Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

by Esau McCaulley

I do not think that we have evidence to suggest Onesimus stole from Philemon, but his basic point stands. Nothing in the text prevents us from assuming that he sought Paul out with the intention of being freed and that Paul joins him in that effort. Therefore, we must stop calling him a runaway slave. To call him a runaway centers the opinion of slave holders because when someone runs away, the logical thing is to return them. But Onesimus had no desire to be returned. Onesimus did not run away; he escaped.

We have to ask how this letter would land in a mixed congregation. We have enslavers listening to Paul tell slaves to gain freedom if they could. Paul’s words could have been used to convict the consciences of slave masters so that like Philemon they might act out of love. We must also ask how those in power in a democratic republic should have received this message from Paul.

Christians should have become

the means by which the enslaved person received their lo...

have succeeded if it has reminded others of home.

The tradition of biblical interpretation is dialogical, clearly beginning with the concerns of Black Christians, but being willing to listen to the Scriptures as God speaks back to us. We have a patience with the biblical text born of its use against us.

The point is that the very process of engaging these Scriptures and expecting an answer is an exercise in hope.

Our theology of public witness and protest in the field of biblical studies remains anemic.

We have allowed man made (I use the term man intentionally) rules to create a hermeneutical prison that traps biblical scholarship in the past.

It is time to let the lion out to hunt. Ethnic identity and the Christian community, a question asked and answered a generation ago must be addressed again in our day so that our people know that God glories in the distinctive gifts we all bring into the kingdom. Black pain and the anger rising from it is not going...

we must continue to read, write, interpret, and hope until the advent of the one who will answer all our ques...