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

Reading Scripture from the perspective of Black church tradition can help us connect with a rich faith history and address the urgent issues of our times. Demonstrating an ongoing conversation between the collective Black experience and the Bible, New Testament scholar Esau McCaulley shares a personal and scholarly testament to the power and hope of Black biblical interpretation.

Growing up in the American South, Esau McCaulley knew firsthand the ongoing struggle between despair and hope that marks the lives of some in the African American context. A key element in the fight for hope was the practice of Bible interpretation coming from his traditional Black church. This ecclesial tradition is often disregarded by much of the wider church and academy, but it has something to say.

Reading While Black is a personal and scholarly testament to the power and hope of Black biblical interpretation. At a time in which some within the African American community are questioning the place of the Christian faith in the struggle for justice, New Testament scholar McCaulley argues that reading Scripture from the perspective of Black church tradition is invaluable for connecting with a rich faith history and addressing the urgent issues of our times. He advocates for a model of interpretation that involves an ongoing conversation between the collective Black experience and the Bible, in which the particular questions coming out of Black communities are given pride of place and the Bible is given space to respond by affirming, challenging, and, at times, reshaping Black concerns. McCaulley demonstrates this model with studies on how Scripture speaks to topics often overlooked by white interpreters, such as ethnicity, political protest, policing, and slavery.

Ultimately McCaulley calls the church to a dynamic theological engagement with Scripture, in which Christians of diverse backgrounds dialogue with their own social location as well as the cultures of others. Reading While Black moves the conversation forward.

Esau McCaulley (PhD, St. Andrews) is assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America where he serves as a Canon Theologian in his diocese C4SO (Churches for the Sake of Others). Esau also serves the Province of the ACNA (Anglican Church in North America) as director of the Next Generation Leadership Initiative, a province-wide effort to raise the next generation of Anglican lay and ordains leaders. Esau is a contributing writer for the New York Times and has written for numerous outlets such as Christianity Today, The Witness, and the Washington Post. His publications include Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance and The New Testament in Color (forthcoming). He is a highly sought-after speaker, hosts The Disrupters podcast, and speaks at many conferences.  Throughout his career in ministry and academia, Esau has served in a variety of contexts, including as a pastor at All Souls Episcopal/Anglican Church in Okinawa, Japan, assistant to the pastor at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, Virginia, and assisting priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in St. Andrews, Scotland. He is a military spouse and is married to his beautiful wife, Mandy, a pediatrician. Together, they have four wonderful children

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

by Esau McCaulley

September 1, 2020 \ $20 \ 200 pages \ paperback \ ISBN: 978-0-8308-5486-8 

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