| Pastor puts Dr. Seuss among theological giants By Bob Smietana Religion News Service  When he was a student at Duke Divinity School, the Rev. James Kemp studied the great theologians of the Christian faith the Apostle Paul, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church to which Kemp belongs.
But his favorite theologian was the one he first read at the public library in Lexington, Ky. Dr. Seuss. His favorite theological work? Horton Hatches the Egg. It is the first book I remember reading or having read to me, recalls Kemp in his new book, The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss. Since its release in February, The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss has already sold more than 14,000 copies, and has headed into a second printing. It got a boost in early March, when Barnes and Noble featured it as part of a national celebration of Dr. Seuss birthday on March 2. During his 15 years as a United Methodist minister, Kemp often used Dr. Seuss stories as illustrations in his sermons. For example, Horton the elephant, who keeps his promise to sit on a birds egg till it hatches despite ridicule from those around him is a model of faithfulness of Christians, Kemp says. In the face of challenges, persecution and ridicule, he wrote, Horton remains faithful one hundred percent. Each chapter focuses on a single Dr. Seuss book, and was condensed from Kemps old sermons. The Cat in the Hat Comes Back becomes a story about the restoring power of Jesus Christ. Yertle the Turtle a lesson about greed. Green Eggs and Ham a parable about embracing change, and The Sneetches one about overcoming discrimination. Two chapters focus on The Grinch Who Stole Christmas: one about materialism and another about loving difficult people. If we are to follow Jesus, Kemp wrote, we too must learn to recognize and love people, who, like the Grinch, are miserable and difficult because they are in so much pain. In an e-mail interview from his home in Lexington, Kemp said he likes Dr. Seuss as theologian because Jesus told us to come as a child, and Dr. Seuss makes us look at things through the eyes of a child. Kemp, 48, suffers from severe multiple sclerosis, a condition that forced him to retire from the ministry in 1996. The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss is the third book hes written since then. The first, Who Says Im Dead? deals with his struggles with MS, which has made him a quadriplegic. The title comes from an incident in 2000, when Kemps bank accounts were frozen after the federal government mistakenly decided he had died. A 2002 book focused on ideas for childrens sermons. For a time, Kemp wrote using a computer with speech recognition software. His speech has declined so that the computer can no longer recognize him, so he dictates his writing to his mother, who acts as his secretary. His wife Barbara interprets for Kemp during interviews. He says he wrote the book to show that people with great limitations can still be productive, as long as they have the right support system. He says he relies on his faith, family and church friends to help him keep going, despite his circumstances. Hope is another of the themes Kemp finds in Dr. Seuss. One of his favorite characters is the Cat in the Hat, he says, because through him we see that something good can come out of bad circumstances; we are never hopeless. Thats the overall message of the book, he adds. There is always hope, Kemp said. There is always hope in the unlimited richness of God. Most of our problems are trivial. Since the release of The Gospel According to Peanuts by Robert L. Short in 1965, thereve been a number of similar books that combine spirituality with pop culture. There have been Gospels According to the Simpsons, Tony Soprano, J.R.R. Tolkien, Harry Potter, and even The Gospel Reloaded, tied into the Matrix phenomenon. And then theres the 2003 spoof, the Gospel According to Biff, Christs Childhood Pal. Linda Peavy, associate publisher for Judson Press, Kemps publisher, says the book connects with readers because so many grew up reading Dr. Seuss. She says Kemps book is a joy to read. | 
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