Forbes leaves famed pulpit, not prophetic role: Ready for the next great chapter
Make no mistake: Take James A. Forbes Jr. away from a pulpit and he is not himself. Forbes’s old friend the late African-American church historian James Melvin Washington used to kid the senior minister of Manhattan’s Riverside Church by saying Forbes “would preach to clear his sinuses.”
“He was right: If I don’t preach, I won’t be well,” Forbes mused one morning recently in an office overlooking the church where he has presided, implored and, yes, preached for the better part of two decades.