Bridging Pulpit and Practice: James Forbes

James Forbes on Let's Forgive our Fathers

Rev. Dr. James Forbes preached on Duke University’s Founder’s Day and Father’s Day in 1977. More than 20 years later, Forbes reflects on the experience of preaching at an institution where he was denied admission twenty years prior because of his race.

Listen to Forbes' sermon Let's Forgive Our Fathers (June 19, 1977) and watch the interview below.
 

"For me, God is ultimate relationality...and wants to bring stuff together that is scattered, disparate, and strewn."

-- James Forbes

For Discussion

  1. Although the sermon deals with forgiveness, it is also a sermon about not covering up sin.  How does Dr. Forbes name the sins of the University and the sins of the nation in this sermon?  What spiritual work do you see Dr. Forbes doing through the “indelicate” mention of Duke’s segregated past?

  2. At one point in the sermon, Dr. Forbes speaks of “easing up on [the congregation’s] blind side” to discuss a difficult topic.  How did you see Dr. Forbes engaging, naming and softening resistances in his listeners?

  3. Father’s Day can be a complicated day in Christian worship because the church has traditionally used the name of “Father” to describe God – in spite of our human fathers’ shortcomings.  How does Dr. Forbes negotiate these struggles?  What is at stake for him in his use of Mother imagery at the end?

  4. In his reflections with Dean Powery, Dr. Forbes describes a relationality of human creation grounded in the relationality of God (6:41).  After the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, Dr. Forbes would describe protest in similar, relational terms: “My mind is focused on how there must be a divine source of the energy to help this movement to develop, particularly after George Floyd’s murder…The groundswell of Blacks and whites and browns gathering for protest, I think that’s actually miraculous of Biblical proportions.”1  How are protest, relationality and divine energy connected for Forbes?  

  5. What wisdom do you take from this sermon about how to address forgiveness from the pulpit?  What wisdom might you add?
     

    1 https://billmoyers.com/story/bill-moyers-talks-with-dr-james-forbes/