Remembering two UCC peacemakers who sought God’s shalom for all

In his debut sermon, delivered to the masses gathered on the mount, Jesus redefined what blessedness looked like. There, among mentions of the meek, mournful and merciful, were the peacemakers — for they, Jesus said, would be called children of God.

The United Church of Christ recently lost two such children. The Rev. Gordon Forbes died on May 24. He was 92. And on June 28, Margaret L. Jacobs, better known by friends and family as “Peg,” passed away peacefully. She was 93.

Those who knew Gordon and Peg say they embraced Jesus-defined peacemaker lives, speaking when silences harmed and acting when inactions hurt. They tirelessly co-created with God a world where “shalom” dared to go beyond the mainstream definition of “peace.” Gordon and Peg desired the deeper, life-changing meaning of “wholeness” to prevail for all.

A Jesus kind of justice

For Gordon that wholeness meant extending the proverbial welcome table. The pastor, who faithfully served First United Church of Christ in Northfield, Minnesota, and then later Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ in Bethesda, Maryland, became politically active during the social upheavals of the 1960s.

It was during this turbulent decade that he co-founded with colleagues the Center for Human Resources, providing support for those facing challenges of addiction and loss. Later in Bethesda, Gordon established the Westmoreland Volunteer House, a mission program that brought young adults together spiritually to serve those in need throughout Washington, D.C.

Among the many lives Gordon touched, were that of his children. His son, Jeff, has followed in his father’s footsteps, heeding a call not to the pulpit but to the “Hill,” where he leads a government and public advocacy consulting team in Washington, D.C.

As a young boy, Jeff remembers his dad’s political passion, having worked on the George McGovern campaign in the 1970s. He also remembered how depressed his father was after McGovern lost the 1972 presidential race to Richard Nixon.

Gordon, though, never let politics bar the church door. Jeff recalls that soon after the McGovern loss, a woman came to the church office inquiring about joining the church. Her only question she had for the pastor was did she have to be a Democrat like him. It was then his father put some distance from worldly politics for that of kin-dom building.

Capitol Hill politics didn’t fill dinnertime conversations at the Forbes table. Rather the talk was all about Jesus inspired politics that called for workers of justice.

“I wasn’t raised in a political home. I was raised in a household that was all about social justice. It was the idea of sticking up for those in need that my dad passed on to me, and which shaped my life,” said the younger Forbes.

Jeff said that before his father’s dementia fully took hold, they would have robust conversations about the bewildering, age-old question of which political side the Divine was on.

Gordon would answer wisely, reminding his son that the political picture was always much bigger than the person currently in office.  

“Dad would say this moment in time doesn’t define or determine the future. It is just that —a moment, a blip,” he said.

Freeze framing the holy

For Margaret (Peg) Jacobs, moments in time were moments to be captured with the click of a camera. Friends says that the avid photographer, whose camera was her favorite pastime, had the ability to freeze frame the holiness all around.

In 2025, a sister of the Kentucky-based Loretto Community — an order of peace seeking, justice oriented nuns, where Peg would spend her later years as a co-member — wrote of Peg’s snapshot talent. She cited how Peg “saw the beauty and captured it just as it was, and maybe as others had overlooked.”

Peg’s gift for recognizing people’s beautifully-created-by-God selves was one that shined during her time working for the UCC National office, having joined the staff in the early 2000s as Minister for Inclusion Ministries. She worked with many on providing the denomination with a new lens in which to see the work of disabilities, as well as racial and LGBTQ+ ministries.

Prior to coming to the national setting, Peg served as an associate for mission and spiritual development for the former Massachusetts Conference of the UCC. It was there that the Rev. Loey Powell, then a young seminarian, would hear Peg’s name spoken with great admiration by her father who was serving as associate conference minister.

“He would speak often of Peg’s dedication, of her kind heart, and how good she was with people,” said Powell.

It wasn’t until Powell herself joined the National office as Executive Director of the Coordinating Center for Women, that she would come to experience Peg’s abiding, contemplative faith and encompassing, radical welcome firsthand. Spiritual traits, say friends, that made sense to them that Peg would find her second-act home with the Loretto community.

“Peg always found community there with the sisters. She always had a contemplative side,” said Lowell.

That is contemplativeness with an edge as many, like Lowell, describe the Loretto as a “renegade order.” Perfect for Peg whose friend and colleague, the Rev. Dr. Tom Dipko, retired Executive Vice President of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries and Charter Chair and member of the Board of Directors of the Cornerstone Fund, described her as an “accomplished troubler of the waters of dull conformity.”

Peg, he reflected, was one who could not pretend all was well in the world when it was not.

Jesus was right. Blessed are the peacemakers — Gordon and Peg — children of God who sought shalom’s wholeness for those they were called to serve.

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