Eugene Hoiland Peterson (November 6, 1932 – October 22, 2018) was an American Presbyterian minister, scholar, theologian, author, and poet.

He wrote over 30 books, including the Gold Medallion Book Award–winner The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Navpress Publishing Group, 2002),[2] an idiomatic paraphrasing commentary and translation of the Bible into modern American English using a dynamic equivalence translation approach.

[4] In 1962, Peterson was a founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Bel Air, Maryland, where he served for 29 years before retiring in 1991.

[7] He was the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, from 1992 to 1998.

[9] Peterson worked on The Message throughout the 1990s, translating the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts and paraphrasing them into contemporary American English slang.

[4] In 2017, a Religion News Service interviewer asked Peterson about same-sex marriage, which had been endorsed by his denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Peterson had retired from public life in 2017 after publishing his final book, As Kingfishers Catch Fire.

[14] Peterson died at his home in Lakeside, Montana, on October 22, 2018, at the age of 85, a week after entering hospice care for complications related to congestive heart failure.