Esau Mccaulley Quotes

Euro-American scholars, ministers, and lay folk . . . have, over the centuries, used their economic, academic, religious, and political dominance to create the illusion that the Bible, read through their experience, is the Bible read correctly.”12 Stated differently, everybody has been reading the Bible from their locations, but we are honest about it.

The question isn’t always which account of Christianity uses the Bible. The question is which does justice to as much of the biblical witness as possible. There are uses of Scripture that utter a false testimony about God. This is what we see in Satan’s use of Scripture in the wilderness. The problem isn’t that the Scriptures that Satan quoted were untrue, but when made to do the work that he wanted them to do, they distorted the biblical witness. This is my claim about the slave master exegesis of the antebellum South. The slave master arrangement of biblical material bore false witness about God. This remains true of quotations of the Bible in our own day that challenge our commitment to the refugee, the poor, and the disinherited.

But if we all read the biblical text assuming that God is able to speak a coherent word to us through it, then we can discuss the meanings our varied cultures have gleaned from the Scriptures. What I have in mind then is a unified mission in which our varied cultures turn to the text in dialogue with one another to discern the mind of Christ.

God’s vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united by faith in his Son as a manifestation of the expansive nature of his grace. This expansiveness is unfulfilled unless the differences are seen and celebrated, not as ends unto themselves, but as particular manifestations of the power of the Spirit to bring forth the same holiness among different peoples and cultures for the glory of God.

If the Scriptures were fundamentally flawed and largely useless apart from mainline revision of the text, then Christianity is truly a white man's religion.

…there is no joy without suffering, and it is both the joy and the suffering that make me who I am.

Patience with broken people and broken things is a manifestation of trust in God.

Prayer for leaders and criticism of their practices are not mutually exclusive ideas. Both have biblical warrant in the same letter.

Protest is not unbiblical; it is a manifestation of our analysis of the human condition in light of God’s own word and vision for the future.

According to Isaiah, true practice of religion ought to result in concrete change, the breaking of yokes. He does not mean the occasional private act of liberation, but “to break the chains of injustice.” What could this mean other than a transformation of the structures of societies that trap people in hopelessness? Jesus has in mind the creation of a different type of world.

If the church is going to be on the side of peace in the United States, then there has to be an honest accounting of what this country has done and continues to do to Black and Brown people.

I suggest that Paul’s words about submission to governing authorities must be read in light of four realities: (1) Paul’s use of Pharaoh in Romans as an example of God removing authorities through human agents shows that his prohibition against resistance is not absolute; (2) the wider Old Testament testifies to God’s use of human agents to take down corrupt governments; (3) in light of the first two propositions, we can affirm that God is active through human beings even when we can’t discern the exact role we play; (4) therefore, Paul’s words should be seen as more of a limit on our discernment than on God’s activities.

Ethnic identity and the Christian community, a question asked and answered a generation ago must be addressed again in our day so that our people know that God glories in the distinctive gifts we all bring into the kingdom.

If we're all a mix of good and bad then there's always a chance that good might emerge victorious in the end if we give God enough time to do His work. Patience with broken people and broken things is a manifestation of trust in God.

Peacemaking, then, cannot be separated from truth telling. The church’s witness does not involve simply denouncing the excesses of both sides and making moral equivalencies. It involves calling injustice by its name. If the church is going to be on the side of peace in the United States, then there has to be an honest accounting of what this country has done and continues to do to Black and Brown people. Moderation or the middle ground is not always the loci of righteousness.

While I was at home with much of the theology in evangelicalism, there were real disconnects. First, there was the portrayal of the Black church in these circles. I was told that the social gospel had corrupted Black Christianity. Rather than placing my hope there, I should look to the golden age of theology, either at the early years of this country or during the postwar boom of American Protestantism. But the historian in me couldn't help but realize that these apexes of theological faithfulness coincided with the nadirs of Black freedom.

God’s vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united by faith in his Son as a manifestation of the expansive nature of his grace. This expansiveness is unfulfilled unless the differences are seen and celebrated, not as ends unto themselves, but as

What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference. . . . I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.

Others must own their skepticism and I my trust, both of which arise out of deeply held convictions about the nature of reality.

One night when I had convinced her to take yet another respite, I pointed up at the stars as we crossed the quad. “Do you see that?” I said. “That’s the Big Dipper.” Putting my arm around her to direct her vision, I added, “And that over there is Orion.” She glanced up in the sky and then back at me and said, with mock outrage, “No, it’s not. Orion is not visible this time of year.” “Well,” I replied, laughing, “I was only half paying attention in astronomy class.

People are always more than the bad decisions they make. As long as we draw breath, there is always a chance to start anew. That is the central teaching of Christianity

We hope that as Christians we mature and grow and become more and more like Christ. But the church and its wisdom assumes we will fail even after our baptism. The church presumes that life is long and zeal fades not just for some of us but for all. So it has included with it's life a season in which all of us recapture our love for God and his kingdom and cast off those things that so easily entangle us.

Peacemaking can be evangelistic. Through our efforts to bring peace we show the world the kind of king and kingdom we represent.

Slave masters’ fear of the Bible must bear some indirect testimony to what the slave masters thought it said.

They put their lust for power and material wealth in front of the text and read the Bible from that perspective.

First, it can treat the poor as mere bodies that need food and not the transforming love of God. Second, it can view them as souls whose experience of the here and now should not trouble us.

God’s vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united by faith in his Son as a manifestation of the expansive nature of his grace.

If the Bible needs to be rejected to free Black Christians, then such a view seems to entail that the fundamentalists had interpreted the Bible correctly.

the Bible had been reduced to the arena on which we fought an endless war about the finer points of Paul’s doctrine of justification

To think that more is possible is an act of political resistance in a world that wants us to believe that consumption is all there is.

There is no Black faith that doesn't wrestle with the problem of evil. My reply to these questions is: We who have suffered must have some say in how that suffering is interpreted. We won the right, through our scars, to discern the significance of what we endured.

sometimes feel like a doctor telling a patient that their illness is more serious than first thought. Recovery will not simply involve taking medication; it must include surgery and a change in lifestyle. The truth stings, making hostility toward the bearer of such bad news inevitable.

Jesus also cared about the spiritual lives of the poor. He saw them as bodies and souls. His call to repent acknowledges the fact that their poverty doesn’t remove their agency.

Love for God that doesn’t pursue holiness misunderstands the freedom from sin inherent in the gospel.

The state has duties, and we can hold them accountable even if it means that we suffer for doing so peacefully. This suffering is only futile if the resurrection is a lie. If the resurrection is true, and the Christian stakes his or her entire existence on its truthfulness, then our peaceful witness testifies to a new and better way of being human that transcends the endless cycle of violence.

God’s eschatological vision is one of reconciliation.

The problem isn’t that the Scriptures that Satan quoted were untrue, but when made to do the work that he wanted them to do, they distorted the biblical witness. This is my claim about the slave master exegesis of the antebellum South.