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

Content Warning: This section of the guide addresses enslavement, racism, violence, and oppression. The guide reproduces the terms “slave” and “slave master” only in quotation.

McCaulley acknowledges his rootedness in the gospel and his love for hip-hop. As a child, he felt that rappers identified with his experience of being a Black boy in the South. At the same time, Christian faith was his foundation: He grew up listening to gospel music, reading the King James Bible, watching Christian cartoons, and attending church, Bible study, and Vacation Bible School; he majored in religion and history in college. He highlights the confrontation between Black hope and Black nihilism. However, he argues that his foundational aspects are not in competition, but rather informing one another. He does so by explaining the 1990s-era hip-hop controversy, particularly rapper Andre 3000’s suggestion at the 1995 Source Awards that Southern hip-hop—while influenced by elements from East Coast and West Coast hip-hop—needed space to be its own thing. By likening the Black ecclesial tradition to Southern rap, McCaulley illustrates that there is no inherent tension between Blackness and Christianity.

He presents BEI as a key element in the fight for hope and locates it within the oral traditions of African American Christianity. He aims to articulate the BEI method and apply it to contemporary social justice issues. BEI addresses the limitations of ongoing debates between evangelicals and progressives in their interpretations of biblical scriptures. In white theological circles, the debate focuses on the use of the Bible by white fundamentalists to justify racist oppression versus reconstructions of the scripture that show little regard for Black interpretation and testimony. McCaulley reflects on his first college-level Bible class, in which his progressive professor’s “attempt[ed] to take the Bible from fundamentalists” (8).

Debates among Black Christians revolve around a perceived disconnect between theological analysis and social practice. McCaulley’s reflection on his encounter with a Church of God in Christ (COGIC) pastor highlights two issues that BEI addresses: First, Black Christians have a sense that the sources for theological analysis and social practice are separate; second, there is a schism between Black traditionalists, who “take seriously their belief that the Scriptures are God’s Word to us for our good” (14), and Black progressives, who see “the Bible as being as much a part of the problem as the solution” (15). McCaulley contends that these debates do not ask the right questions, and he proposes BEI as the method for answering the fundamental questions of God’s character and how the Bible speaks to the Black experience.

Key characteristics of BEI are that it is canonical and theological, socially located, dialogical, and patient. The interpretive method is an exercise in hope that not only connects Black Christians to their ancestors, but also allows them to navigate contemporary issues and add unique perspectives to Christian thought.