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.

Thesis

What do I mean when I refer to Black ecclesial interpreters? I have in mind Black scholars and pastors formed by the faith found in the foundational and ongoing doctrinal commitments, sermons, public witness, and ethos of the Black church.

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.

What did I do in a world in which so few Black voices are prominent and the questions of my people were ignored? I began to look for anybody Black. I began to search for theologians who could help me make sense of what it means to be Black and Christian.

It is also well known that these enslaved persons, over against their masters’ wishes, viewed events like God’s redemption of Israel from slavery as paradigmatic for their understanding of God’s character.

I contend that the enslaved reading of the exodus as paradigmatic for understanding God’s character was more faithful to the biblical text than those who began with the Pauline slave passages.

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).

we adopt a hermeneutic of trust in which we are patient with the text in the belief that when interpreted properly it will bring a blessing and not a curse.

the question is not about our submission to wicked rulers, but their very existence. The criticism of Paul, then, is theodicy in a different form. Asking what we are to do when those tasked with governing us use that power to do harm is simply another way of asking why there is harm at all.

Romans 13

Based on these two realities, I believe that Paul does not simply delay the righting of wrongs until the eschaton. Instead, Paul shows rightful skepticism about our ability to discern how we are functioning in God’s wider purposes. Stated differently, God brings his judgment against corrupt institutions through humans in his own time, and we are not given insight into our proper role in such matters.

This suffering is only futile if the resurrection is a lie. If the resurrection is true, and the Christian stakes his or her entire existence on its truthfulness, then our peaceful witness testifies to a new and better way of being human that transcends the endless cycle of violence.

If Jesus could tell the Jews of his day that the leader of their country was corrupt, then why can’t we?

White supremacy, even when practiced by Christians, cannot overcome the fact of the resurrection.

What about the justice that Black Christians desire? Are those who disdain the church correct that the Bible isn’t up to the challenge of speaking to the issues of the day? Put simply, is the Bible a friend or foe in the Black quest for justice?

Luke’s Gospel meets the early experience of Black Christians whose Bible reading awakened them to the truth about God.

But the exodus put the suffering of the enslaved dead in a new light. It showed that their suffering was not in vain because God remembered. God’s memory also raises the possibility, in the grand scope of history, of the resurrection.

Zechariah and Elizabeth function in Luke’s narrative as a reminder that a dream deferred is not a dream denied.

if Black biblical interpretation is to be free to chart its own path, it is also free to reject the thoroughgoing skepticism that stands as one legacy of the European dominance of biblical studies.

The question isn’t always which account of Christianity uses the Bible. The question is which does justice to as much of the biblical witness as possible.

if some secularists can look back to the greatness of our African past as the basis for Black identity now, then Black Christians can look to early African Christianity as their own. Therefore, it is historically inaccurate to say that Africans first heard of Christianity via slavery.

The Black man or woman in America who goes back to Africa looking to find their roots will be surprised to find many Black and Brown ancestors staring them in the face proclaiming Christ is risen.

God’s eschatological vision is one of reconciliation. The Abrahamic promise of universal blessing serves as the theological fountainhead for the declarations that in the last days God would establish universal peace (Is 2:1-5).

Jacob sees the Brown flesh and African origin of these boys as the beginning of God’s fulfillment of his promise to make Jacob a community of different nations and ethnicities, and for that reason he claims these two boys as his own. These two boys become two of the twelve tribes of Israel. Egypt and Africa are not outside of God’s people; African blood flows into Israel from the beginning as a fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

As it relates to the twelve tribes, then, there was never a biologically “pure” Israel. Israel was always multiethnic and multinational.

Is it possible that he felt that what had been done to him was a grave injustice—for which he was forced, for his own safety, to keep silent like the silently suffering Christ? Was there a point of connection between the rejection the servant experienced and the rejection that the eunuch experienced?

This eunuch as a “despised thing” found hope in the shamed Messiah whose resurrection lifts those with imposed indignities to places of honor.

Therefore inasmuch as I modulate my blackness or neglect my culture, I am placing limits on the gifts that God has given me to offer to his church and kingdom. The vision of the kingdom is incomplete without Black and Brown persons worshiping alongside white persons as part of one kingdom under the rule of one king.

When the Black Christian enters the community of faith, she is not entering a strange land. She is finding her way home.