“An Exercise in Hope” with Esau McCaulley
Shownotes:
When it comes to racial reconciliation, the church is quick to educate its congregants about the power of forgiveness. Pastors often jump to the solution without acknowledging the full extent of the problem. What do we do when we’re enraged by the things we’ve seen or experienced? How do we make a conscious, faithful choice to practice Christianity even when it seems harder than we can bear?
In his new book, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope, Dr. Esau McCaulley aims not to answer questions the church is asking, but to answer questions that Black Christians are asking. A New Testament scholar, Anglican Priest, and theologian, McCaulley understands that the way we interpret the Bible often depends on our communities and context. He invites listeners to take an unfiltered look into the Black experience and to ponder how all of us can interpret the Bible as an exercise in hope.
He joins Eddie and Chris to discuss how Christians can have open dialogue about riots and protests, and how white Christians can interpret the truth behind the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” They talk about specific passages in the Bible that point to the grief and rage Black Americans feel and where the cross of Christ fits into the scope of human emotion.
Resources:
You can order Esau’s book “Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope” here
Learn more about Esau’s podcast “The Disrupters” here: https://esaumccaulley.com/the-disrupters-podcast/
Read Esau’s articles in The New York Times here: https://www.nytimes.com/by/esau-mccaulley
Follow Esau on the web: https://esaumccaulley.com
Follow Esau on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialEsauMcCaulley
https://www.instagram.com/esaumccaulley/
https://twitter.com/esaumccaulley
Transcript:
Eddie Rester : 0:00
I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly : 0:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester : 0:03
Today our guest is Dr. Esau McCaulley who has written a new book called "Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope."
Chris McAlilly : 0:14
When you hear this... When are we putting this out? Next week?
Eddie Rester : 0:17
Right.
Chris McAlilly : 0:18
So, the book came out on September the first and we're gonna release this, you'll be hearing this--I guess the first of you will be hearing it a week or two after it's out. But the book is debuting number one on Amazon. It's going to be a best seller. Esau is writing columns in the New York Times and The Washington Post. He's one of the voices in American Christianity that I think will be offering a public witness for years to come.
Eddie Rester : 0:46
And the thing about the book and our conversation with him is that he challenges us, I think, particularly as white Southern Christians, but it's not in a way that... What am I trying to say here? Not pushes us off the edge. He's inviting us into a conversation and an understanding of how we interpret scripture alongside what's happening in our world today.
Chris McAlilly : 1:13
If you're young and maybe trying to put the pieces together. You want to make a difference in the world. You're trying to make sense of what you see as wrong or just not right in yourself or in the world around you. Esau speaks to that in his own life as he kind of navigated between the faith of his childhood that his family gave him outside of Huntsville, and in Black hip-hop music that helped him understand the kinds of questions he was asking when he was young. And he finds his way through that into a really rich understanding of being a Biblical scholar. And his, I mean, there's a lot of Bible in this book.
Eddie Rester : 1:57
I think you're gonna enjoy the conversation. Let us know what you think about it. We'll also have him for a Q&A at the end of September that we'll talk more about, not on the podcast, but well, if you're familiar with our church, OUUMC in Oxford, there'll be conversations in the coming weeks about that.
Chris McAlilly : 2:18
We're gonna do a live Q&A with Esau on September the 30th, which is a Wednesday night, at 7:00 PM, and we'll be putting out a registration for that soon. So be on the lookout for that.
Eddie Rester : 2:29
Enjoy the podcast. [INTRO] Let's be honest, there are some topics that are too heavy for 20 minute sermon. There are issues that need conversation, not just explanation.
Chris McAlilly : 2:39
We believe that the church is called to engage in a way that honors the weightiness and importance of these topics for how we live faithfully today. We'll cover everything from art to mental health, social injustice to the future of the church.
Eddie Rester : 2:50
If it's something that culture talks about, we need to be talking about it, too. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly : 2:56
We are here today with Dr. Esau McCaulley of Wheaton College, an author and he's just put out a book called, "Reading While Black," and the subtitle of it is "African American Biblical Interpretation as an Cxercise in Hope." We're so glad that you're here today, Esau, thanks for taking the time.
Esau McCaulley : 3:16
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's good to talk to Southerners. I'm back. I'm back in my roots.
Chris McAlilly : 3:22
That's right.
Eddie Rester : 3:23
You're from one state over in Alabama, Huntsville. And where'd you do your undergraduate?
Esau McCaulley : 3:29
The University of the South, also known as Sewanee.
Eddie Rester : 3:32
Sewanee. Yes.
Chris McAlilly : 3:33
I was wondering how you made your way over to the Anglican tradition. I guess that would have been your first move.
Esau McCaulley : 3:40
Yeah, the Anglicans ended up corrupting me at the university.
Chris McAlilly : 3:44
There you are.
Eddie Rester : 3:44
It's one of the good ways you can get corrupted. There are other ways...
Esau McCaulley : 3:47
There are worse things that can happen to you.
Chris McAlilly : 3:49
We could have a long conversation about the South and it factors into the book for sure. But I wanted to ask, just to get the conversation going, about the subtitle of your book, "African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope."
Esau McCaulley : 4:04
Yes.
Chris McAlilly : 4:05
There's a lot going on in that. And I wonder if you could just unpack it a little bit.
Esau McCaulley : 4:10
Yeah. I mean, the second part is probably the heart of the book, when I say an exercise in hope. And when I talk about an exercise, I mean, a practice, something that you do repeatedly. And the point is that, what I want the argument of the book is that, historically, African Americans have turned to the Bible and seen in the God of the Bible a friend and not an enemy. And so the practice of always, in the midst of oppression and racism and injustice and slavery, to come to this text again and again and again, is in and of itself important. So that the mere existence of Black Christians, who are 400 years later still coming to these texts and trying to make sense of what it means to follow Jesus, is important. And so I want to give, like, weight to that particular testimony as an exercise in hope. That's the name of the concluding chapter. And the African American Biblical interpretation is also important, because people often... they bristle at this idea that there's something could be... how can you have a race interpret the Bible? How does your race influence how you read the Bible? And what I wanted to say to people, I feel like everybody who's been a pastor, or listened to a pastor, or been in a church. If you're, say, a pastor in a rural area, the first thing you have to do is to say, "Well, what's going on with the people in this small town? What are the issues? What are their concerns? And how does the Bible address those concerns?" And the moment you begin to think about that community, you sometimes you recognize things in the text that you may not have seen. Oh, Jesus grew up in Nazareth, and it's a small town, kind of out of the way. So then if you have a small town that's out of the way you can kind of make more sense to that. Now, if you live in a city and you start trying to make sense of what does it mean to live in urban, hip, you know, important area, and you're teaching on Corinthians, you might go okay. Corinth was this big, hip and trendy, up and going city. And you began to talk about how there's these analogies. And so what I want to say is that the particular circumstances, experiences, history, and culture of a community influences the questions that they ask, and the way that the Bible is applied to their context. And so the book is asking, the book begins with someone who grew up in the midst of an African American context, in which I'm trying to make sense of the world as an African American Christian. There is no other way for me to move through the world other than as a Black man. And that influences the kinds of things that I ask. And it influences the ways in which I apply the Bible to my life. And so we're not talking about African American Biblical interpretation. That's what I mean. And in a sense, it's not controversial, because people will say, "Yeah, I give one sermon to a youth group. I give a different sermon to a women's group. I give a different sermon to married couples, but it's all the same word of God."
Chris McAlilly : 6:54
Right.
Esau McCaulley : 6:55
And when we sit, when we sit down... I know, I'm rambling.
Chris McAlilly : 6:57
No, no, I didn't say right, because you're rambling. I was just saying, "Yes, that's right."
Esau McCaulley : 7:01
When we sit down and say, okay, the exact same chapter in the exact same Bible, and we say, I'm going to go on Sunday to do a funeral. And then you take that exact same passage, and you say, I'm gonna do a wedding. It's heard radically different once it enters into that context. So it doesn't mean that the Bible, the truth of the scriptures themselves change. But it means that the ways in which we apply it may change. And not just the ways that we apply it. The things that we see, I'm trying to get at the heart of motivated readings, the way our motivations influence the way we understand and comprehend the text. And if we can acknowledge that certain readings may help our interpretation, there also are readings that may hinder our interpretation, because all of us have kind of said, "You know what? I've been given this topic, and the scripture doesn't exactly match that topic and I'm trying to make it happen." [LAUGHTER] As best I can, as a pastor.
Eddie Rester : 7:58
You have to work real hard.
Chris McAlilly : 8:00
My dad was a pastor. He said, "Sometimes you have something to say. And sometimes you have to say something." I think Eddie had something you want to jump in on.
Eddie Rester : 8:09
I was just gonna say one of the things I've loved in a real quick reading of the book this week, is that it really engages scripture, a lot of scripture, and it helped me. I mean, there were several moments, I'm circling stuff and put an exclamation points. But one of the moments of scripture reading that you offer is around the Magnificat, or around Mary's song and testimony. And there were just, something that you said was, "The testimony of Mary is that even in the shadow of the empire, there is space for hope, and that sometimes in that space, God calls us from the shadows to join him in his great work of salvation and liberation." Now, I've always preached that text about Mary joining up with what God is doing, but the "shadow of the empire" is a piece of it that, again, from my perspective, I never would have connected that. But you offering that from your perspective changes now how I see that that story, that moment. And here's the amazing thing about that. I'm actually... almost said arrogant. I'm correct, because Nazareth is, like, right down the road from Sepphoris, which is a major outlet and a major part of the empire, where they were rebuilding. And so it was a large gentile enclave just down the road from Nazareth. And so Mary and Joseph probably grew up where they had to at least have some kind of working language of Greek. And they saw it in their face, right? This is this immovable, unstoppable thing and it feels like it's going to be here forever.
Esau McCaulley : 9:46
And what Mary probably wanted to do, she didn't want to be a revolutionary. Mary wanted to get married, have kids, and kind of say, "You know what? Things are rough here. But I can be faithful to God as a mom in Nazareth." And God says to Mary, "I have so much more for you." Not in the sense of, like, that her marriage and her life as a mother wasn't significant. It was like, "I'm going to use those very things as a means by which I am glorified." And I'm glad that you mentioned the use of Scripture. This is a Bible book.
Eddie Rester : 10:20
Mm hmm.
Chris McAlilly : 10:21
It's absolutely a Bible book.
Esau McCaulley : 10:23
And people think that this is like some kind of 15 steps about how to do racial reconciliation. This is the wrong book. Or people are just like, here's me yelling at the Christianity and calling racism evil. That's not that book. This is the book asking a particular question: How do the passages of the Old and the New Testament speak directly to our concerns in a way that is... like, you have to answer the exegetical question. That's what I wanted to put in the book. I didn't want you to just say... I mean, there's other people who can give you history and who can give you sociology and anthropology, they can do all of that stuff. That's their disciplines. I'm a New Testament scholar. And so I say y'all gonna get a big bucket of Bible in this book.
Chris McAlilly : 11:05
That's exactly right. Yeah. No, I think one of the things, I mean, there are a couple different directions I could go. One of the things, we're United Methodist pastors, and our denomination is in the midst of a lot of turbulence, particularly around interpretation of the Bible around human sexuality, mainly. But in the midst of that, you have Black churches that we know in Mississippi, who, when we talk to our friends, pastors, colleagues, in those churches, they basically just say, if our denomination splits, we don't know where to go. Because the progressive mainline end of United Methodism tends to be justice-oriented and kind of advocates for the poor and social justice more broadly construed. While the more conservative or orthodox side of the house, they tend to align on doctrinal and scriptural basis with that end of the church. And I felt like I was overhearing a conversation in the Black church that had a lot of important things to say to me, broadly, as a witness to what it is to read the scripture in America at this particular moment in time that holds together, you know, something quite faithful. I felt like it was a such a loving book. I love the ways that you reference your father at the beginning, and your mother, and the ways in which you talk about, "I'm not trying to do anything innovative here. I'm just trying to put in words and articulate something that I've seen going on my entire life." Can you talk a little bit about that and then just kind of the the experience of the Black church particularly in the American South and what it can say at this time?
Esau McCaulley : 12:56
One of the things, and this is interesting, this is a small point. I think that we can easily think, like, when we talk about like orthodoxy and heterodoxy, we can kind of shrink those things down to a few particular issues. So the fundamental claim that African American churches are making, and the reason why there's political or theological homelessness, is the idea that we think the racism is itself a heresy. And so it's a heresy they can sometimes, even if it is, you know... There's an anti. There's racism, there's condemnation of racism on paper, but racism allowed to flourish in practice, that itself is heresy. And so what I want to say is that the African American Christian doesn't feel the need to compromise. There's this thing in the Anglican tradition, and maybe other people have a version of it, of preaching the whole counsel of God, and not just the parts of it that we like. And so what I wanted to be able to do in this book was... And I think that this happens a lot. When you go to college, you got to try to find yourself. And sometimes finding yourself means that you grew up Baptist and you become Methodist. You grew up Methodist, and you become Anglican. You grew up Anglican, and you become nondenominational. And part of that process can sometimes mean looking back with disdain on the church of your youth. I am not in kind of, like, a Black denomination right now. But what happened for me was the opposite--is I began to recognize all the ways in which that tradition prepared me for this moment. And I wanted the book to feel like the people who put so much into me to make me the person that I am felt like they were seen and heard. I think there's a line in there. It's a fulfillment of a trust.
Chris McAlilly : 14:58
Yeah.
Esau McCaulley : 14:59
A stewardship. So I felt like I was raised with this wonderful gift that allows me to live as a Christian in America. And I want to give that to the rest of the world. And so there is a sense in which this is a very... and sometimes you don't appreciate things until you have distance from it.
Chris McAlilly : 15:17
I see that a lot. I mean, we live in a college town and we are around a lot of young people and a lot of young, both Black and white, Mississippians, Southerners who are coming to college seeking. They know that there's something wrong about the world. They know that there's something that's not quite right. Sometimes they sense that about themselves. Sometimes they sense that about the wider political, social-economic realities that they find themselves in. I thought it was interesting that you began the book by talking about Black nihilism and Black hope and the ways in which kind of this tradition that you grew up in--and that did give you an inheritance, that you've come to really appreciate through time--couldn't quite speak to the person that you were. But you heard it in hip-hop in a different kind of way. There's this sense that hip-hop was struggling, in a way, with the reality of the questions that you were experiencing as a young Black man in the American South, that you wanted to kind of live into a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about how that informs the book?
Esau McCaulley : 16:22
Yeah, I talked about how there's, like... I mean, I think of the book almost like an album, that's the reason why people said they can skip around in it. An album has a coherent theme, but the songs, they kind of exist independent of one another, that kind of circle around this idea. And so on one level, it influences the very structure of the book. But what I want to say about music more more directly, is, like, Black hip-hop did a very good job of capturing sometimes how I felt and what I saw, even if it didn't offer me the proper solutions. Sometimes the solutions were nihilism. There's this phrase we used to say all the time growing up, we would say, like, "It's a dirty game." And, like, what did that mean? It meant well, like, so if someone's robbing you, "Hey, man, we boys. Why are you robbing me?" Like, "Man, it's a dirty game." And the whole point was, this is actually a very theologically astute thing: the system is broken; therefore, I gotta do what I got to do to kind of get through it. And I said, "You know what? You're right. The game was dirty. You caught me slipping. Now, I'm robbed." And it was this kind of, like, brief theological analysis of where we find ourselves. We're both Black in America in a system designed against us. So my solution is to get what I can get. And so that's true. That's what I experienced. But that's nihilism, ultimately. That's this idea that let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. And I say, well, there was another testimony that sits alongside of that. Let's talk about my mother's gospel music: Mahalia Jackson, Shirley Caesar, James Cleveland. Later on Kurt Franklin, the Georgia Mass Choir. These were people who existed in that same world, right, but also articulated a hope. And so, all of hip-hop isn't nihilistic. And all of gospel music isn't, like, providing answers. But I lived within those two worlds of living in one world where the church was here to, like, answer our questions and guide us through reality. But another reality in which being young and Black and Southern was a particular challenge. And so I didn't want a book that answered questions that the church was asking. I wanted a book that answered questions that Black people were asking, most of whom were Christians. And so in order to do that, I had to go back to Southern hip-hop. I had to, like, sit there. Because what I'm saying is, you can give a great sermon that kind of addresses the issue at hand, but skates it. But what if someone who's there can ask you, "What about the fact that I'm Black and I'm mad?" That's a direct question.
Chris McAlilly : 19:07
Yes.
Esau McCaulley : 19:07
"What do I do with this anger?" Not, like, "why should we forgive?" Not, "what is love?" Those are important questions. But "What do I do about the fact that I am enraged by what I saw? Or what I've seen, what I experience?" And you have to answer that question addressed in that form, if you're going to actually be able to give people hope. And the important point I want people to realize is that when I wrote the book, you could disagree with the answers. I didn't have an answer to any one of the questions that I wrote, that I raised in that book. I tried to say to myself, what are the questions I have to answer in order to write the book? So I said, I have to write a book about protest. I have to write a book about policing. I have to write--I mean a chapter about policing--I have to write about Black anger. I have to write about slavery, because these are the questions that I have to answer. And so the book is written for the reader, but also for me, because this is the book that I didn't have when I was 22, 23, 24, trying to make sense of what it meant to be Christian in America. So my hope is the next person who comes through and is going through the same thing can turn to this book, not because it has the correct answers, but that it points us in a direction that we might discover it.
Chris McAlilly : 20:21
It's an exercise.
Eddie Rester : 20:22
Yeah.
Esau McCaulley : 20:23
It's an exercise in hope. And anyone who's a Christian... Like, there's two stages of the Christian life. And the first stage may last a really long time. It's where everything works for you pretty well being a Christian.
Eddie Rester : 20:37
Right.
Esau McCaulley : 20:38
Like, the answers kind of work, the ethos kind of work, the culture kind of works, and you just kind of, like, float along. But there's this other point where it gets difficult to actually be a Christian. Things start to happen to us. Our life gets hard. We we experience disappointment. We find out the other Christians are human and fallible. We recognize that the church is full of broken people. And then the question becomes, "How do I be a Christian when it's hard?"
Eddie Rester : 21:05
Mm hmm.
Esau McCaulley : 21:07
And it's kind of, like, and what people do is people can do a lot of things to get to this difficulty problem. They might say, "Well, I'm in the wrong tradition. And that's why it's hard." So they kind of run to another tradition. And that kind of delays the question, right? But eventually, you have to get to the fact that no matter what tradition you're in, it gets hard. The other option is, "Well, let me just, like, adopt nihilism. Well, let me abandon the faith." And then they kind of go down there, but life doesn't get less hard there. It's just hard without the same hope that we have in Christ. And what I want to articulate was a Christian faith that exists upon the other side of the difficulties of being Black in America. These are my difficulties. Somebody else might have a different set of difficulties. But everybody gets to the point where Christianity doesn't work for them in a way where it's just intuitive or you're trying to fight for hope. We're opening the Bible. We're opening the Bible, saying, "Man, I hope I have a good word, that God speaks to me here." We walk into church to say, "Man, I hope the pastor's ready to preach today, because I really need a good sermon." "I hope that, like, during prayer time and small group, you can actually be vulnerable because I really want to share what's going on in my life." That's what I'm talking about an exercise in hope. When things are really, really tricky, we're able to, like, not even work ourselves into it, but to be carried along by the Spirit of God back through these practices that have historically given us life.
Eddie Rester : 22:32
I'm sitting here thinking about several things. One is a man I heard preach years ago, filling in for the preacher one Sunday. I can still hear his words. I can still see his face. He said, "On some days, faith must be a conscious choice." And when you talk about an exercise in hope, there are days we have to put ourselves in a position to say, "I'm going to pursue this hope that I can't feel
Esau McCaulley : 22:56
Exactly.
Eddie Rester : 22:56
"or see." You know, you talk about the book, and that every chapter is different, answering the questions, trying to answer questions that are important for you. You know, people may not know that your book was actually slated to come out, I think in November, is that right? A couple months from now. And then with everything that happened this summer in the United States, it got pulled up a couple of months. And what I love about the book is that you do, each chapter is one of those big questions that right now, in the United States, we're wrestling with: policing and justice, Black identity, rage and anger. The chapter on rage, there's this moment where you talk about Jesus is called to forgiveness and how powerful that is, that the crucifixion that points us to a forgiveness, that is not cheap. But then you started that chapter with Psalm 137, which is the exiles saying, "Look, we're done. We're going to weep by the rivers of Babylon, we're hanging up our harps. We were not going to be forced to sing anymore, because they're mocking us." And you talked about living between those two scriptures, between Psalm 137 and between I think it was Luke 23, where Jesus offers words of forgiveness. Talk a little bit about how living like that, you know, that's in the chapter about rage. So how did... help... Talk a little bit about that chapter.
Esau McCaulley : 24:24
So that chapter is, I mean, every chapter, and maybe when... The reviews have been positive, but there may be people who may not like it, because there is a danger in talking about Black forgiveness.
Chris McAlilly : 24:39
Right.
Esau McCaulley : 24:39
And I call it the ticket to the party. And Black, at least for me, in the Black context, you can't talk about the solution unless you're able to really articulate the scope of the problem. And Psalm 137 and the experiences of African Americans, like, the experiences of other people who experienced... The experience of exile and the destruction and the burning down and the mockery that surrounded it is raw and unfiltered. And it gave me the perspective of being able to talk about the African American experience in America. And so I have to talk about it in the way that it happened. I called it a litany of suffering. It marks African American life in this country. And so I had to give full space for that reality to exist, so that people understood the conversation that was going to take place later on in the chapter. And so the litany of suffering was written in before I knew how the second half was going to go. And what I actually talked about before I got to the New Testament was, like, the miracle of the Bible. And I said it's not the fact that there's the Psalms of rage. Like, that's, of course, there'll be people who stepped on people so the world will be upset. The miracle of the Bible, even in the Old Testament, is even the descendants of the people who experienced these things were able to look beyond their anger to see the salvation of the Gentiles. So you have something like Isaiah saying, "It is too small thing for you to bring back the nation of Israel to restore the people I have kept. But I'll make you a light to the nations." The idea that Isaiah could have envisioned not just the destruction of the enemies, but that the king of Israel might draw the people to himself, allows us to begin to ask a question, or at least look towards something beyond Black anger. And so that gives me the context to say, "Well, I don't know how we going to get there, but we can at least get there." And when I get to the next sentence, like, ultimately, it's the cross that does that. The cross that gives me the spiritual and the theological resources to begin to have something to say rather than beyond just my anger, and that [kind of] forgiveness is dangerous because it can be heard as saying, "Well, it doesn't matter what happened to you because of Jesus. And we do forgive one another." And then there is no reckoning. There is no justice. And I want to say, "Well, no." You can... Forgiveness is the cross breaks the wheel. It's the language that I use. It's that forgiveness allows us to kind of break this cycle of revenge. And then we, in our vengence, go beyond what's necessary, which creates another generation of people who are then wronged. And so there has to be a place in which the violence ends. And in some sense, Jesus ends the violence by taking it upon himself, which then allowed me to say, "Yes, I have forgiveness." But it's not a forgiveness that denies the truth of the thing, right? Jesus doesn't say, "It's not that bad; therefore, forgive." Jesus says, "It's so bad, I must come here and receive this myself." And then have the power to transfigure our mutual hatred and contempt and sin and things into something that might become love. And so, obviously, in this I will have to say this in every caveat, the cross is more than that. It's not less than that, right, and the cross includes the things that Christians always believe about the cross, about forgiveness and atonement. But there's also in that same context the resources to forgive. And I think that, like, ultimately, the only answer that we can provide to Black anger is the cross of Christ. But the cross of Christ does not mean I have to accept what is being done for me, done to me. It doesn't mean I have to allow it to continue. It doesn't mean that I have to say that it wasn't that bad. It just means that I could say that this is not the end of the conversation, my revenge.
Eddie Rester : 28:35
I think that's the place sometimes that we get tripped up. Because we think well, if everybody just forgive everybody, we could go on living. We'd go on just with whatever, you know, we can just go on our way. But true forgiveness alters the structures and the reality that we live in. And that's the piece I think sometimes that particularly white Christians miss. "Okay. I've asked for forgiveness. Just give me forgiveness, we'll all move on." But there's more to that: the power of forgiveness, what it actually can release if we let it.
Esau McCaulley : 29:12
And let forgiveness, like, for me to forgive someone requires me to acknowledge the truth of what happened. I can't forgive you for something that you didn't do. And to forgive, like, the cross makes it impossible for us to lie about the nature and the extent of human sin. It's impossible. Like, the blood washes away sin, but the cross also reveals sin. Right.
Eddie Rester : 29:44
Right.
Esau McCaulley : 29:44
We have to see what it was, you know. Paul talked about, like, Christ loves him and gave us a forum for Paul. Why does Paul need to be rescued? What was going on? And so I think that it's important to talk about, like, a un-naive forgiveness.
Chris McAlilly : 30:04
I've been thinking so much about you since, I mean, just over the summer knowing that this book was going to come out and seeing a couple of the columns that came out in the New York Times after Ahmaud Arbery that was, I think the first one, the most poignant. That was my way into some of your writing around this. And I hadn't really connected the dots back to when I started out in ministry and I moved out to a little rural church. And I began to ask that question, "what are the issues and concerns facing this little, tiny community?" It strikes me that one of the things that's happening for you in this moment is that you're in a position by providence and experience and training and all the rest and also to see your church broadly as kind of what's happening in America. And you've been given this platform to kind of think about these things and to offer a public Christian witness that meets the moment. I just wonder how you're dealing with that, you know? And, I mean, certainly I'm praying for you in that, just because I know that it's got to be heavy, but also because part of what I've sensed in you is this burden to tell the truth about what's happening in a way that creates the capacity or the possibility for that encounter with the cross of Jesus for all of us. And I think that that's why... there's something about that that's so beautiful, man, and something that's so powerful about this book. But I wonder, I mean, kind of how are you wrestling with that, the need to offer that public witness right now?
Esau McCaulley : 31:46
Um, well, interesting. Like I didn't set out to offer a public witness.
Chris McAlilly : 31:51
No, I didn't. I didn't, I didn't mean to think that you were like. I don't think you were, like...
Esau McCaulley : 31:56
Yeah, yeah, I was just, like, I was just minding my own business [LAUGHTER]
Eddie Rester : 32:02
"Write a book about this."
Esau McCaulley : 32:03
"Write a book about hermeneutics." And how do I feel? On one level, I don't think it's very good for a Christian. I have to, like, do two things at the same time. One is, I don't think it's good for me, or for any Christian's own soul, to say, "Well, God has chosen me to do A, B, and C." Because once you begin to kind of, like, put yourself on some kind of pedestal, you might think that you're kind of like spiritually immune, you know. And I've seen and heard about pastors that, "Well, because, you know, I have this call, then these kinds of things are excusable because the ministry should be most important." And so for me, I mostly just try to keep my head down and do the work as it comes to me, and not really reflect on the moment. Does that make any sense?
Chris McAlilly : 32:51
Yeah, for sure.
Esau McCaulley : 32:52
Like when my book came out, I taught Bible all day, and then I went home, and I had, like, an hour before I'd take my kid to soccer practice, and then I had dinner--I had, like Chick-Fil-A and you know, pie. It's, like, myself before dinner, so it was, like, a regular day. On the other hand, so that's the first part of it. And as much as it depends upon me, I try to ignore what's going on and be... I tell my students all the time, "it is less important what you accomplish than you... like, you accomplishing certain things and you becoming that kind of person." And so what I'm trying to do is to become the right kind of Christian, so, like, so 10 years from now it's not that Esau wrote 20 more articles. It's that, like, I am better at loving my wife and my children and teaching the students whom God has given me. And that's not like... I remember one time praying, saying, "Okay, God, I will do this, but I'm making three requests of you. These are my three requests. One is I don't want ever to get into any kind of financial scandals that the people said I stole money from the church. And I don't want to get into any kind of sexual scandals that people say I'm some kind of weirdo. And I don't want to gain 500 pounds from stress eating." And God was, like, "Well, okay, you're gonna have to exercise, but the other two we can work on. So you got to get up and go to the gym, you got exercise." So, so part of it is just, like, I just try my best each day to be a Christian. But I also feel like as a writer, especially in my monthly columns, I try not to say, "Well, how can I, like..." People kind of think of it as, like, "This is my one shot. Let me preach the Gospel." And this is laying out the plan of salvation in every article. And what I try to do is, like, make Christianity natural in my writing, in the sense of I don't try to put in Christianese in a way that I wouldn't normally do it. So if you think about a movie, and in a movie, like, nobody ever goes to church. Right? They just live their life. Or like on a television show, people don't stop in church. And so what I try to do as a writer is to stop in church, when it feels relevant. And so what that means is... and the other thing I would probably say is that in any given issue, there's a kind of leftist Christian take that people are expecting. And there's kind of a rightist Christian take the people are expecting. And I'm not trying to split the difference. I'm not trying to say that there's a golden mean. What I'm trying to say is, the Gospel should make us, so the Christian tradition should make us unpredictable. And what I try to be is unpredictable in that sense of trying to think it through as Christianly as possible. I've noticed that in my writing, a lot of times, I have friends who are Christians who may be, like, either in complicated situations with their kind of social circles. And what they are looking for, is they see something happens in society, and they want to say something about it, but they don't know what to say. And they want to share something. Well, they say, "Okay, this makes sense for Christians, but my non-believing friends, they're going to hear things that, like, it's going to be confusing to them." And so I try to write the article that a Christian can share, can give to someone who may not share their values and say, "This is how we would talk about the situation." So I see myself stewarding the responsible Christian reflection, and even if it's not the mainstream Christian reflection, it's like, "Here's how I think we should be thinking about this, as Christians."
Chris McAlilly : 36:33
Can you talk a little bit, I do think it's still the Black Lives Matter movement is one that's just contested in among Christians, particularly white Christians in terms of what's going on there. Some people are all in. Some people are... They just don't know what to make of it. And then also particularly kind of the more riotous ends of protesting and
Esau McCaulley : 36:53
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly : 36:53
I think that that's something that I've heard pushback, certainly among white Mississippi Christians.
Esau McCaulley : 36:59
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly : 37:00
And I just wonder, kind of how would you help the church think about what's going on there? Yeah, I mean, just, like, what's some language, what do you see going on there?
Esau McCaulley : 37:12
I would love to talk about riots and protests. So there's a, like, standard kind of pattern for all these events. And we've kind of played this pattern out a thousand times. I would hope that as Christians we could get beyond it. Let's say something happens in the community. And then let's say the past, an event, violent, whatever it was. And the pastors in the community get together and they say we should have a march for justice or whatever, and they get--and I've been a part of these things--they get five or ten pastors together. They start the thing at 11 o'clock, at 1 PM, and they march down the street. They may go to the courthouse and give some speeches, say some prayers, and then they go home, like 2, 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
Chris McAlilly : 37:57
They eat Chick-Fil-A on the way home.
Esau McCaulley : 37:59
They eat Chick-Fil-A. And when the sun goes down, and a different group of people comes out, and there's riots and unrest. Now, sometimes those same Black pastors are there. But they're there trying to prevent the people from, like, damaging things. Like who wants their grocery store burned down? And so it's not the case that, like... But then once those riots occur in the evening, they're used to discredit the protest that happened during the day. And then the question becomes, "What's your opinion on the riot?" Or the question becomes, "Well, we need the churches to be really energetic in condemning the riots," but the question becomes, "Well, who is the condemnation of the riots for?" Right? Because if I live in a neighborhood, and the grocery store is burned down, the people in my congregation may not need me to lead the march, saying "don't burn down the grocery store," because we were the ones without groceries. But the condemnation of the riots are supposed to appease white audiences. So white audiences will then, like, come help us during the day. But if they weren't already helping us during the day, then actually criticizing the riots aren't gonna do that work. So then the discourse becomes, "Well, what about this civil unrest?" And by the time you get to discussing the problem with the civil unrest, or the riots--which they are--you've lost track of the actual thing that gave cause to the riots, which is why we were marching in the first place. And so I don't know. No, yes. Are there pastors who are then trying to say, "I understand why someone might be upset." That's different than saying like, "Well, I think that rioting is a good way to solve problems." Very few people, Christians, are, like, pro-riot. And so, like, where is this? Like, no, I'm not saying you can't find them. I'm talking about you go to the actual churches in your community, and the actual pastors who are in the city and say, of the five most prominent Black churches, the largest Black churches, how many of them are saying, "Go and burn down the city"? So then who are we actually arguing with? Where, we argue this... So then we've kind of lost the entire narrative. So I want to say that people is, well, let's stay focused on the issue at hand. And even if there is a riot, it doesn't mean that the issue that we're protesting is... Like, the logic is well, because there was a riot at night, then you shouldn't protest during the day. And you shouldn't call out injustice, as if the following didn't happen. Let's say the following doesn't happen. Let's say there's a videotaped shooting, and no churches do anything during the day. Do you think there's still going to be a riot that night? Of course there is. Of course there is. So the existence of a riot does not thereby invalidate the concerns that led to the protest during the day. It seems to be the case that the standard is until Black Christians can prevent Black anarchists from rioting, then we can't have justice. And I don't understand who else has that kind of responsibility to be able to enforce these other things to get the thing that you want. And so what I would say is that, like, your discomfort, with rioting is shared. Do you not think that I'm not worried about cities burning? Of course. Of course we're worried. But, like, but the community in which we live doesn't need to hear us all of the time saying, "We're concerned with the riots." The people in our communities need to hear, "We're concerned with the ways in which Black people are treated in this country." It gives rise to the frustrations. There would be no riots if there were no police shootings.
Chris McAlilly : 41:56
I think I've heard you say that riots are the language of...
Esau McCaulley : 42:01
Yeah, so, but, like, that's the difference. There is a way of talking about, like, yes, I could say that. But that's not the point I'm trying to say. It's, like, the issue is not the justification of the riots. And those can be separate things. And the same thing with the Black Lives Matter organization. Yes, there are parts about the organization that we disagree with. Of course there are. But words have meanings in context. So if you're in a church, and your church preaches the scriptures, and the people who attend your church listen to you week in and week out exposit God's word faithfully. And if they're Black churches that are doing this in your community, and they are doing the ministry, the idea that saying the words, "Black Lives Matters" changes the entire theological structure of a church is slander unbecoming of God's people. Just think about all... put it this way, the people who do things in the name of Christianity, who slaughter and who murder and who, like, we are in a tradition that had the Crusades.
Eddie Rester : 43:15
Right.
Esau McCaulley : 43:17
We are in denominations that existed, that supported slavery. We're in denominations that supported segregation, not 100 years ago, 50 years ago. And we didn't say, "I can't call myself a Methodist, because the Methodists supported segregation and the abuse of Black people. And so to associate myself with Methodists means to associate myself with everything that Methodists taught." No, what we'll say is, "I'm this kind of Methodist, not that kind of Methodist." But even if you're a Democrat or Republican, you will say, "I'm this kind of Democrat, not that kind of Democrat." "I'm this kind of Republican, not that kind of Republican." There is no phrase that exists uninterpreted. Even when you say, "I'm a Christian," or someone says they're a Christian, the first thing that you ask is, "Well, what kind of Christian are you?" Isn't it?
Eddie Rester : 44:08
That's exactly right.
Esau McCaulley : 44:09
So then here's the question, why is it that we're able to define Christian and say, "I mean a Christian, and when I say Christian, I mean, these sets of beliefs." Other people call themselves Christians who have a different set of beliefs. I'm not saying they're not Christian. I'm saying this is what I mean by the term. So why is it that only the phrase "Black Lives Matter" has an inflexible definition? And that I can't say, "When I say 'Black Lives Matter,' I mean, Genesis 126 to 128." There is no reason why I can't say that. That's not how language works. Words have meanings in sentences. Sentences have meanings in paragraphs. Paragraphs have meanings in worldviews. So if you want to know what I mean by "Black Lives Matter," read my book, read my scholarship. You can't take that sentence and say it indicates something. And so we do this with so many other things, right? Even when you say something simple, like, "I love you." I love potato chips. And I love my wife. I don't mean the same thing when I used the word "love."
Eddie Rester : 45:18
I hope not.
Chris McAlilly : 45:18
[LAUGHTER]
Esau McCaulley : 45:19
Right? I would hope so. So what I'm saying is, like, when we put freight on something, because we pretend like we don't understand how language works. And we do.
Eddie Rester : 45:35
Which, as I'm sitting here, processing all this, which means that in order to understand the language that we're each using, we actually need to talk with each other. We actually need to be in conversation with each other, instead of assuming we know what someone thinks, believes, understands, or is standing for. I think one of the thing that has happened is that we've decided that--we can talk social media, whatever you want to talk about that--but we've decided, "Well, I know who they are. I, I think I know who I am. We're just gonna let the gulf exist between us," instead of "help me understand."
Esau McCaulley : 46:18
And I would also say it's partially linguistic imperialism. Like the dominant culture decides what language that the minority culture has to be able to use in order to receive justice. And I want people to understand this. Let me tell you something. I don't run around with a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. I mean, it's not necessarily, like, what I write in every article, "Black Lives Matter." I want to talk about the freedom for us to be able to use words to describe things we want to experience. Because here's the thing, and this what I want people to hear: never in the history of this country have the words that black people use to describe their oppression been acceptable to the majority culture. You can look at Frederick Douglass. You can look at Martin Luther King. You can look at the Civil Rights Movement. And it is only retrospectively as we selectively appropriate those leaders that we say that we like their rhetoric. But this King figure, who we think is this great unifier, was seen as defensive. And so there isn't a word, there's not a set of words that describes the assertion of Black words in a world that is anti-Black, too often. It's offensive. Right? You can you know, sorry. I know this is, like, a joke, but it's like when the affair, when Jada Pinkett and Will Smith, and she was talking about when she had an affair, and she called it an "entanglement."
Eddie Rester : 47:51
Right.
Esau McCaulley : 47:51
And Will was like, "No, you can't call it an 'entanglement' because you cheated on me." And she's trying to find the best word to describe adultery. There's no way of admitting a sin where the, like, ugliness of the sin isn't sometimes contained within the very language itself. And so Black Lives Matter is a strong affirmation. And it carries with it a critique that is hard to hear. And I think all of the equivocation is because that's a hard thing to hear, that we haven't valued Black lives in this country, but it's true. And it's not a nice way, a nice way to say it that captures the kind of the experience of it, the way that we feel it.
Eddie Rester : 48:40
So we we've got just a couple more minutes, and we're so thankful for your time. As people are hearing you today, and they're like, why should I read his book? What would you say? Why would white, Southern Christians need read your book?
Esau McCaulley : 49:03
I got four kids and I gotta pay for college.
Chris McAlilly : 49:04
[LAUGHTER]
Eddie Rester : 49:06
I've got one in college and one about to go to college, so you get saving. Yeah.
Esau McCaulley : 49:11
My favorite analogy is, it's one thing to, you can have a couple who comes in, they want to give you like a seminar about marriage. And the couple could stand before you and explain what their marriage is like to the audience and say,"You should do these five things." And you get one picture of their marriage by listening to them describe it, but what they are doing when they describe that marriage to an audience, it's giving you an interpreted version of who they are. And then thinking through at every point, well, how much can this audience really take about what it's like? Like, reality TV is edited.
Eddie Rester : 49:46
Right.
Esau McCaulley : 49:46
Right? It's not real. It's, like, it's a perception. And so whenever an African American is explaining themselves to a white audience, it's a filter, and that filter is always distorting. We're saying, "Well, how much can my white audience receive?" Now, if you go into that family's house, and you watch how they interact, you actually begin to see what their marriage looks like when the cameras aren't rolling. So "Reading While Black" is focused on an African American context, and is trying to answer questions that African Americans are answering, but it's precisely because you're not at the center of the story, you might actually get an unfiltered window into our experience. Right? So sometimes you learn by watching and listening. So you might ask yourself, "Why have I never thought theologically through Black anger? Or thought about what kind of anger might exist within Black communities?" So just sitting there and listening gives people at least the beginnings of a picture into the Black Christian experience. You know, the first step towards kind of becoming who God would call us to be, as brothers and sisters in Christ, is understanding one another. And the last thing I'll say about this, like, most white Christians have never really been in a place where there's an African American who had real authority over them. Maybe they had a football coach here and there. We're talking about, like, economic, political, religious authority. Most of the time, that's relatively rare. Like if you had 50 teachers in high school, you might have had three Black teachers. The reason that's important is because we're used to being in the center of the story. So that means that the music, the stories, the analogies, the applications, are all focused on us. But that means when Black people come to those spaces, they're always engaging in the process of translation. Because we really listen to the narrative, and so that disorientation that you might feel in "Reading While Black" may give you, like, an insight into what Black students feel like when they walk into classrooms, offices, job every day, where their stories are never at the center. I tell people, I've never watched "Friends." I've never seen "Seinfeld." I didn't like Dave Matthews Band. I don't know the Beatles. Right, that's not mine. But when I went into white spaces, I had to learn about Monty Python. I never heard of Monty Python. So like these are all the cultural things, just to understand the conversation, that I had to learn certain parts of white spaces.
Eddie Rester : 52:16
That's good.
Esau McCaulley : 52:17
Even the disorientation that you get from reading the book, like, "I don't know any of this stuff." This is how we feel all the time.
Chris McAlilly : 52:23
I think what I would say to the question of "why people should read this book," I think what I just was reminded, reading your book, Esau, is just how compelling the character of God is, and to hear how compelling the liberating power of God is for you and for the folks that you're writing: for the churches of your youth, for yourself, as you continue to grow as a writer and a scholar and as a pastor. But for me, it just reinvigorated my desire to dive deeply into the Bible and to find there the source of hope, which is the character of God who has been with God's people through time, in every time and space, in every language, ethnicity, culture, and race. So I'm grateful for that, man. Thank you for taking us on the journey in the book and then also today in the conversation. We're grateful for what you're doing.
Esau McCaulley : 53:24
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Eddie Rester : 53:26
Blessings to all that you do, and we pray that God will use the book in great ways.
Esau McCaulley : 53:32
I appreciate that. Those are kind words.
Eddie Rester : 53:34
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening today. Go ahead and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And go ahead and hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts.
Chris McAlilly : 53:46
This wouldn't be possible without our partner General Board of Higher Education in Ministry. We want to thank also our producer Cody Hickman. Follow us next week. We'll be back with another episode of The Weight. [END OUTRO]