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

McCaulley raises the question of the church’s role as a political witness and posits that the work of justice is evangelistic and part of God’s will for ordering society in a way that glorifies God’s kingdom.

He discusses Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” his response to the eight clergy members who criticized him and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for their activism during the civil rights movement, saying that their protests were antithetical to the cause of peace (48). McCaulley frames the letter as a response not just to the clergy but also to a wider practice among white Christians of focusing on law and order and taking a moderate stance at the expense of the demands of the New Testament. Similarly, Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” indicts white Christians for perpetuating the institution of slavery while claiming to honor God and the ideal of freedom (49). Unlike white Christians who can sacrifice compatibility between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, Black Christians “have never had the luxury of separating […] faith from political action” (49). BEI offers a unique exegesis rooted in the Black experience that challenges all Christians to live up to the ideals of the just society envisioned in the Bible. McCaulley follows the example set by King in the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by likening Black protesters to Old Testament prophets and the Apostle Paul.

McCaulley deconstructs Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Timothy 2:1-4, showing how the passages are weaponized in the debate about the political witness of the church and Black protest for freedom. However, McCaulley insists that they do not limit political witness or Black resistance. McCaulley grounds Paul’s call for Christians to pray for their leaders in Paul’s preceding criticism of the established practices of the Roman Empire in 1 Timothy 1:10 (53). Therefore, prayer for leaders and political witness are not mutually exclusive, and 1 Timothy suggests that it is precisely political witness that prompts Christians to pray for their leaders.

McCaulley finds examples of political witness in the New Testament. In Luke 13:31-32, when the Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him, Jesus responds with a dismissal of Herod’s political authority and criticism of his political practice. Similarly, Paul dismisses the social and political order in Galatians 1:3-5 when he refers to Jesus’s sacrifice when setting the people free from the “present evil age” (80). He cites J. Louis Martyn and Stephen E. Fowl to argue that there was no separation between spiritual and political evil for Paul. Therefore, the passage’s reference to being freed from the “present evil age” is a call for Christians to witness and refuse the “economic, social, and political oppression of the people of God” while waiting for God’s eschatological kingdom (61). Revelation 18 contains John’s vision of the Roman Empire’s fall, and the political witness is found in John’s comparison of Rome to Babylon and his condemnation of the institution of slavery. McCaulley connects John’s comparison of Rome to Babylon with Isaiah’s condemnation of Babylon in the Old Testament as a tyrant that will be judged by God and destroyed for its oppressive ways and immorality.

Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 emphasizes that Jesus calls his disciples to desire and work for justice. The Third Beatitude reveals Jesus’s attitude toward political witness. Matthew 5:4 contains a theology of mourning, which calls on Christians to care about suffering in the world; Matthew 5:6 asks that Christians go beyond mourning toward a hunger for justice, which implies hope in a vision of a new transformed society; and Matthew 5:9 mandates that the practice of justice is peacemaking. McCaulley argues that peacemaking requires calling injustice by its name—that is, being a political witness.