“Reading While Black” by Esau McCaulley–Book Analysis Series (Part 3)

Here in my third post on Esau McCaulley’s book, Reading While Black, I’m going to look at Chapter 4, “Reading While Black—The Bible and the Pursuit of Justice,” and Chapter 5, “Black and Proud—The Bible and Black Identity.”

Chapter 4: “Reading While Black—The Bible and the Pursuit of Justice”
McCaulley begins this chapter by recalling the time that he, as a 7^th-grader, saw the Denzel Washington film, Malcom X in 1992. He was deeply affected by the movie and how fervently Malcom X spoke out against racial injustice. McCaulley also noted that Black Muslims like Malcom X, as well as many secular civil rights activists, often criticized Christianity because of its seemingly lack of concern for social justice. The reason why McCaulley didn’t abandon Christianity and turn to something like the Nation of Islam or become a secularist, though, was that he was convinced that the Christian story was actually true. Therefore, despite any valid criticisms leveled at what specific Christians did or did not do, that central fact of Christianity’s truthfulness kept McCaulley a Christian.

He couldn’t get behind those other forms of social justice activism because they seemed to push for a diminished role of the Scriptures. As McCaulley put it, they seem to want a new starting point of a pre-determined definition of liberty that acts as a filter through with the Bible is read. Furthermore, they assume a kind of infallibility of the current sociopolitical consensus over the Bible, and thus are really advocating their own wisdom over God’s Word.

The thing is, though, as McCaulley goes on to show, all of that is unnecessary because the Bible itself does, in fact, speak on the issue of the pursuit of social justice from cover to cover. It doesn’t need to be read through a modern or post-modern filter in order to “get things right.” It gets things right all on its own, thank you very much.

McCaulley proceeds to highlight a number of passages in the New Testament that show just how much God cares about the pursuit of justice. He first points to the Gospel of Luke as a whole and shows how at the heart of the Gospel is the proclamation that the goal of God’s plan has always been to have an international, multiethnic community be the people for His Name. Thus, the conversion of the Gentiles was part of God’s wider purposes all along.

McCaulley then specifically discusses the songs of both Mary and Zechariah. Both songs highlight the reality of Israel’s oppression under Rome and praise for God as a liberator who frees people from slavery. In particular, McCaulley points out that Mary had grown up in Nazareth, a small town just s stone’s throw from the major Roman city of Sepphoris and was thus well aware of living in the shadow and fear of an oppressive empire. Nonetheless, her Magnificat praises God for lifting those considered unworthy by the world to a place of honor. Indeed, throughout the Gospels, Christ’s kingship is always linked to justice and good news to the poor and marginalized. As McCaulley brings all this around to how it speaks to the Black community in America by stating, “God displays his glory precisely in rejecting the value systems posed by the world. It is the rejection of the world’s evaluation that lifts the soul of the Black Christian because this country has repeatedly claimed that Blacks are ontologically inferior” (93).

That being said, McCaulley makes the point that this entails more than just economic or political justice. In fact, he ends the chapter by correctly pointing out the general problem with the way both “the Right” and “the Left” tend to view the issue. He says “the Right” tends to fall into the trap of thinking the Bible only cares about the souls of people and not their bodies and their physical needs, whereas “the Left” ironically agrees with that view (that the Bible doesn’t speak to the physical needs of Black people) and therefore say that the Bible and the traditional Christian Gospel has to be either replaced, or at least supplemented with their own brand of liberal politics. Both positions are faulty and problematic.

Chapter 5: “Black and Proud—The Bible and Black Identity”
In Chapter 5, McCaulley takes on the historically wrong assumption that Christianity is, at its core, a purely “European thing.” Now, obviously, anyone who knows anything about early Church history knows that such an assumption is laughable. For that reason, my summary of the chapter won’t be that long at all.

McCaulley begins by pushing against the equally absurd claim that the first time Black people in Africa came in contact with Christianity was via the slave trade in the 17^th-19^th centuries. Some of the earliest Church Fathers and thinkers were, in fact from Africa. Going back into the Old Testament, McCaulley points out that Genesis 1-11, complete with its genealogies, God’s covenant with Abraham, and the Exodus, show that God had always wanted a multi-ethnic Israel—a multi-national people of God. Even when it comes to the twelve tribes of Israel who settled in Canaan, two of the tribes came from Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to him by his Egyptian (and hence African) wife.

As for the often-repeated claim that “the curse of Ham” in Genesis 9:20-27 is a God-ordained justification for the enslavement of Africans, McCaulley doesn’t even spend that much time with it because it is so incredibly absurd. The focus 9:20-27 it that Ham was the father of Canaan, and the passage served as justification for the Israelites to take Canaan…and Canaanites weren’t African. Therefore, to suggest that the “curse of Ham” was black skin and that it justifies European enslavement of Africans is just ridiculous. I’ll just add that the fact that such an absurd claim gained so much traction among certain groups of people over the past few centuries speaks to not only their overt racism, but to also the shockingly mind-numbing biblical illiteracy of such people.

Turning to the New Testament, McCaulley highlights that Simon of Cyrene, the man who carried Jesus’ cross to Calvary, was an African—Cyrene is a city in Libya. Then there is the Ethiopian eunuch, whom Phillip led to Christ in the early years of the early Church. McCaulley’s point is simple: Not only is Christianity NOT solely a “European thing,” not only was God’s intention all along to have a multi-ethnic people for His Name, but that both the Old and New Testaments are quite clear that African people have always had a home in the people of God.

The final thing McCaulley touches upon is Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Some people use this verse to argue that the Church should be colorblind, because everyone is “one in Christ.” As McCaulley puts it, “Some take this passage to mean that Paul claims our identity in Christ cancels out our ethnic identities” (113). This view, though, is wrong. If Paul didn’t care about ethnicity, he wouldn’t have made it a point to evangelize Gentiles!

McCaulley argues that the goal of the Church isn’t to have a people where there are no discernable ethnicities, but rather for the people of God to consist of people from every nation, tribe, and tongue—to be one in Christ, and yet to celebrate each people’s cultural and social diversities. Through Christ, Abraham becomes the father of many nations, not one nation that is simply the result of everything being blended in together.

Some Brief Observations
There really isn’t that much I can add to these chapters. They should be so self-evident and obvious. Nevertheless, the two big takeaways I have from these chapters is how dangerous (and easy!) it is to bypass what the Bible actually says about God’s concern for social justice and to instead embrace decidedly unbiblical or unchristian versions of pursuing social justice. It is really easy to substitute secular notions of liberty and justice for biblical notions of liberty and justice. It is really easy, if you tend to be politically on “the Right” (and a conservative Evangelical), to see any attempt at addressing social justice as “liberal”—but that is simply wrong. Many of the original Evangelicals of the 19^th century were deeply involved in social action and reform. They saw that a transformed Christian in Christ would embrace the call to engage in social reform. Most of the abolitionists who fought hard to end slavery were Christians. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian minister. Working to right the social evils of this world is part the Christian vocation. It’s not some sort of “liberal” plot.

At the same time, it has to also be said that some within the “social justice” movement are doing it from a decidedly unchristian base. Therefore, one shouldn’t automatically throw one’s support behind any cause that claims to be about social justice, because it is entirely possible that that group’s social justice goals run contrary to the biblical social justice goals.

In my final post on McCaulley’s book, I’ll look at the last two chapters and offers some closing thoughts.