecturer for the Evangelical Lutheran Seminaries in the United States. In 2001 he was Missioner to Oxford University; in 2000 he delivered The University Sermon before the University of Cambridge, England, and The Millennial Sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, England; and in 1998 he presented The Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching, in Yale Divinity School.
Gomes serves on the advisory board of The Living Pulpit. He is Harvard University trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a trustee of Roxbury Latin School and Bates College. He is a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and Colonial Society of Massachusetts and a sometime Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts, London. Gomes is former acting director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research; past president of The Signet Society, Harvard’s oldest literary society; past president and trustee of the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Mass.; and former trustee of Wellesley College, the Public Broadcasting Service, and Plimoth Plantation.
A member of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Faculty of Divinity, Gomes holds degrees from Bates College and Harvard Divinity School and honorary degrees from more than 30 colleges and universities.
In 2006, he was given The Preston N. Williams Award by Harvard Divinity School. In 2001 Harvard University presented him with its Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award. He is an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, where The Gomes Lectureship is established in his name.