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

by Esau McCaulley

The struggle I speak of is not merely between two genres of music. I am referring to the struggle between Black nihilism and Black hope. I am speaking of the ways in which the Christian tradition fights for and makes room for hope in a world that tempts us toward despair. I contend that a key element in this fight for hope in our community has been the practice of Bible reading and interpretation coming out of the Black church, what I am calling Black ecclesial interpretation.

We are thrust into the middle of a battle between white progressives and white evangelicals, feeling alienated in different ways from both.

I want to make a case that this fourth thing, this unapologetically Black and orthodox reading of the Bible can speak a relevant word to Black Christians today. I want to contend that the best instincts of the Black church tradition—its public advocacy for justice, its affirmation of the worth of Black bodies and souls, its vision of a multiethnic community of faith—can be embodied by those who stand at the center of this tradition. This is a work against the cynicism of some who doubt that the Bible has something to say; it is a work contending for hope.

Every devout student who experiences higher biblical criticism for the first time is inevitably a bit bewildered.

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We are acted upon, our suffering functioning as examples of the evils of white fundamentalism.

That is the testimony of Black Christians who saw in that same Bible the basis for their dignity and hope in a culture that often denied them both. In my professor’s attempt to take the Bible away from the fundamentalists, he also robbed the Black Christian of the rock on which they stood.4

Black Theology sees God as the source of hope for liberation and as loving and personable in suffering.

evangelical means different things to different people, it is important to clarify what I mean by the term. Historian David Bebbington’s definition has been accepted by many as a good starting point. He outlines four characteristics: ■ Conversionism: the belief that lives need to be transformed through a “born-again” experience and a lifelong process of following Jesus. ■ Activism: the expression and demonstration of the gospel in missionary and social reform efforts. ■ Biblicism: a high regard for and obedience to the Bible as the ultimate authority. ■ Crucicentrism: a stress on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as making possible the redemption of humanity.

We were told that our churches weren’t sound theologically because our clergy did not always speak the language of the academy. In my evangelical seminary almost all the authors we read were white men. It was as if all the important conversations about the Bible began when the Germans started to take the text apart, and the Bible lay in tatters until the evangelicals came to put it back together again.

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.

The character of Jesus, who though innocent suffered unjustly at the hands of an empire, resonated on a deep level with the plight of the enslaved Black person. This focus on God as liberator stood in stark contrast to the focus of the slave masters who emphasized God’s desire for a social order with white masters at the top and enslaved Black people at the bottom. But the story doesn’t stop there. Alongside the story of the God of the exodus is the God of Leviticus, who calls his people to a holiness of life. The formerly enslaved managed to celebrate both their physical liberation and their spiritual transformation, which came as a result of their encounter with the God of the Old and New Testaments.

Therefore, I contend that the enslaved person’s biblical interpretation, which gave birth to early Black biblical interpretation, was canonical from its inception. It placed Scripture’s dominant themes in conversation with the hopes and dreams of Black folks. It was also unabashedly theological, in that particular texts were read in light of their doctrine of God, their beliefs about humanity (anthropology) and their understanding of salvation (soteriology).

This is not unique to Black Christians. Blount again says that “Euro-American scholars, ministers, and lay folk . . . have, over the centuries, used their economic, academic, religious, and political dominance to create the illusion that the Bible, read through their experience, is the Bible read correctly.”

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.

The state has duties, and we can hold them accountable even if it means that we suffer for doing so peacefully. This suffering is only futile if the resurrection is a lie.

A Christian theology of policing, then, must grow out of a Christian theology of persons. This Christian theology of policing must remember that the state is only a steward or caretaker of persons. It did not create them and it does not own or define them. God is our creator, and he will have a word for those who attempt to mar the image of God in any person. We are being the Christians God called us to be when we remind the state of the limits of its power.

This is the Black claim on the conscience of those who police us. See us as persons worthy of respect in every instance.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

Anyone familiar with the Jewish Scriptures knew that when God did act, he would not leave the rulers of this world unthreatened. This is what frightened Herod—the possibility that the advent of God’s reign through Jesus might upset his own.

For Isaiah, piety must bear fruit in justice.

Mourning is intuition that things are not right—that more is possible. To think that more is possible is an act of political resistance in a world that wants us to believe that consumption is all there is. Our politicians run on our desires by convincing us that utopia is possible here and they alone can provide it.

The outcome of our peacemaking is to introduce people to the kingdom. Therefore the work of justice, when understood as direct testimony to God’s kingdom, is evangelistic from start to finish. It is part (not the whole) of God’s work of reconciling all things to himself.

Why did Zechariah and Elizabeth continue to trust in God? Because he was a God who frees from slavery—his fundamental character as liberator marked him out as trustworthy, even when they had yet to experience it. Black Christians who came to Christ surrounded by the false Gospel given to them by their slave masters were right to see in the exodus narrative a God worthy of their trust.

Once we agree that Jesus is the Son of God and Israel’s true king, the next question becomes, What kind of king will he be? What are the key facets of his rule? Kingship in the Bible is linked to justice. We see this in the royal psalms (Ps 72:1-4). According to the Psalmist, the king—who reflects God’s own justice—is on the side of the poor and disinherited. Jesus’ kingly sonship is inseparable from God’s justice because Israel’s king cares for the poor. The rest of Luke’s Gospel will reveal that Jesus is not Son merely because he is king like all the other kings of Israel. He is Son because he shares in the divine identity of the Father that precedes the creation of the world.22

The problem isn’t that the Scriptures that Satan quoted were untrue, but when made to do the work that he wanted them to do, they distorted the biblical witness. This is my claim about the slave master exegesis of the antebellum South. The slave master arrangement of biblical material bore false witness about God. This remains true of quotations of the Bible in our own day that challenge our commitment to the refugee, the poor, and the disinherited.

This shows that those whom society has declared secondary receive the place of priority in the kingdom. In a society where Black lives have historically been undervalued, we can know that we have an advocate in the person of Christ.

First, it can treat the poor as mere bodies that need food and not the transforming love of God. Second, it can view them as souls whose experience of the here and now should not trouble us.25 This is false religion that has little to do with Jesus.

In evaluating the poor

Therefore, it is historically inaccurate to say that Africans first heard of Christianity via slavery. The Christian story is ours too. It even stretches further back into early Christianity than the three patriarchal sees of the emerging church catholic.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. JAMES BALDWIN

He was saying that if you dig deep enough into any people’s corporate or personal past, you will find wrong. In Christian theology this plays out in the words of Paul: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23 NIV).

the theological energy of the Bible is toward liberation.

Christian eschatology breeds compassion. Many years into my Christian life I still feel the anger, but the cross and the reality of God’s power have changed me. I want the oppressor to repent and find healing. I want him or her to be free as well. My rage, then, has hints of sympathy that linger in the back of my most heated moments.

He does not engage the text that his opponents have in mind—Deuteronomy 24:1-4. Instead, he turns to the opening words of Genesis. He speaks about God’s creational intent. The question, for Jesus, is not what the Torah allows, but what God intended.

In response to the Pharisees

propose, then, when Paul speaks of slaves honoring their masters, he does not mean unquestioned obedience. Drawing on the prophetic tradition, he has in mind behaving in such a way that their masters are drawn to God. This included, according to the Old Testament testimony, periodic refusal to obey.45 This is not slavery as evangelism. Instead, it is saying that even in slavery one has some ability to live in a way that testifies to their beliefs.

He maintained that some passages limit human sin rather than present the ideal.

This led to attempts to limit Bible reading among slaves out of fear it might cause rebellion.7 Slave masters’ fear of the Bible must bear some indirect testimony to what the slave masters thought it said. Part of them knew that their exegetical conclusions could only be maintained if the enslaved were denied firsthand experience of the text. This is evidence to my mind that Bible reading was itself an act against despair and for hope.

Slaveholders were not disinterested exegetes. They put their lust for power and material wealth in front of the text and read the Bible from that perspective.

This lack of Biblical scholars was not due to a lack of interest, but rather the long history of institutional racism that limited Black access to higher education.22