Reading While Black
Book Review (Esau McCaulley)
I actually listened to this as the first audiobook I had, and it was so intriguing that I ended up buying a copy to read as well, and I have returned to it several times since I first read it. It helps, I think, that the audiobook is read by the author themself, Dr. Esau McCaulley.
The book begins by articulating its location, and its author's location. McCaulley grew up in the South, and he uses the analogy of how Southern hip-hop had a position that was neither East Coast nor West Coast, but a third thing, to articulate how he himself grew into faith, through college and then seminary, and the Black Ecclesial Tradition (as he terms it), neither beholden to White Protestantism in its Conservative nor its Progressive forms. In particular, the holding together of a profound public/social/political witness, alongside theological 'conservatism' expressed in Black language, not in the jargon of the White traditions. McCaulley sums up some of his early discomfort with white evangelicalism like this:
I learned that too often alongside the four pillars of evangelicalism outlined above there were unspoken fifth and sixth pillars. These are a general agreement on a certain reading of American history that downplayed injustice and a gentlemen’s agreement to remain largely silent on current issues of racism and systemic injustice. p11
McCaulley makes the further case that in fact:
Stated differently, everybody has been reading the Bible from their locations, but we are honest about it. What makes Black interpretation Black, then, are the collective experiences, customs, and habits of Black people in this country. p20
This is not an insular project though, it is a dialogical one. One in which not only do Black people ask particular questions of the Biblical text, but the Bible asks (searching) questions in turn; it is also dialogical in terms of other cultures and histories. I think this is why and where my appreciation for the Black ecclesial tradition comes in - I am clearly not part of that tradition or history in any way, but it has become a dialogue partner to me in new and refreshing ways.
The rest of the book works through certain key issues: policing, political protest, justice, ethnicity, Black anger and pain, and finally slavery.
Policing is obviously a topic that Black Christians in America face daily. From the origins of US police forces in slavery, as tools to enforce that institution, to racial profiling and systemic discrimination in our present day. McCaulley makes the argument that because ancient Roman soldiery very often had a policing function, that Romans 13:1-7 can speak not just to the State, but to the question of policing in particular. He deals deftly with the problem of submission to evil rulers, "the question is not about our submission to wicked rulers, but their very existence." (p31) The answer to that question lies in eschatology. Furthermore, the way that Paul uses Pharaoh in Romans, and the broader understanding of God's use of human agents in the Old Testament, suggest that the limitation is not on God's use of evil agents to achieve his purposes, but our discernment of his actions.
Black hope for policing is not that complicated. Paul articulates that hope quite plainly in Romans 13:4. We want to live free of fear. When I am pulled over for a traffic stop, I am afraid precisely because the police have been a source of terror in my own life and the lives of my people. p40
Political Witness: In opening this section, McCaulley contrasts MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail with those he was responding to, a coalition of white clergy calling for a moderate position, to trust the system, and to stop agitating for political change and disturbing the peace. The same tension bedevils politics and faith today - we may look back at the US Civil Rights movement and side with MLK, but this is partly because MLK's legacy has been domesticated and tamed and reduced to soundbites. Blaming activists for inciting violence is always a tactic that belongs to the status quo.
What does the New Testament have to say about the political witness of the church in response to the oppressive tendencies of the state? p50
McCaulley begins this chapter by critiquing the tendency to start with, and end with, 1 Tim 2:1-4 and Rom 13:1-7. His critique of readings of 1 Tim 2:1-4 as "shut up and pray" (my paraphrase) points back to 1:10, and that Paul is indubitably making a political point in critiquing slave-traders as "contrary to sound doctrine". He then turns to fourloci of political witness embedded, and not discardable, in the New Testament: Jesus' ministry (especially his critique of Herod), Paul, Revelation 18, and then the Beatitudes. Undergirding all this is a reading of the OT Prophets as critique.
Moving towards a resolution, McCaulley highlights peacemaking:
Peacemaking, then, cannot be separated from truth telling. The church’s witness does not involve simply denouncing the excesses of both sides and making moral equivalencies. It involves calling injustice by its name. If the church is going to be on the side of peace in the United States, then there has to be an honest accounting of what this country has done and continues to do to Black and Brown people. p68
Chapter four complements and projects from the previous chapter, in turning to the question of justice. It positions itself against the White critique of Black Christian concerns for justice (the endless deriding of 'social justice' as 'liberalism'), as well as Black critics of Christianity as fundamentally unjust and not-a-friend to Black people. McCaulley limits his study, for space reasons, to Luke:
The burden of this chapter, then, is to outline the ways in which the Gospel of Luke contains a vision for the just society transformed by the advent of God that speaks to the hearts of Black Christians. p74
I won't outline his argument in this chapter, but it is powerful and persuasive, the way he connects lived Black experience with the hopes and sufferings of Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah, and the proclamation of Jesus.
One of the things, let me say by way of a side-comment, that I appreciate about this book is that its topics are almost back to front. Rather than starting with slavery or Black identity, which are key, core, important topics, and then moving to 'application' like policing, McCaulley begins with what seem to be the 'application' issues before moving to the foundational ones. I think this has a strong positive effect on the shape of the book and the structure of his argument. It is in fact better to start with the particular, before you get to some of the more universal.
Chapter five discusses Black Identity. Is Christianity foreign to African-Americans and Africans? No, answers McCaulley. Firstly, by pointing to the early connections to Africa: Alexandria, North Africa, Augustine, Tertullian; Sudan, Ethiopia, Nubia - these last two being Christian kingdoms where Christianity did not come via colonisation.
Furthermore, McCaulley does work in the text for us, including the multi-ethnic nature of Israel, for example in the inclusion of Ephraim and Manasseh, half-Egyptian children, as sons of Jacob, tribes of Israel. "Israel was always multiethnic and multinational". So too Exodus 12:38 - the inclusion of a "mixed crowd", e.g. non-Israelites, in the Exodus event and community. In the New Testament, McCaulley points to especially Simon of Cyrene, and of course the Ethiopian eunuch, as African presence in the earliest Christian community.
We need to be as clear as possible about this. When it comes to the question of Black presence in the Bible, it is not a question of finding our place in someone else’s story. The Bible is first and foremost the story of God’s desire to create a people. We are encompassed within that desire. p108
(Let me add, that it is incredibly interesting that Black people struggle so hard to find their place in the text, but White people rarely do. Despite the fact that there are no such thing as White people in the Bible, nor even any Northern Europeans)
Just as at the origin of the Israelites, at the origin of the church we find Black and Brown believers.... When the Black Christian enters the community of faith, she is not entering a strange land. She is finding her way home. p117
Chapter seven turns to Black anger. I don't think it's possible for me to truly comprehend what lived Black experience is like, but James Baldwin's famous quote, which headlines the chapter, captures something of its pervasity:
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. p 118
That experience has its origins in the history of the US:
a recourse to history will show that as far back into America’s story as we want to go we will see the heavy boot of white supremacy stepping on the backs of Black women and men. p120-121
The question of this chapter, then, is:
What does the cross have to say, not simply to human suffering, but the particular suffering of African Americans? p122
McCaulley offers four points:
The expression of Israel's pain and anger in the prophetic literature and psalter, as a means of processing Black grief
The prophetic critique of the spiral of violence as a solution
The cross as the end of the cycle of vengeance and death
Resurrection, Ascension, and Judgment as themes necessary to deal with Black anger and pain (p121)
McCaulley's final chapter wrestles with slavery - how do we reckon with the Bible and slavery, particularly the way the Bible was weaponised in times past (and present) to enslave Black and Brown bodies?
Our reflections on the Bible and the Black Christian then should end here at the origin of all our problems, the question of the Bible and slavery. p139
McCaulley's answer, in short, is this:
the Christian narrative, our core theological principles, and our ethical imperatives create a world in which slavery becomes unimaginable. p139
In making this argument, McCaulley starts in what prima facie seems an unusual place - Jesus' response to the Pharisee's question on divorce. Here, Jesus' appeal to God's purpose over and above the Torah's permission. It is not the Law's provisions for human sinfulness, but a broader, grander, creational and new-creational vision of life as God intended, that provides a better hope, and a truer vision of human flourishing.
Slavery, in this lens, is always a result of fallenness and sin, it is never God's will of command, and the theological vision of both testaments creates a world, and a people, in which slavery ought to be unthinkable. It is to Christians' own shame, that it took them so long (historically) to figure this out, and greater shame that some today still defend slavery.
McCaulley thus finds in the OT a treatment of slavery intended to limit its excesses, not to create a 'good' slavery, but to restrain human wickedness. In the NT, he offers a powerful reading of Paul and Onesimus that Paul in fact is requesting Philemon set Onesimus free, in light of the gospel.
Reading While Black closes by (re)turning to hope, and how this book itself is an exercise in hope, in articulating the hope that lies at the heart of the Black ecclesial tradition. It is a hope worth listening to.