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

As the central figure around which the Christian faith revolves, Jesus plays a key role in McCaulley’s articulation of BEI. It is through Jesus and the crucifixion that God enters into suffering with Black people, as McCaulley argues, thus communicating that they, too, are image bearers. Therefore, McCaulley suggests that when Black Christians come to Jesus by way of the cross, they learn that they are not inferior; it is merely that they have been devalued by society, which is incompatible with God’s valuation of them. The identification with Jesus and his suffering, however, is limited because Jesus is truly innocent, while Black people’s humanity renders them fallible and capable of sin. Nonetheless, if God’s answer to Jesus’s suffering is the resurrection, then Black Christians can hope for their own vindication.

Accordingly, Black Christians follow the example of Jesus in his dual focus on spiritual redemption and social justice, as indicated in the first sermon at Nazareth where Jesus reveals himself as an advocate for the marginalized. McCaulley contends that early Black Christians saw in Jesus’s sermon that their status as second-class citizens did not diminish their moral agency, nor did Christianity require of them that they ignore the injustices to which they were subjected. Thus, they follow in the footsteps of Jesus when bearing witness to and holding governments accountable for unjust institutions and practices, when transforming their justified rage into forgiveness and breaking the cycle of revenge due to trust in God’s eschatological vision, and when interpreting the scripture in a way that bears true testimony to God’s character and Christian doctrine. McCaulley’s discussion of Jesus therefore highlights the Power of Scripture in Addressing Contemporary Social Issues.

The Apostle Paul, who was active during the first century, is believed to have authored half of the books in the New Testament, so his influence on Christian thought and practice is tremendous. McCaulley highlights that Black Christians have a complicated relationship with Paul. For example, McCaulley discusses the way white preachers used Pauline passages to justify slavery and to withhold God’s redemption unless enslaved people behaved obediently and happily. Throughout the text, McCaulley deconstructs Pauline passages, both noting how they have been weaponized through enslaved enslaver exegesis and offering alternative interpretations that wrest Paul’s character from the false witness. McCaulley views Paul as an advocate of political witness and structural reform.

In Reading While Black, the most important reconstruction of Paul’s character relates to his views on slavery. In Chapter 7, McCaulley demonstrates that Paul undermines the institution of slavery and challenges the church to rethink the institution “in light of the cross and the resurrection” (162). McCaulley locates the challenge to slavery in Paul’s interaction with Onesimus and Philemon as well as his words to enslaved people in 1 Corinthians 7:21-24 and 1 Timothy 6:1-3. In Chapter 3, McCaulley refers to 1 Timothy 1:10 in which Paul criticizes enslavers, grouping them with others who do not follow sound doctrine as outlined by Jesus’s teachings. McCaulley’s characterization of Paul as a political witness and critic of slavery, then, suggests that Black Christians also follow in the footsteps of Paul, just as they and he follow the example of Jesus.

Luke was an evangelist who authored the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. He is closely associated with Paul, as they were active during the same time and traveled together. As the only Gentile author of a biblical text, Luke takes on a special significance for McCaulley. He deems Luke the patron saint of BEI because, like Black preachers ministering to their Black congregations to tell them that they have a place in the kingdom of God, Luke preaches to other Gentiles that they are a part of God’s intention “to create an international, multiethnic community for his own glory” (75). Accordingly, it is in Luke’s writing that McCaulley locates early African Christianity in the figure of the Ethiopian eunuch and underscores the centrality of the cross to Black Christians’ recovery of their sense of self and hope in God’s vindication.

Moreover, McCaulley suggests that Luke’s writing offers other points of connection for Black Christians because it alludes to God’s character as liberator in the form of Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary. They lean into the Exodus narrative to place their trust in God, despite facing tragedy and risk. Luke also plays a role in building McCaulley’s argument that the Bible provides the theological resources to address policing and justify political witness. While Paul’s passages in the theology of policing hold accountable the governments who direct their policing forces, Luke’s passages focus on the individual accountability of police officers. In Chapter 3, McCaulley uses Luke 1-2 to contextualize Jesus’s criticism of Herod, while Luke 13 relays the actual criticism.