“The triune God wishes us to be free”: A Review of Reading While Black
Esau McCaulley’s brief book introduces readers to the Black ecclesial tradition, as well as arguing ably for the biblical basis for the present pursuit of justice in our society.
Review by Malcolm Foley
Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black is marked throughout by reference to “we” interpreters of the Bible and “our” shared historical experience. The invocation of the first-person plural is merely stylistic in some works, but in McCaulley’s text, it is profoundly specific: this is a brilliant and accessible work that is written to and for Black Americans in general, and Black American Christians more specifically. The “we” then is, on its face, an exclusive “we” and one that I, as a Black man, recognize and relish. But upon reading, one finds a deeper truth: that the Black ecclesial tradition and Black American biblical interpretation are gifts from God to the Church universal. The insights of this book are not only applicable to a particular racial group in a particular country. Ultimately, as McCaulley argues, the Black experience has led Black American interpreters to more faithful, consistent, and just interpretations of Scripture than many of their white brothers and sisters, and such a fact ought to be ignored by no one.
The Black Christian has ever had to be armed with a dual apologetic, fielding skepticism from our white brothers and sisters as to our orthodoxy and fielding suspicion from our Black brothers and sisters as to why we would subscribe to a faith weaponized for our oppression. We are told, on one side, that an urgent yearning and fighting for justice now is contrary to biblical calls for patience, while on the other side, we are told that the Scriptures are insufficient for holistic liberation. McCaulley is emphatic: The Scriptures are not lacking nor are they unclear. The triune God wishes us to be free.
McCaulley is unwavering in his affirmation of ultimate biblical authority, even while seriously reckoning with and being shaped by Black American experience.
Reading While Black is an intellectual and emotional rollercoaster, beginning with the introductory work of situating Black American biblical interpretation as a distinct tradition. The result is a beautiful account that exemplifies the contextual nature of biblical interpretation. McCaulley is unwavering in his affirmation of ultimate biblical authority, even while seriously reckoning with and being shaped by Black American experience. In spending considerable time considering policing and the Church’s political witness, McCaulley exposes the profoundly un-Christian application to which the narrow doctrine of the “spirituality of the Church” has sometimes been put, while also articulating his distinction from the Black progressive theological tradition. Contrary to those who might claim (and have claimed) that the liberation spoken of in Scripture is exclusively spiritual, McCaulley does the fully canonical work of teasing out a fuller understanding of racial and ethnic identity. In doing so, he offers interpretations of Scripture that are much more canonically, theologically, and ethically sound than those often used to silence Black dissent and protest. Worth the price of admission are his treatments of Romans 13 and 1 Timothy 2, texts often used to silence Black interpreters who seek to affirm that the Christian faith necessitates social and political action, particularly the pursuit of justice and equity. The point of commonality in these three chapters is an unassailable hope, located in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Christ. Contrary to those who might claim that focus on the resurrection and ascension leads one to yearn for salvation “in the by and by,” McCaulley explicitly exalts the work of Christ as the necessary root of both future and current liberation.
Rightly mobilized, this book will produce better preachers, better readers of Scripture and, ultimately, better Christians.
I maintain two reservations about this book, both of which are merely clarifying points. For McCaulley, Black and African-American are synonymous, insofar as this book is firmly rooted in the American context. There are appeals to the Diaspora but this remains a US-centric book, which allows him to narrate a particular tradition more precisely. This then leads to the book’s only flaw: that it is too short. It is self-consciously brief, as McCaulley’s prowess as a Biblical scholar could easily translate to a dense and inaccessible tome. But instead, Reading While Black has an opportunity for widespread appeal. It should therefore be considered an introduction to the Black ecclesial tradition, rather than a thorough statement of that tradition.
This work is a contribution not only to publicly accessible Black biblical interpretation but to Black theology. McCaulley shares with the radical tradition of Black exegesis, embodied most famously by James Cone, the claim that true Christian faith points toward temporal justice, as well as eschatological liberation. But he departs from Cone by insisting that the Bible itself advocates for precisely that justice and that liberation and encourages the believer to orient their sight and actions toward them. Rightly mobilized, this book will produce better preachers, better readers of Scripture and, ultimately, better Christians. While it is self-consciously written for Black Christians as an affirmation not only of our dignity but of the distinct theological tradition that we have carved out in the midst of lies and oppression, it ought to be required reading for all who seek to understand that the Gospel applies to both bodies and souls. Here one truly finds a profoundly biblical account of holistic liberation.
Malcolm Foley is the Director of the Black Church Studies Program at Truett Seminary and the Director of Discipleship at Mosaic Waco, a PCA church plant in Waco, Texas.
Reading While Black was released by InterVarsity Press Academic on September 1, 2020. Fare Forward greatly appreciates the publisher’s provision of a review copy. You can purchase your own copy from the publisher’s website here.
If the dividing of the church by conscience is a scandal, its division by race is a double-scandal.