Interview with Eugene Peterson on Reading Rich Literature

Recently in Manhattan I had the opportunity to sit down with venerable pastor and author Eugene Peterson and interview him.  Peterson has championed a rich reading life on the part of pastors over the years, and I had the chance to talk with him about how to cultivate such a life.  Not everyone will agree with all of Peterson’s stances and theological ideas, but I commend his comments to you.

A selection from the pastor:

Good writers are people who pay attention to language, are interested in telling the truth, and are in some ways finding themselves inoculated against the fads of what will sell, what will please. Good literature almost always goes against the grain of the culture: interpreting it, subtly criticizing it, maybe not polemically. Pastors are right in the center of deceit and corruption and bad use of language. We have a commitment to use words accurately and honestly.

Good writing does not come easy; it takes a lot of discipline, a lot of self-criticism. A lot of people in my position want to know how to write, and after talking to them for a while I realize, “You don’t want to write, you want to get published; you’re not willing to go through the disciplines, the rejections.” Rejections are often compliments, because we’re not writing for popular taste or the stuff that just titillates people, what makes them feel good or bad or whatever. Propaganda is the worst kind of writing; there’s almost something pornographic about it. It just dehumanizes what’s going on, and we’re just filled with it right now politically, so I think of the importance of poets and novelists, because I think of poets as the high priests of the language. No poet writes in order to get published, not in America, so anybody who takes the path of poetry is going a lonely way and a not lucrative way.

Read the whole thing.  If you haven’t read his book The Pastor,  you might want to give that a look to become familiar with his material.