The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton talks with the Rev. Frank A. Thomas, director of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, about Thomas’ life and faith journey Thursday in the Hall of Philosophy.
MARY LEE TALBOT
Staff Writer
“There is no point to faith if we don’t have an honest struggle with it, because struggle takes us deeper and closer to God,” the Rev. Frank A. Thomas, Ph.D., said at the 9:15 a.m. Thursday morning worship service in the Hall of Philosophy. Thomas engaged in a conversation with Bishop Eugene Sutton about his life and faith journey.
Thomas’ parents were part of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North. “My mother was a schoolteacher and my father was a short-order cook and a musician. He thought we would never get the full measure of our lives if we stayed in Gulfport, Mississippi,” Thomas said.
While the family was not overly religious, Thomas attended a Roman Catholic school for the educational opportunities and then from grades 8–12, he attended a Lutheran school. When he attended the Roman Catholic school, he wanted to be an altar boy but was told he could not because he was not Catholic. “My walk with God began early. I felt a deep connection even then,” he said.
When Sutton asked if Thomas had any teenage rebellion, he responded, “I played basketball and ran track and cross country. You can’t do that and not live righteously. I had a teacher in a sex education class who could not say the word sex; he always had to spell it.”
Thomas’ mother was the first in his family to go to college, and he was the second. He went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He lived in a house sponsored by Lutherans and the chaplain kept urging Thomas to go to seminary. He told the chaplain he was there for an MBA.
He was attending a United Methodist church with his soon-to-be wife and the pastor asked Thomas to fill in for a men’s day speaker who had to cancel. “I said yes and I talked from Genesis to Revelation; I covered everything. One of the mothers of the church came up to me afterward and said, ‘That was good, long but good.’” The pastor took him over to Chicago Theological Seminary to register.
He decided to pursue a Ph.D. in world religions and took a course on the prophets, taught by a Roman Catholic professor who would weep in class over the sayings of the prophets. Thomas was the only African American and the only non-Catholic in the class. One day, the professor invited him to his office and asked Thomas what he wanted to do with his life. “I told him I wanted to be a teacher of world religions. He said to me, ‘We have enough teachers; the people need shepherds.’”
Thomas told the congregation that the church does not make room for the absence of God. He noted author Frederick Buechner, who said that people cannot experience the presence of God if they have not experienced the absence of God. Thomas said, “Struggle is part of the faith. In 2025, I found out I had prostate cancer. I prayed, I journaled, I talked with people, I asked God how this could happen. When I went in for surgery six months later, I was completely calm. It is a process to rejoice in the Lord.”
He continued, “I had to go to the House of God’s visitation, look in the mirrors and see the end and face myself. If you like my preaching, it is because I suffered my way into it. I remember Lauryn Hill saying that a lot of people like to wear the clothes of Bob Marley but they have no idea of the deep struggle Marley went through to develop deep content.”
There are no shortcuts. James Baldwin said you have to pay your dues. “The church says that Jesus suffered so that we did not have to, but that is wrong,” said Thomas.
Thomas and his wife, Joyce, lost their son this year to a hit-and-run driver. “I could not process when the police officer said he was ‘deceased.’ I don’t know how people do without the people of God.”
The Thomases are members of Trinity United Church of Christ, the church of Jeremiah Wright and Otis Moss III. Thomas was asked if he wanted to do anything in the funeral service for his son. “I said no. I want to sit on the front row with Joyce and my family. I want the rights of every other church member.”
Sutton’s final question to Thomas was, “What do you want your funeral or headstone to say about you?” Thomas replied, “That I was a good man.” Sutton asked Thomas to give the blessing and he prayed over the congregation using the “Prayer of Loving Kindness” that he ended his sermons with this week.
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor of Chautauqua, presided. Sonya Subbayya Sutton, interim director of Sacred Music, provided musical accompaniment. For the prelude, she played “Troubled Waters,” by Margaret Bonds, on the Steinway piano. Mary Lee Talbot led the prayers of the people. Dena Ward read the Scripture lesson from Philippians 4:4–9. Audrianna Hughes, a Chautauqua Opera Company young artist who is at Chautauqua with The Denyce Graves Foundation’s Generational Voices program, was the soloist. She sang two spirituals, both in settings by 20th-century African American women: “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord” by Florence Price and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” by Margaret Bonds. Hughes was accompanied by Sutton on the Steinway piano. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching was made possible by The Rev. Leonard J. Ebel Chaplaincy.
