Q&A: Peter Gomes

Rev. Peter J. Gomes, longtime pastor of Harvard University’s Memorial Church and a professor of Christian morals there, first came into the publishing limelight with his New York Times best-selling primer on the Bible, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (1996). Next month sees the release of The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News?, a meditation on where the figure of Jesus stands in the modern world. LJ recently spoke to the renowned preacher over the phone from his home outside of Boston.

Your upcoming book’s emphasis on the possibility of controversy is consistent. Why choose this approach?

I think the stress of the times affects us all. It struck me that the greatest controversy of all is the unwillingness to look at the transforming aspect of the Christian message, which raises serious questions always about the status quo but at the same time demands a great deal of courage and imagination, and those seem to me the two qualities most lacking in religious life today.

You lean on poems and hymn-texts throughout the book. What is the place of poetry and hymns in spiritual life?

I don’t pretend to be a literary critic or even a connoisseur of poetry, but I’ve always believed—perhaps it’s just my Puritan upbringing—that most of us define our religion through the hymns we sing. I know I always tell my students you should choose your hymns as carefully as you choose your biblical text, because by and large, people will remember the hymns whether or not they remember the texts.

This is a boom going on with spiritual books. What is America looking for in your opinion?

We thought we found everything in the enormous material and sensual wealth surrounding us, and yet we still feel strangely empty. So having everything and having tried everything else, I think we’re giving the spiritual sense another try. People are hungering for something meaningful and not something simply bought, used, and discarded.

What do you make of Joel Osteen (see LJ’s review of his Become a Better You, p. 55) and other preachers associated with megachurches or media ministry?

I like him. I can understand why he fills that stadium church several times a week. People seem desperate to find where religion fits into their daily lives, and I think Osteen is good at offering a kind of spiritual clarity, at asking the fundamental questions, and at finding a religious and theological way to fill that gap. People used to write to the Agony Aunt or Ann Landers, and there is a sense in which Osteen and other televangelists acknowledge that these problems are real and offer a spiritual way to deal with them.

What living writers on spiritual topics or translations of spiritual favorites/classics do you find engaging?

My favorite translation of the New Testament—J.B. Phillips’s The New Testament in Modern English—though roughly 60 years old, has a pungency and clarity lacking in the more sterile, modernized versions or in the sanctified classic version. Phillips’s translation of Letters to Young Churches reminds us that Paul was speaking to communities in formation—that there was an urgency there. I read Augustine and Calvin to keep myself sharp.

Why has the long-standing argument between religion and reason flared up via books like Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great?

I have a theory, part of which is that the Hitchenses of this world long ago expected religions to shrivel up and blow away, yet not only do religions persist, but they are gaining adherents. You would think they’d remember we already had this argument over the course of the 19th century. They expected a secular universe by now, and they are quite surprised to find believers. Their annoyance at finding belief of any sort is a proof of the vitality of religious belief, and so much the more it’s an annoyance and a distraction to them.

What’s next for you?

I have committed to writing a memoir—a much misused term—which I suppose will bind together many interests and experiences. I’ve been in the ministry for 40 years. That makes for a lot of loose ends to put together, and people flatter me with their curiosity about how I will manage to put those loose ends together.