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

by Esau McCaulley

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.

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. For a variety of reasons, this ecclesial tradition rarely appears in print. It lives in the pulpits, sermon manuscripts, CDs, tape ministries, and videos of the African American Christian tradition.

But there is a second testimony possibly more important than the first. 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.

My professor’s victory felt too much like my mother’s defeat. She had always told me that the racists were the poor interpreters and that we were reading correctly when we saw in biblical texts describing the worth of all people an affirmation of Black dignity.

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.

How could I exist comfortably in a tradition that too often valorizes a period of time when my people couldn’t buy homes in the neighborhoods that they wanted or attend the schools that their skills gave them access to? How could I accept a plac...

Where does the

Bible address the hopes of Black folks, and why is this question not pressing in a community that has historically been alienated from Black Christians?

The Black pastors I knew had the same audacity to think that texts of the New Testament spoke directly to the issues facing Black Christians.

The main difference between Black and white progressives was that the former put the revision of Christian belief into direct conversation with the experiences of the Black community.

Talking of reading critically is a slightly dangerous thing because Black traditional voices are often weaponized in evangelical spaces against Black progressive voices. Some Black progressives have theological ideas that trouble evangelicals. Rather than dismiss Black progressives directly and be accused of racism, evangelicals sometimes bring Black (theological) conservatives in to do that work.

there is a well-worn path of Black affirmation in white conservative spaces if one is willing to denigrate Black theology (and the Black church) full stop.

But the converse also occurs, namely that white progressives have often weaponized Black progressive voices and depicted them as the totality of the Black Christian tradition for reasons that suit their own purposes, which have little to do with the actual concerns of Black Christians.

What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference. . . . I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.

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. They claimed that God is fundamentally a liberator. 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.

It is not the case that Blacks uniquely emphasized certain passages and read other Scriptures in light of them; what was unique was what enslaved Black people emphasized. They emphasized God as the liberator and humankind as one family united under the rule of Christ whose death for sins reconciles

us to God.

To put it more pointedly, I contend that the enslaved reading of the exodus as paradigmatic for understanding God’s character was more faithful to the biblical text than t...

propose that dialogue, rooted in core theological principles, between the Black experience and the Bible has been the model and needs to be carried forward into our day. This means that it is laudable to engage in what Brian Blount, noted New Testament scholar, called an “academically unorthodox experiment” of asking questions of the text that grow out the reality of being Black in America.

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. This means that we do the hard work of reading the text closely, attending to historical context, grammar, and structure.

African American exegesis, then, precisely because it is informed by the Black experience, has the potential to be universal when added to the chorus of believers through time and across cultures.

But a difficult job does not absolve one of criticism; it puts the criticism in a wider framework. That wider framework must also include, if we are going to be complete, the history of the police’s interaction with people of color in this country. If the difficulty of the job provides context, so does the historic legal enforcement of racial discrimination and the terror visited on Black bodies. We must tell the whole story, as difficult as that telling might be.

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.

Again, this does not place limits on our ability as Christians to call evil by its name, but it does obligate us to be willing to suffer the consequences of living in a fallen world. We recognize that the state has been given its responsibilities. We are not anarchists, but we do recognize that the state is in fact under God. The state has duties, and we can hold them accountable even if it means that we suffer for doing so peacefully.

Historically in America, the issue has been institutional corporate sin undergirded by the policing power of the state.

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...

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.

He rightly focuses on those who control the sword and not merely the individual. This gives the Christian thinker and advocate the space to think structurally about how a just society should treat its people.

God active in history to bring about his purposes. God lifts up and God tears down. To avoid that tearing down, those who have the task of government must do all in their power to construct a society in which Black persons can live and move and work freely.

Given their ability to use violence, it is incumbent on police agents to do their work with integrity.

This giving over of bodies as sacrificial offerings for the maintenance of the status quo denies the imago Dei in each of us. The story of Jesus’ crucifixion contains the paradigmatic false accusation.

Jesus’ treatment by the soldiers strikes us as egregious because he was innocent of the charges (Mt 27:27-30), but do the guilty deserve beatings and mockery?

He calls upon those with power to use that power to uphold the inherent dignity of all residents and to never use that power for their own ends.

The state must remember that it is not divine or infallible. It is a steward of that which belongs to God.

As Christians, it is part of our calling to remind those charged with governing of their need to create an atmosphere in which people are able to live without fear.

A Christian theology of policing, then, is a theology of freedom.

Christian theology of policing, then, looks to the state and calls it to remember its duties.

It looks to the officer and demands that said officer recognize the tremendous responsibility and potential of the work that they do.

If we undertake this task of calling on the officer and the state to be what God called them to...

Black folks as they relate to the police in this country ...

As we stated earlier, the question is not the authority of the texts under consideration. Instead we wonder about how they are weaponized in

debates about the political witness of the church.

This does not mean that a Christian cannot protest injustice, it means that we cannot claim God’s justification for violent revolution. Submission and acquiescence are two different things.

Prayer for leaders and criticism of their practices are not mutually exclusive ideas. Both have biblical warrant in the same letter.