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236 reviews for:
Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope
Esau McCaulley
4.44 AVERAGE
236 reviews for:
Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope
Esau McCaulley
4.44 AVERAGE
Well-written, insightful, and timely. I really appreciate McCaulley’s love for Scripture and his desire to be thoughtful to his different audiences. His perspective is incredibly helpful.
Chapter One does an excellent job explaining his journey and the very real tensions he faces when he approaches the work of theology and interpreting Scripture.
Unfortunately his arguments in both Chapters 2 & 3 hinge on a lack of context and perhaps even an outright proof text. He makes some great points but he skips some basic hermeneutics to get there.
But everything comes together in Chapter 4. It’s not hyperbole to call it a masterpiece. Without question it’s the apex of the book. His analysis of the Gospel of Luke from the African-American perspective is some of the finest contextualization I’ve ever seen. It was incredibly moving. It made me love Jesus, the Word, and my brothers and sisters in Christ in a deeper way. Very powerful.
I look forward to reading whatever he writes next!
Chapter One does an excellent job explaining his journey and the very real tensions he faces when he approaches the work of theology and interpreting Scripture.
Unfortunately his arguments in both Chapters 2 & 3 hinge on a lack of context and perhaps even an outright proof text. He makes some great points but he skips some basic hermeneutics to get there.
But everything comes together in Chapter 4. It’s not hyperbole to call it a masterpiece. Without question it’s the apex of the book. His analysis of the Gospel of Luke from the African-American perspective is some of the finest contextualization I’ve ever seen. It was incredibly moving. It made me love Jesus, the Word, and my brothers and sisters in Christ in a deeper way. Very powerful.
I look forward to reading whatever he writes next!
There are details in the Scripture that may seem irrelevant to many, but to those of a different life experience, they are extremely relevant. Examples: Joseph's sons, two of the 12 tribes of Israel were of part African heritage (Joseph's wife was Egyptian) and the Simon who was forced to carry the cross as Jesus made his way to Golgotha, was from Cyrene, in North Africa. In the black experience, those are texts which establish their inclusiveness in the gathering and forming of a people of God. The author does a fine job in helping us see the scripture from an experience not our own.
On a more general theme of Bible interpretation, this book got me thinking further about how it is that starting with the same texts, Christians can come to distinctly different positions. It often comes down to how we weight the various texts that address a particular topic. Racist Christians of the past gave heavy weight to a text like I Timothy 6:1-2 and treated other texts that speak of the equal dignity of all mankind as being light as a feather. I think we need to give good reasons for how we weight the texts that address a topic from a variety of angles.
On a more general theme of Bible interpretation, this book got me thinking further about how it is that starting with the same texts, Christians can come to distinctly different positions. It often comes down to how we weight the various texts that address a particular topic. Racist Christians of the past gave heavy weight to a text like I Timothy 6:1-2 and treated other texts that speak of the equal dignity of all mankind as being light as a feather. I think we need to give good reasons for how we weight the texts that address a topic from a variety of angles.
2021: In his debut book Reading While Black, Esau McCaulley highlights that in the Bible there are a number of Black individuals that are introduced who played a role in their own right, not only introduced to Christianity through slavery. McCaulley undertakes a relevant examination of how the Black experience can provide a deeper understanding of biblical texts as well as inform our actions today.
The table of contents hints at the richness of the pages, covering Black ecclesial theology and interpretation, policing, protest, mourning, justice, peacemaking, liberation, black identity, and black anger.
He notes many parallels between evangelicals and the Black church, but the latter have often been overlooked and left out. McCaulley models a way to dialogue as he offers insight of how the Black experience can provide better understanding for the biblical text: "At the end, we do not find the elimination of difference. Instead the very diversity of cultures is a manifestation of God's glory."
I appreciated this well-written, well-researched book.
(I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)
2023: I was able to revisit this book for a book discussion. It was meaty, full of content which led to fruitful conversations, even as we recognized this book stretched and challenged us, with more of an academic bent than some of the other books this group has read.
The table of contents hints at the richness of the pages, covering Black ecclesial theology and interpretation, policing, protest, mourning, justice, peacemaking, liberation, black identity, and black anger.
He notes many parallels between evangelicals and the Black church, but the latter have often been overlooked and left out. McCaulley models a way to dialogue as he offers insight of how the Black experience can provide better understanding for the biblical text: "At the end, we do not find the elimination of difference. Instead the very diversity of cultures is a manifestation of God's glory."
I appreciated this well-written, well-researched book.
(I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)
2023: I was able to revisit this book for a book discussion. It was meaty, full of content which led to fruitful conversations, even as we recognized this book stretched and challenged us, with more of an academic bent than some of the other books this group has read.
I started reading this book because it seemed to offer some insights that related to a situation I was going through. My team and I had to defend our book choices to the school board. Though they were not brought up in the meeting, there were concerns that the books we had chosen were “anti-Christian” and that there was a lack of Christian representation. Aside from the fact that we do not choose books in attempt to represent any religion, I was angry when I heard this because several book options on the list had Black Christians represented quite positively. In fact, one book, Just Mercy, is probably the most Christian book I have ever used at school. McCauley’s claim that evangelicals often disregard the Black church despite many theological similarities offered a logical (and saddening) explanation for this concern.
In addition to exploring this issue of unity in the church, McCauley does an excellent job helping me understand issues such as how to interpret passages about slavery and whether the Bible has anything to say about policing. I also learned about situations in which African tribes were evangelized without colonization and about the roots of the slaves’ faith. Another key principle that applies to a few issues, including slavery, is that “some passages limit human sin rather than present the ideal” (p. 162).
In addition to exploring this issue of unity in the church, McCauley does an excellent job helping me understand issues such as how to interpret passages about slavery and whether the Bible has anything to say about policing. I also learned about situations in which African tribes were evangelized without colonization and about the roots of the slaves’ faith. Another key principle that applies to a few issues, including slavery, is that “some passages limit human sin rather than present the ideal” (p. 162).
Took me a while to get through this one, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. McCauley's historical expertise, Biblical knowledge, and experience as a black man helped shed new light on passages and themes in the Bible that are easy for me to miss with my own life experience.
Every Christian in America should read this book
Esau McCaulley is a voice our world would do well to listen to. This book is equally hard-hitting, convicting, enlightening, and hopeful.
Esau McCaulley is a voice our world would do well to listen to. This book is equally hard-hitting, convicting, enlightening, and hopeful.
"Reading While Black" is a great primer on African American Biblical Interpretation. If you are looking to expand the voices that are speaking into your life through Scripture, Esau McCaulley is a must-read. Reading this makes me want to dive into Scripture with a renewed spiritual understanding, reading it in new ways.
I can see why this book won the Christianity Today book of the year award. It deals with so many important issues, and connects biblical interpretation and theology to them in sound and helpful ways. I learned so much from this book. On top of that, the writing is very accessible. I was expecting more of the stilted prose of contemporary scholarship, but the book isn't like that. Yet it is still rigorous and thought-provoking. Those interested in what the Bible says and implies about race, slavery, policing, protesting injustice, the rage and pain that result from the oppression of black people, and, ultimately, a hope (grounded in the Bible) that persists in an unjust world will profit greatly from reading this excellent book.
Esau McCaulley opens this book with the assertion that Black ecclesial interpretation “got somethin’ to say” about the Bible. By the end of the book, I totally agreed. McCaulley looks at a number of questions about the Black experience in the US, present and past—policing, politics, justice, identity, anger, and slavery—and asks what the Bible says to these situations. Some quick points that I will be contemplating for quite a while:
**The twelve tribes of Israel were never a racially or ethnically “pure” group. Jacob accepts Joseph’s two sons and so incorporates African blood into the family right from the start. God’s promise to reach all the world through Jacob’s family thus starts happening at the very beginning.I loved McCaulley’s perspective on many parts of the Bible that I thought I knew pretty well. I still have a lot to learn, and the learning is a thrill. My only criticism of Reading While Black is that I wanted it to go more in-depth (only 184 pages??). But for now, I’ll be content with this book and eagerly await what McCaulley writes next.
**The Bible sometimes speaks from the standpoint of God’s creational intent—the way the world is meant to be—and other times speaks to what God allows because of human sinfulness. McCaulley points out how Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ questioning about divorce (Matthew 19) not by expounding upon Deuteronomy, as the Pharisees had intended, but by returning to Genesis, to God’s original intention for the world. In the same way, the Bible speaks to proper relations between masters and slaves, but that doesn’t mean God’s intention was that there be slavery; rather, those passages are making allowances for the way Roman society functioned, with the intention that slavery be eradicated.
**Through and through, the Bible takes seriously the rage of the oppressed against the oppressor. The Psalms give voice to that just anger, and the Hebrews are reminded that they (we) were all once slaves, having been rescued by God from Egypt. Slavery is our heritage as God’s people, and the anger and bitterness are real. But God’s purpose all along has been the redemption of all people through the family he chose—and in the New Testament we see the astounding quality of that promise when it means loving the oppressor and the enemy, even when they clearly don’t deserve it. But the Bible also balances this with the assertion that there will be a final reckoning. God’s justice doesn’t mean ignoring all the injustice of human society.
**Where the Bible seems to stop short of encouraging all-out rebellion against the evils of politics, government, and systemic injustice, it’s not overlooking those evils nor telling us to just put up with it. Rather, the lesson we learn is that God knows the right time and way to overthrow injustice, and he will do it; we will always want to revolt and try to rid the world of evil, and sometimes that’s the right thing and other times it’s not the time or method just yet. The Bible teaches us to want the right things and to wait for God’s timing.
challenging
slow-paced