Esau McCaulley - Reading While Black

Episode: Dru's discussion with Dr. Esau McCaulley spans across matters of biblical theology, NT interpretation, the hermeneutics of the Black Church in America, and how his own biography has played into his scholarship. Reading While Black (IVP) is a forceful and encouraging message to the Black Church that McCaulley has written so that non-Black readers can listen in and learn. Sho Baraka's blurb captures this book well for the OnScript audience:
“Esau McCaulley is untying the Gordian knot that has kept Black Christians bound to theological ultimatums. This is a book for theologians who hope to play outside the trite sandboxes of their seminaries and for the practitioners who find themselves in need of a Black lexicon."

Guest: The Rev. Canon Esau McCaulley, PhD is a New Testament scholar, an Anglican Priest, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. He has also appeared in outlets such as Christianity Today and the Washington Post. He is also the host of the Disrupters Podcast and functions as a Canon Theologian for his diocese. Dr. McCaulley, currently, serves as assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. In addition to Reading While Black (IVP, 2020), he is the author of Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance: Davidic Messianism and Paul’s Worldwide Interpretation of the Abrahamic Land Promise in Galatians (T & T Clark, 2019).  He is married to Mandy, a pediatrician and a Navy reservist. Together, they have four wonderful children.

NB: Dru mistakenly cited the "Congressional Black Caucus" when saying that black leaders once claimed that President Obama was not black. He was misremembering what he had read in Debra J. Dickerson's Salon.com article "Colorblind: Barack Obama would be the great black hope in the next presidential race—if he were actually black." See the following for the discussion of Obama's "blackness" in the 2008 presidential election:

• "Is Obama Black Enough?"
• "Is he African American if his roots don't include slavery?" 
• "Morgan Freeman raises eyebrows for saying Obama wasn’t the first black U.S. president" 

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