New Book Analysis Series: “Reading While Black:African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope” by Esau McCaulley (Part 1)

Last fall, Esau McCaulley, an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, came out with his book, Reading While Black: An African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. To be honest, even though I bought it soon after it came out, it had remained on my desk, unread for a while. Part of the reason was because there were a number of other books on the same pile, and I like reading one book at a time so I can really focus on it. Another reason, though, was that due to all the racial upheaval and chaos we witnessed over the summer, I just felt too mentally exhausted to tackle the book.

Well, this past month I did sit down to read it, and I’m glad I did. And so, I want to take a few posts to share what McCaulley writes in his book. Now, to just address the elephant in the room, writing about the issue of race relations in America is a particularly touchy subject, especially if you are a “white person” who doesn’t fully embrace a particular political, dare I say, “progressive” position. As with other social issues, there seems to be a very rigid progressive orthodoxy whose adherents are quick to label anyone who questions their particular political stance and views with a host of pejoratives that have the goal of shutting that person up. The problem with that, of course, is that it denies a basic reality that when it comes to any social or political issue, there is a wide spectrum of opinions and views. Therefore, to try to impose such a rigid orthodoxy that it has the effect of saying there are only two views—the righteous view and the evil view—is to actually foster further division and hatred.

Even in many Christian circles, political biases often subvert and trump basic Christian stances rooted in the Bible. It is quite easy to see when that happens because division and discord soon follow. All that said, I want to take a few posts to go through McCaulley’s book for the sole reason that it is a fantastic book that should challenge every Christian, whatever his or her political views are. If I were to sum up the book as a whole, I would say McCaulley attempts to do two things. First, he seeks to carve out space for what he calls a Black Ecclesial Interpretation and application of the Bible in terms of racial injustice. This position is different than what I will call the traditional conservative and progressive views (but I’ll tease that out later). Second, he goes through a host of biblical passages to argue for what is a truly biblical witness regarding things like slavery, racism, and the pursuit of justice.

My only complaint about the book, if you can really call it a “complaint” at all, is I couldn’t help thinking as I read the book that the book’s title is actually misleading, for I didn’t see McCaulley’s black ecclesial interpretation of the Bible to really be a black interpretation at all. It was a faithful Christian interpretation. Of course, that is one of the points he makes in his book. Still, all I’ll say at this point is that if you read the book, you’re really not getting a “black version” of Christianity. You’re getting Christianity…and that is a good thing.

Chapter 1: The South Got Somethin’ to Say (Making Space for Black Ecclesial Interpretation)
McCaulley begins this chapter by recounting the first time he encountered higher biblical criticism in the college classroom. To the point, the “interpretive battlelines,” so to speak seemed to be drawn between the more politically conservative white Evangelicals and the more politically liberal white mainline Protestants. As a black student in a predominately white college, McCaulley noted that his professors were certainly more in the mainline Protestant camp and they made it very clear to their students that the South could only be made better if people rejected “white fundamentalism” (into which his professors lumped all Evangelicalism) and the centrality of the Bible in favor of the “white mainline Protestant consensus on politics, economics, and religion.”

The problem with that was that McCaulley grew up in a Black Christian home that did, in fact, hold to the centrality of the Bible, and did, in fact, share a lot of theological commonality with Evangelicalism. They accepted the commonly known four pillars of Evangelicalism: (1) The importance of a “born again” experience, (2) The demonstration of the Gospel in missionary and social reform efforts, (3) The upholding the authority of Scripture, and (4) The stress on the sacrificial death of Jesus as what makes redemption possible. At the same time, though, McCaulley saw that there were still problems within Evangelicalism. Evangelicals of the late 20^th century and early 21^st century tended to turn a blind eye to the plight of being black in America, and Evangelical scholars seemed to want to keep the study of the Bible solely focused on the first century world of the early Church.

So, white mainline Protestantism had its major flaws and white Evangelicalism had its large blind spots. McCaulley then says a few things about the rising progressive strand of the Black Christian tradition. He notes that although he could agree with much of its social analysis, it bothered him that “some Black progressives shared the same disdain for traditional belief that I had witnessed among my mainline professors” (14). It seems like many Black progressives “saw the Bible as being as much a part of the problem as the solution” (15).

All those experiences McCaulley had with white mainline Protestantism, white Evangelicalism, the traditional black Christianity of his upbringing, and the black progressive movement caused him to try to really think about what a proper understanding of the Bible and Christianity really was. At the risk of possibly oversimplifying things, McCaulley ends his first chapter by saying that the version of Christianity by white slaveowners in America is anti-Christian and unbiblical. In fact, it was precisely the “social location of enslaved persons” that “caused them to read the Bible differently”—and they “different way” they read it was actually the traditional and biblical understanding of God as a liberator. Simply put, when you are a slave or are oppressed, it is quite easy to see in the Bible what should be obvious to all. After all, the founding story of the establishment of the Hebrews as God’s people—the Exodus—is one of God bringing people out of slavery and oppression.

McCaulley ends his first chapter by admitting that it is inevitable that everyone comes to the Bible and reads the Bible through their own culturally and socially shaped experiences. He states the problem with many Euro-American scholars, ministers, and lay-folk is that although they read the Bible through that Euro-American shaped lens, they have this illusion that they are the ones reading it objectively and that their interpretation is the correct one. By contrast, McCaulley states that a “black reading” of the Bible is at least honest about the fact that it is coming to the Bible from a very specific vantage point.

In any case, what McCaulley proceeds to put forward in the rest of his book is what he calls a Black Ecclesial Interpretation of the Bible—a way to take the Bible seriously as authoritative in a Christian’s life and to understand it in its original context, and yet at the same time to be committed to letting the Bible speak to the present concerns of black people and the black experience. It means not going the way of white mainline Protestantism or black progressivism and seeing the Bible as a hindrance to social progress, and not going the way of white Evangelicalism and reducing the Bible to either ancient historical inquiry or private devotional life.

How McCaulley teases this out will be the subject of the next few posts.