47 pages • 1 hour read
Esau McCaulleyReading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Impact of Social Context on Religious Interpretation
Content Warning: This section of the guide addresses enslavement, racism, violence, and oppression. The guide reproduces the terms “slave” and “slave master” only in quotation.
One of McCaulley’s key claims about BEI is that it is socially located, and the idea has foundations in Black liberation theology. McCaulley follows the example set by James Cone, who highlights the social locations of biblical characters to find points of connection with the Black experience. For example, the Exodus narrative is a throughline of BEI because the enslaved status of early Black Christians prompted their identification with Israel and trust in God’s character as a liberator. In Chapter 4, McCaulley emphasizes that Luke was the only New Testament writer who was a Gentile, making his place in the canon “a testimony to God’s value of all ethnic groups” (75), which provides hope for Black Christians who face racism.
A critical component of distinguishing BEI is demonstrating the ways that white Christians have interpreted the Bible from their social locations. In Chapter 1, McCaulley writes of evangelical circles that focused on the “golden age of theology […] [that] coincided with nadirs of Black freedom” and the biblical commentaries that only provided practical applications designed for white middle-class Christians (11). In Chapter 3, McCaulley bookends his argument on the church’s role as a political witness with assessments of the moderate approach displayed by white Christians reluctant to explicitly name or protest injustice because they believe that peacekeeping requires inaction or docility. This reinforces the text’s argument that someone’s social context impacts the way they read the Bible.
While the bulk of the text focuses on racial context, McCaulley briefly considers gender and class contexts as well. He highlights womanist biblical interpretation as a recent development that explores the meaning and validity of the Bible for Black women simultaneously facing racism, sexism, and classism. Some of the injustices McCaulley names in Chapter 3 are “[s]exism and the abuse and commodification of the Black female body” (69), and Chapter 5 contains a reference to gender roles in relation to the Ethiopian eunuch’s identification with Jesus’s suffering (110). He makes references to class in Chapter 6 in his exegesis of Psalm 137 and Israel’s rightful anger at their suffering while their oppressors enjoyed wealth and luxury.
Contribution of Black Theological Perspectives to Broader Christian Thought
McCaulley contends that BEI opens space for discussion among various groups of believers about the unique insights their cultures have gleaned from the Bible. He counters dominant claims that “strong affirmations of ethnic identity are improper for Christians” by demonstrating that diversity is required for the fulfillment of God’s eschatological vision (112). Accordingly, it is the interpretation that arises out of the Black experience that transforms broader Christian thought and discerns the truth of the Christian faith from its distortion.
Centering Black concerns enables McCaulley’s alternative interpretations of the same passages that have been used to justify slavery and encourage passivity among oppressed peoples. Many of these alternative interpretations are of the Pauline scriptures because they have been most widely (mis)interpreted in enslaved enslaver exegesis and have therefore been “presented to Black Christians as the fount of all [their] troubles” (151). McCaulley’s deconstruction of Romans 13:1-7 in Chapters 2 and 3 provides the basis for theologies of policing and political witness, whereas conventional white interpretations have used the passage to mandate enslaved people’s unquestioned submission to enslavers and unjust governments. In support of his assertion that the fulfillment of God’s eschatological vision requires that Christians’ ethnic and cultural identities remain intact, McCaulley challenges the colorblind reading of Galatians 3:28 and points out Paul’s ethnic consciousness. The passage, then, is a statement that it is not only Jewish identity that guarantees the inheritance of the Abrahamic promises, but rather faith, regardless of class, gender, or ethnicity. Notably, it is on the question of God’s intention regarding slavery in Chapter 7 that McCaulley’s exegesis highlights the ways Paul’s scriptures undermine slavery and challenges the church to rethink the institution in light of the cross and resurrection.
There are other critical passages and figures throughout the Old and New Testament that McCaulley reinterprets through the lens of Black experience. However, a key insight of McCaulley’s articulation of BEI is that from Black people’s earliest encounters with the Bible and the establishment of Black churches, Black Christians have been critical of their white counterparts’ interpretation of the scriptures and refusal to order their lives according to true Christian doctrine. Consequently, Black theological perspectives correct the false witness of enslaved enslaver exegesis and subsequent attempts to limit political witness and resistance to injustice, thereby challenging all Christians to live up to ethical ideals outlined in the Bible, as exemplified by Jesus, Paul, Luke, Isaiah, and other essential figures.
Power of Scripture in Addressing Contemporary Social Issues
In Chapter 1, McCaulley reflects on his encounter with a Black Pentecostal pastor to outline the central concern and source of debate among Black Christians: “For many of them a traditional understanding of the Christian faith limited the work of liberation. They often saw the Bible as being as much a part of the problem as the solution” (14-15). McCaulley gleans that within Black Christianity, there is a tendency among progressives to emphasize political liberation at the expense of Christian doctrine. However, in the Bonus Track, he warns against allowing social location to eclipse the biblical text. Accordingly, McCaulley applies BEI to illustrate that the Bible can and does speak directly to Black concerns, charting theologies of social justice that are deeply connected to the personal salvation undergirding Christian faith.
Although McCaulley demonstrates the application of the BEI method in Chapters 2 through 7, Chapter 4 makes the case for the Power of Scripture in Addressing Contemporary Social Issues because McCaulley directly addresses the question of whether the Bible speaks to the Black quest for justice. He notes that, in addition to the criticisms coming from within the Black Christian community, Black pastors also face the criticism of Black members of other religions and Black secularists who contend that the “Bible isn’t up to the challenge of speaking to the issues of the day” (73). Besides probing the gospel of Luke to answer affirmatively that the Bible does address Black people’s social justice concerns, McCaulley emphasizes the dialogical and patient characteristics of BEI, stating that “[t]he Black Christian brings his or her questions to the text and the text poses its own questions to us” (73). This is a key point that McCaulley reiterates in the Bonus Track when discussing how different theologians have allowed social location to eclipse the text. For McCaulley, Black Christians must come to the Bible without leaning solely into human understanding but instead trusting God’s wisdom and allowing the text to play a corrective role in shaping Black Christian thought. That is the point from which McCaulley’s exegetical articulations emerge, even though this point emerges later in the text.
