New York Times O-Ed: There Is Glory and God in Our Struggles, by Esau McCaulley (Wheaton; author, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (2020)):
Every February, Black History Month, Americans engage in a futile attempt to squeeze into 28 days the history of a people whose tribulations, contributions and successes are on every page of the American narrative. For African Americans, at least, the struggle to tell our story and make sense of our place in the American saga never recedes from view.
Understanding who we are and why we have suffered so much in this country is something like existential questions that wax and wane, coinciding with the peaks and valleys of anti-Black racism. Are we more than the identities and labels people have given us? Is there more to our narrative than the whip and the chain?
Some have tried to find a sense of origin in the remnants of African culture that survived the middle passage and that made their way into the religious and social lives of Black communities. Black history, we think, is there, broken and fragmented, in the spirituals and the blues. Others have pursued a more direct route, taking DNA tests to find their roots. And some African Americans are moving back to the motherland.
Black religious groups, in particular, have struggled with questions of identity and history. That is no surprise given that some theologians and pastors justified our enslavement by evoking the curse of Ham, saying that African people were predestined to servitude.
This has led to the criticism from within our communities that Christianity is a white man’s religion. Resisting this idea is a regular feature of many preachers’ sermons. They argue that the white supremacy practiced by “Christian” enslavers was a corruption of the religion, not the thing itself.
The Black Hebrew Israelite movement gives African peoples a sense of self by claiming the identity of the nation of Israel depicted in the biblical texts common to Jews and Christians. The community is quite diverse in its beliefs and opinions. …
I am proud of my connection to the motherland and of the African presence in the biblical narrative.
I am also inspired by the stories that have taken place here. The shame of Black chattel slavery in the United States is not attached to the descendants of the enslaved. The middle passage and the auction block are not things we did; they were evils perpetrated against our ancestors.
There is glory to be found in the struggles of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, James W.C. Pennington, William J Simmons, Jarena Lee and Richard Allen. We come from a people who pulled together a culture and a faith out of the mud. Our music, dress, food and spirituality are a wonder to behold. We do not need another history to have a sense of self or to find religious meaning. According to many abolitionists and later civil rights leaders, God was not just with the ancient Israelites; he has also been with us on our long and winding journey toward the promised land.
Op-Eds by Esau McCaulley:
- The Christian Response to the Coronavirus: Stay Home (Mar. 22, 2020)
- What The Bible Has To Say About Black Anger: 'The Cross Helps Us Make Sense Of The Lynching Tree' (June 21, 2020)
- MLK's Legacy: Push Past Tweetable Quotes To True Christlike Love (Jan. 18, 2021)
- Why Christians Must Fight Systemic Racism (Aug. 1, 2021)
- The Dangerous Politics Of ‘We Will Not Forgive’ (Oct. 3, 2021)
- MLK's Legacy: Push Past Tweetable Quotes To True Christlike Love (Jan. 17, 2022)
- Does The Meaning Of A Christmas Song Change Depending On The Race Of The Man Who Wrote It? (Dec. 25, 2022)
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