Theology in the Raw - Biblical Scholarship, Race, Sports, BBQ, and Everything Else: Dr. Esau McCaulley

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Check out Patreon.com/theologyintheraw for Extra Innings, bonus episodes, interactive live streams, and discounted event tix!Shoutout to our amazing sponsor, Wild Alaskan. Save $35 on your first box of delicious, sustainable seafood. Head to wildalaskan.com/titr to order.  Also, be sure to grab a copy of God’s Colorful Kingdom, available now! Exiles in Babylon Conference 2026 Registration is open! Join us in Minneapolis, April 30-May 2. Esau McCaulley, PhD, is Pastor of All Saints Anglican Church in Naperville IL. He is also an author and The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. His research and writing focus on New Testament Exegesis, African American Biblical Interpretation, and Public Theology. Esau's latest book is a children's Bible called God's Colorful Kingdom, which celebrates God's heart for diversity throughout scripture. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm Esau McCauley. I'm the host of what I'm the host of the Easton, creatively entitled The Issa Macaulay podcast with Holy Post Media. We're in my studio and recorded a podcast with someone else. And I got a book that I think you should buy. Hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology Draw. This is a special episode, the first of four episodes that were shot on site in Chicago

at the Holy Post. Studio. Shout out the Holy Post for allowing us to use their beautiful studio. And this first episode is with Esau McColley. And this was an absolutely fun, free-flowing episode. Most of you know who Issa is. He is a Bible scholar and author, a professor of theology and Bible at Wheaton College. And just an all-around fun dude. We also recorded in-person episodes with Mark Yardhouse, Caitlin Chess and my good friend Joel Willits, which will be released over the next few weeks. I know many of you listened just to the podcast on audio, but I would encourage you to hop over to YouTube and check it out because the studio is just so beautiful.

And you can see me in person interacting with my guest. So you can pop over to Theology Indira on YouTube and go from there. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only, Issa Mekoli. I was wrong about soccer. This also, I use this as an example of being, like, energetically wrong. And people ask you, what were you wrong about? I just go, like, this is stupid. They only score one goal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, yeah, ties. But now I actually can see how a one-zero game can be super stressful and exciting and enjoyable. And the chance, it's just like a soccer game is like college football on steroids. into a college football game. Or you know college sports. It's like a different vibe. It has that kind of

local hometown feel. Are we ready to start the podcast? Okay, the podcast's not already starting. Cold start. Okay. I used to serve Pepsi's when I was 14 years old at the Fresno at the Fresno State Bulldogs in Fresno. The who's in the what?

Fresno State. Oh yeah, Fresno State. Yeah, they like the red team. Pepsi! 14 year old. I'd make 100 bucks a night as a 14-year-old. walking that stadium. My first job was my grandfather owned a record store

back in the day when they actually this is like the 90s but my grandfather was a minister and he was kind of old school so this was like back when CDs were kind of still becoming big and so it may have been early than that when I first started

because my grandfather also didn't believe with child labor laws. I could have been like 12 working there. But there were still eight-trap tapes when I first started. And then there was like mostly tapes, cassette tapes, and then CDs, and they had records there because the DJs would come and buy their records

to then go and play at the clubs. And over time, the eight-track tapes went away, the tapes section expanded, and then the DVDs, and then the tape section condensed, and it became all DVDs. It ended up closing down when Best Buy came right next door,

and it's the first time I learned about the E-WISO corporation. Because they came and could sell the CDs for like 10, bucks and that was in the black there we go there we go I think we're about the same I'm 45 I'm 49 okay yeah so yeah I wasn't the same air tower records go and no like like believe it or not like we're closer to it like I remember

being in my PhD program and I think you're like always been three or four years ahead of me in the academy could you wrote your dissertation on like Paul and Deuteronomy or something like that? Paul and Leviticus yeah Leviticus yeah Leviticus 18 185 yeah the reason I

I know this is because my, my dissertation was on Galatians 3, oh gosh, 3 1 through 411, but also the Litticus 18 and 5. You did your dissertation on Galatians 3? Yeah. And so I read your stuff on like, Paul and mom hasn't read my stuff. I know. That's when I'm, some of these people just know like popular, I knew you, I knew you, you know, I feel a little turn of my heart, man.

Rinding on the, grinding on the books that nobody reads, because they're like, 80 bucks or whatever. No, I remember, like, Paul and the Law, President Spankel. So anyway, I'm not saying, I know you got the chops. Sorry. You were in St. Andrews under Tom Wright. Yeah, so I was there at 13 to 16. Okay.

Yeah, I got done in 2007. Yeah, so, like, you were, like, in the range. I had to go and read the recent stuff. Tell me about your dissertation. No. I'm not going to do it. At least tell me the topic. Tell me the topic.

Come on. Actually, actually, it's funny because I think, I mean, you know how you see, like, if you pay attention, and I didn't even know this at the time, every book that I write, I said no, first said no, but then I'm going to make this somewhat entertaining. Kind of how podcast works. Nobody cares about my dissertation, but I'll skip to the interesting part. In every book that I write, there's the preview for the next book, even though I didn't

know it at the time. Yep. So my book is about the inheritance laws, or the inheritance. language in Galatians and I'm arguing that Paul believes that we're heirs to the inheritance that we share that belongs to the Messiah

that he shares with us and the Messiah's heirs heir to the entire world and so what you inherit in Galatians is not salvation but it's life in the renewed cosmos and so the question of who is in air he actually has the inheritance of a life of God

anyways the most of that book is just like boring like you know New Testament stuff. Yeah. But I get to the end of the book. And I say something along the lines. If someone wants to spend $100 to check on it, they can't.

I haven't read it since I published it. It says something like, all of this language of Aaron inheritance related to the kingship of Jesus raises the question of what kind of kingdom does he want to create and what are the values of that kingdom and how did the values of that kingdom push back against the culture. But that would be a question for another book. But like the importance of Jesus' kingdom pressing against culture is,

I just put that there in a couple of sentences. And the next book that I write about is reading my black, which deals with a lot of ways in which the kingdom of God pushes back on culture. And I can keep going and I like that. I just read, I'm rereading. I can keep telling you how I'll eat. There's a bread coming every book for the next book, but I'll stop right there. I want to go back a little bit to when was the first time you really wanted

be a biblical scholar like was there a certain moment a period of time and and what did that feel like i mean there's like three different answers to that question depending on my mood and i'll tell you like two of them really briefly the first one was i was sitting in seminary and and this may be just like a bunch of different events which seminary i went to gordon conwell and i remember them saying that like there were no black new testament scholars yeah and they said that black people can't do real New Testament scholarship. Wait, they said that? I mean, they didn't, sorry, I'm in the air.

No faculty person in Gordon Conloff said those sentences to me before they email me. But I'm saying the vibe was that the vibe was that we didn't do serious New Testament scholarship. And so whenever they were talking about

diversifying the curriculum, and it's like, well, there are no Black New Testament scholars. And I was like, well, I can do that. I remember, actually, I would say this. There was one and this would be a positive story there was one guy there

who you might know his name was Barry Corey Barry Corey he's a president of Biola he's awesome so I went to Barry Corey when I was in seminary and I said hey

he was the academic dean at the time or something like that Provost one of the fancy titles and I said Dr. Corey you know these are some problems like we really wish that we had a more of the rest staff

blah blah blah and he said you saw you're right but there aren't that many African-American New Testament scholars. And he said, if you're going to get a PhD, I will hire you as soon as you're finished. And obviously, I mean, that's not the reason I went,

but he's like, let me, let me go back before people think that Barry's doing, we're in a weird time now. I've got to caveat all of this story. Oh my goodness. It's theology in the raw, man. It's the ideology in the raw, but I know. I got to make you, yeah, I know.

I know, but I'm saying, well, Dr. Corr is like, if you go and get a PhD, yeah, you know what I mean? He's like, come to me. He said, come to me when you're finished. That's what he said. There's something along those lines. So I got to make sure because people, you know, do stuff. So by the time I actually graduate, you know, he's over at Biola at the time.

So I never actually apply anything like that. But part of it was to say, well, I can go and do it. And I wanted to be like, I wanted to be the guy who wrote the Romans commentary, Galatius commentary. That was part of it. Another part of it was my wife wanted to do medical missions in the global South. because there weren't a lot of pediatricians and there's not a lot of pediatricians in the global south

and I was in love I said I'll come with you but I didn't think they needed pastors on the mission field you know the Africans can pass to themselves but I said I'll get a PhD and I can learn I mean I can train the people there so part of it was this idea that maybe I can be

an African American New Testament scholar who wrote like serious scholarship Yeah. And the other part was my wife wanted to be able to train missionaries in the, like, Global South. The third thing, like the final version of my scholarship, the one that people eventually meet by the time it all it gets there, is I decide I want to write books that people from my community I actually wanted to read. Okay. So that's the person that people know, like the stuff that people have read about, they've read, any of the stuff that I did.

But I said, I want to write something that my mama would read. And I wanted to do scholarship for my community. community, even if we didn't get the same kind of acclaim that people, you know, who write certain kinds of books. And so actually, when I wrote, like, reading my black and the other stuff that far, I thought I was, like, setting my career on fire. It was more of a, like, rejection of the academy, which is weird than I now have seen as an academic, at least by some.

So you're, you wrote, did you publish your dissertation? Yeah. Okay. You can buy it $100. Yeah. Sharing in the sun's inheritance. I mean, I don't know what my royalties on it are, but, like, sure. I don't ever got a royalty check.

I think I paid my German publisher to publish this 100-20. It's called Sharing in the Sun's Inheritance. You can go and pick it up. Did you write other academic peer-reviewed articles at the time or after? Yeah, I mean, I wrote like maybe one or two right after that, but. But you wanted to live in the space of writing thoughtful stuff for people. So, no, the truth is I came, so I finished my PhD in 2016. and well I came back to the United States in 2016

I don't know if you remember what's happened in 2016 in America but it was a common yeah some changes and I remember so I didn't have you know how people ask you about like a plan in retrospect but you don't actually have a plan you're just bonding and stuff and it looks intentional so if you look at my two first two books sharing the Sun's Inheritance is by T&T Clark called 100 bucks.

Nobody read it. Nobody's been on a podcast. Nothing happens, right? I come back into the United States in 2016. It's the fall, it's the summer 2016, and there's a lot of race protests

and those things. And a lot of those people who are talking about race and justice, I remember them saying, I've talked about this a lot, this is not your parent civil rights movement. And so they were like putting modern justice

movements against the church, that we need to do something differently, and that we don't need the church anymore and I felt like what ended up happening over time what I saw and was trying to prevent is there were a lot of African-American Christians who were being discouraged

because they wanted to have the Bible and justice and people were asking them to choose and I wanted to say you don't have to choose in the black church you never have had to choose and so I wrote reading my black simply as a pastoral intervention to prevent what what what would become the deconstruction movement,

the kinds of loss of faith because of the disillusionment. I saw it happening with people, and I said, maybe I could write a book that shows how to hold on to biblical fidelity, the inspiration of scripture, the authority of scripture,

while at the same time concerning caring about the poor and the neglected. So that was the goal, but it's on, I would say it, I've said it a thousand times. It's a book on African-American hermeneutics. They're not designed to sell.

You know how her. Nobody buys Herman Nudic's books. And so then because people buy it, people then say, in a different way, I ended up getting this job with the New York Times around the same time. And the people started asking me, well, because the book is begun in 2016. That's when you started writing. Yeah, but it comes out in 2020. That's right.

Which is the different. Yes. And by that time, I'm writing for the New York Times. The people are asking me how to you be a public theologian and all the other stuff. I was just being a Christian and things were happening. So it would be wrong to say I intentionally pivoted. When I started writing the book in 2016, I was thinking, I don't care if I ever get an academic job.

People who I care about are losing their faith. And in other situations, people are like dying. People are suffering. And so I wanted to like intervene with no strategy other than that. I wish I could write books like that again. but as far as like being free you know what I mean there was nothing to lose

because I had nothing and it was more of like I'm going to try this because nobody's paying attention and now the people are paying attention the edits in my head even we had the conversation earlier not telling the story about what Barry said to me I was like well someone could take that clip

and say this that and the other and so yeah that's what I was trying to do it wasn't anything intentional your book Reading While Black is one of the most helpful pieces, books, I would even include articles, blogs, whatever, in helping someone like me, white guy living in America, understand how black Christians have read the Bible and maintain kind of this like fidelity to theological orthodoxy while a passion for justice and what

some people might perceive as like, wow, kind of socially left-wing stuff, but still kind of Theologically conservative and why is that? And I think a lot of white people kind of don't, we grew up in a certain environment where those categories seem contradictory. And especially your opening chat, your first two chapters were so helpful. Yeah, it's funny.

It's like, it's, I was telling someone like the book is not meant to be groundbreaking. It's if it was like, yeah. But someone needs to put it on paper because people lie. It's, lie sounds wrong. Lie is too strong of a word. It's too, it's the afternoon here. I'm tired.

I'm going on this stuff. So I'm being too honest. People will distort what African-American Christianity has been historically. Both on the left for their purposes. They need it to be a certain way. Yeah. And on the right, so there's the caricature of black theology is all progressive. Right.

And that serves two purposes. One, for the people on the right, it gives them a boogeyman, right? And for the people on the left, it gives them a cosine. Because black people agree with us. But we actually don't. You're talking like the white liberal Yeah, white progressive And so like even

So what I was trying to say is no We've actually historically been This group that's under pressure It's always threatening to be co-opped One way or the other We've tried to walk this narrow line And that's become even more complicated In the present moment

But that's historically Who we've been And I was just trying to articulate that for people And then it was like You write that book And then people start asking and you like all of this other stuff and you end up like being preceded some kind of spokesperson and I don't think I'm like the spokesperson I just think that I had an experience

that was common you know this is what I explain to people do you you have you have Thanksgiving at your house mostly yeah yeah do y'all eat turkey or ham we do we do usually it's a different ethnic food group every year we break the yeah so like what I'm saying it's like you know how you grew up your whole life you're eating this dry turkey yeah yeah you're And all of a sudden, who likes turkey? Nobody likes turkey. But nobody says it.

Like it's a secret. And then someone found a... We finally called it out a couple years ago. Nobody likes turkey. And then we go, you're right. We don't like turkey. And then you're free, right? And so I remember reading this stuff and say, hold on.

I think the most black Christians experience it this way. But nobody writes books about this. I'm going to put it in the book and see if people think... I called it there, do you like turkey? And people goes, no. And I said, okay, then, I'm going to, like, posit this as a common... There's a common experience of black people because I didn't just grow up like in like one like black church. I knew like black churches from all over.

I grew up in the middle. I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, like the epitome of like southern black life. And I was like, and there was like missionary Baptist, Pentecostals, all the different Baptists. I had friends in my high school. That's like we were all kind of like this. And then I said, what if I put this in a book? when I put it in the book and black people all over America

was like, this is what we're talking about. Really? Okay. And they started giving this book to their friends. And they started giving this book to their pastor. Like, you want to know what we're like? Yeah. Here. And so it's the fact that it wasn't original

that made it useful to people because it's descriptive. And what I would say is that there are a lot of books that are descriptive of evangelicalism. Not just prescriptive. Like, this is what an evangelicalist like. Yeah. And I think that, and the other part about it is the book was not read, and this is probably what might be weird, it was not written to explain the black church to evangelicals.

It was meant to say to black Christian, this is who we've been, and it's who we can be. So in that sense, I think evangelicals liked it because it wasn't overly critical of evangelicalism. No, it wasn't all. Because when I was growing up, I wasn't criticizing evangelicalism. I didn't even know y'all. And so I was just overheard. here, like, managing, like, my own issues. And so African-American Christians

don't need, didn't need books at the time. Explaining to them why evangelicalism was bad. Yeah, right. Those books exist. I'm not saying you shouldn't write those books. Like, your stories can do those. You can have a reverse effect, too. If people feel so beaten up on all the time,

they start to double down. Well, the thing is, like, it's not, what I'm saying to you, it's not even the primary subject matter. Right. In, like, okay, then you imagine, like, You're in Huntsville, Alabama. You're in Northwest Huntsville that is in an all-black neighborhood. It's dealing with crime, poverty, and even structural injustice.

We're not actually on a Sunday preaching about what's happening in a white church across town. We're talking about how do you care for your family in this context? How do you love your neighbor? What can we do to help the people who are struggling? What's going on with a school board? What's going on with police violence? What's going on with like, how do you deal with this race? All of these things.

are the actual questions. They have this thing I know what it's called in movies. I can never think about it, but like they talk about in the movie and somebody who put this in the comments. What's something

where there's like two women who are having a conversation and the subject is not a man they're just talking to themselves. There's like a test in a movie. The what test? The Bechtel test, right? So it's like most women in the movie, they get, even when the man is not on screen, the subject of the conversation

is the man. And so the question is, do you pass the test, can two women in a movie have a conversation that does the center to the man? That means the women are their own independent characters. And so I think what makes you reading while black unique is it actually a book from a black person

talking to a black person where the center character is not explaining blackness to the white audience. You can intuit it by reading in, but it's not for the first place directed to you. That's something. made it so helpful, I think. I was, it's funny, I was talking to

a different community and a community that isn't often served. So, anyways, that's five years ago. I want to go back to the turkey comment. So I'm not a fan of turkey. It's kind of a boring meat. It's dry, but I do want to say this. Much love to turkey eaters out there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want turkey have coming forth. No, Judge, some people get really offended by that. You know, anybody's got their preference. I would rather have the last, I think last year I did slow-smoked ribs. We smoked brisket last. You did brisket last?

We did ribs. It was amazing. But one year I did slow smoke a turkey six to seven hours in the, in the Trigger. And I put butter between the skin and the meat. You kept doing that. I had some good herb. I did the same thing, too. And I was like, the first time I got a Trigger, I mean, I'm going to sound like old people.

We're talking about grilling. It's like when you get your 40s, you get into the grill. like a cutting grass. Oh man. Girl has a passion. But I was like, why am I doing all of this energy to make the turkey from like middling to good? Well, I can just have an amazing brisket for the same amount of energy. Or I've been doing these, oh, man, I mean, they're pricey, so we don't do it a lot, but man, a good.

Prime rib? Well, T-bone. Oh, my goodness. And you do- I told my kids, they're not acting good enough to get T-Bone. No, no, no. My son has had too many T-bones, and he realized he should have had by 16. Yeah.

So I slow smoke it. it 220 for about a half hour, 40 minutes. Then I get the grill, the charcoal with some wood chips. We're so old. I get it lit, like really hot, 700 degrees. I take it off, just sear it for a minute, minute and a half, throw some butter on it, wrap it and foil. I swear, I've had people in my house that say,

I've been to, like, a steakhouse. Should we talk about, like, what we do with knee pain next? I'm trying to figure out, like, what's the target demographic of the theology in the raw podcast. Should we do, like, how do we handle knee pain or when you're back? What do you do when you're back so in the morning? I don't know, I'm trying to figure out. See?

You got lower back? No, this is a story of my life. I wake up. I can't, my lower back hurts. My knees are fine. No, I tore three linguists my knee playing football. So I have an old man knee. Did you, you look like an athlete?

Did you play football in a high school? I played football in college. I played football in college. I played baseball division three. There we go. Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I feel like I can do everything, but my lower back is just killing.

I know. I feel like because of like, I don't know why, in retrospect of played Division III football, like, because I was so used to it. And so I played in high schools, I just played in college. In retrospect, I'm like, I should have just stopped playing. Why? Because, like, your body was just. Yeah, I mean, I feel like maybe every old person, like, feels this way.

But I feel like now that I have this old person entry, it doesn't feel worth it. And so with my kids, my kids aren't super in the sports, I don't push them. I was like, why? She can have a lifelong knee injury. Just play enough to, like, be able to be coordinated. What position? You're like a running back? I was a linebacker, actually.

in my heyday in high school. That was the peak. Who was your player? Who did you like? Mike Singletary? I was a big Singletary fan. I was a big ring. I'm not that old.

Wait, I guess he is before. I mean, we were watching the highlights of him, but it was like Junior Seale, Ray Lewis. What, so when I was, oh, so you're right. When I was growing up, there was a guy named Sam Mills who played linebacker for the New Orleans Saints because he was 510 and I'm 5.11. Okay.

Where I'm 510, I like to say, I'm 511. I'm not exactly sure. You know how you have like that one height that you get, the good measurement? I'm 5.11 and a half. I'm never being re-measure. My license says 6 feet. My kids measured me the other day, said, Dad, you're 5-11. I said, well, I must have shrunk or something.

I think I'm 5-10. But I remember being measured once and I said I'm 5-11 and a half. So I said I'm basically 6 feet talking about. One of my favorite memories was going deep sea fishing in Alaska with my son a few years ago. Now I got super sick on the boat, but we brought home like 20 pounds of fish. and it was amazing. Unfortunately, I can't pop up to Alaska every few weeks to bring home fish, which is why I was

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The fish from Wild Alaskan Company is 100% wild caught, never farmed, and the fish is frozen off the boat to lock in taste, texture, and nutrients like omega-3s, and there are no antibiotics, GMOs, or other additives. Just real fish that's delivered straight to your door. If you're not completely satisfied with your first box, Wild Alaskan Company will give you a full refund. Get seafood you can trust. Go to wildalaskan.com forward slash TRTR for $35 off your first box to premium wild-caught seafood. Speaking of changing topics, all of the place,

you wrote a kid's Bible. Yeah, after I wrote a memoir. You're a memoir, we didn't get to that one. Let's maybe come back to that since I'm on here. So God's colorful kingdom story Bible. Storybook Bible, subtitle the story of God's big, diverse family. This is a, first of all,

the person who did the illustrations he killed it he killed it these are these are incredible and I can say this guy I feel like I don't sound like a salesman that's the best illustrated children Bible have ever seen just in case of people

for the people who want to look at it yeah it's beautiful I'm not an artist but I can I can I can all I can do is I can notice in something's like really compelling and just like draws you in four years to draw it I wrote it

I finished in the 2021 okay and so he's been able to It took him a while, but it's worth it. Oh, man. Yeah, it's beautiful. So it's a really, what age group is it targeted at? That's a great question. Some people.

I mean, I would say probably like. Eight to 12. Yeah, that's what I was said. That's probably the age group. Yeah. So it's thorough. It's not like, you know, a paragraph per like book of the Bible. It's thorough, but it's not like overwhelming.

I mean, like, so Ruth, you have one, two, three pages on Ruth. Yeah. So, I mean, I can tell you, so reading my black came out in 2020, the pandemic happened right after that, or right around that time. And my wife, who was a Navy doc, who was a reservist, was deployed during the pandemic before we, so they used to have these military bubbles. So can I tell you this is an interesting story. Like people, like, so, okay, before there was a vaccine, we didn't, the question was like, how do you ask? actually have a military. It might be a weird question to us.

But you have people who were enlisting from all over the country. You couldn't just bring people from all over the country at the time and send them to like Fort Bragg because you're bringing COVID from everywhere and basically creating an outbreak. Right. It's what they did is what most people don't know is they would bring people, they bought out entire hotels in like in Atlanta and in Jacksonville. And they brought people into the hotel and you had to stay there until you,

sorry, the enlisted people. and you have to stay there until you tested negative and then you were sent to your military base to begin your active duty. But in order to do that, they had to have an actual bubble where they kept people in there. And so my wife was deployed

to be in charge of a hotel full of 18 and 22 year old, like soon to be enlisted people. Okay. And so she was gone for eight and a half months during the height of the pandemic. Oh, wow. It was the worst.

It was actually, she left a month after Reading Mom Black came out. Oh, God. in my black is blowing up everywhere, but my wife is actually gone, and I'm sad during most of this time. And so, I didn't want to write anything academic. And two different publishers came to me. One said, do you want to write a kid's Bible? That's that book. And the other publisher said to me, do you want to write a memoir? That's how fought to the promise letter. Got it. So that's the last of the books that I wrote during the pandemic. I wrote four books

during that time, because I was just writing, because I was locked up the whole time. But I wanted in that book That book probably is my favorite It's the most warm memory that I have Of anything I've ever written Because at the time I was locked up You remember the lockdown? It was the worst I was locked up with just me and my kids

But what I had is I had the Bible And I was reading through the Bible Trying to think of how I can get these stories In a way that was useful to kids But it also reminded me of the beauty You have to boil it down in your own mind I mean, you've got a couple pages on the book of judges for you to write it to kids.

You have to absorb that. It reminded me of why I got it to the Bible in the first place, the wonder of God's story. That sounds like super cheesy, but it was like, oh, this is actually what we do with scholars. We take these complex ideas and we make them understandable to people and I have to bring it all the way down.

I think that was like, that book has some of the best, that sounds weird. Some of the best writing that I've done is in that book. And it was like nerdy because I did because I know Greek and Hebrew, I translated, like, the books, and then I simplified them. It was like, yeah.

I'm not just, like, doing the NIV of Judges to Reb. No shake to NIV. We're like, no, let me see. Because there's parts when I'm trying to do, like. It's probably the only kids' Bibles has been translated from the original language. And so, like, I'm not saying, like, I translate the entire Bible,

but I translated the portions that are under discussion. Because parts of what I'm trying to do, like, I'm trying to talk about the aton. And other, I'm also ridiculous in places in there because I'm like, I'm going to do. do something other folks don't do. And so when you have to choose 31 stories, like people don't often do. There's a book, there's an entry on James in there. And like Galatians, because normally it's like Jesus and then Paul and then Revelation. Yeah, the book of Acts and the revelation. Yeah. And so,

I said, no, we're going to have the Psalms in there. We're going to have Deuteronomy in there. We're going to have James in there. And so I'm translating through James and thinking through how do I make this simplify for people. And so, yeah, so the book in that sense is, rebellious in the sense and like maybe this is like the other thing I sound like I can talk about a kid's Bible for so long but I want to do

a couple of things that were really important and maybe this probably in some sense this encapsulates my work as a scholar which is weird as a kid's Bible is I want to keep the main thing the main thing so the story of creation fall redemption new creation justification by faith

all of those things are in this book and I don't don't ever want to like lose track of like the central truths of our salvation that I think the kids need to know but within telling that story I wanted to highlight two other themes one is that god always wants to create a multicultural kingdom that's just on every page in the bible and also by the god really cares about the suffering people of the world and so it's always been like my contention which is like I feel like it's a calling from God which is in some sense I'm like I don't get to be like NT Wright who has these like innovative interpretations i just like no like the bible

is true yeah god cares about poor people god cares about diversity and you still need to be holy yeah like until like those things are still that's what i'm trying to encapsulate in that book poor kids so you wrote a uh a woke kids bible oh my goodness there we go there we go there we go It was so funny. I was telling my publisher, I was like, listen, I was telling them. I'm going to do the footnote that really fast. Don't let me linger too long. You better hurry up.

No, the illustrator was delayed, and I kept saying, listen, you know, I need to put this book out because I write about race and justice, like, every single, like, all of the time. And it just takes one person to call this the woke Christian, the children's Bible, and it's going to, like, upset an entire wing of the internet. And I made it all the way through publication day. And a friend, Press and Sprinkle gets me the label I've been ducking for four years. I was like, because like every time I write about,

you know, race or something in New York Times, so like, someone's going to go, this is the woke children's Bible. And then all of a sudden people they're going to be able to farm content. So thank you for giving it what I've been hoping to shake all of this time. I am passing on to you what I've received. So first of all, I know, I know. Did you hear?

Yeah, what? Oh, the upside down kingdom. Yeah. It was labeled the woke study Bible. Yeah, that's what. And I said, that's what I mean. People do it. It's like. And I hate the word war. Yeah. It's like, it's like such an intellectually unserious way of arguing for stuff. It's like, yes, yes. It's like, I don't like this. You shouldn't like it either. Here's the word for the thing that we don't like. And we will just get rid of all reasoning and all like detailed analysis. It's like, we all know that this is the person that we're not supposed to like. I know there's like a dual critique of the word woke, right? Like it has a really rich history that people that's kind of departed from. There's that problem. It's also, for me, it's the intellectual laziness.

It's like, this disagrees with my favorite political commentator who called it woke, so it must be bad. So I'm just going to use this label rather than thinking through whatever the issue. So, I mean, one day I should write a whole book on this. But it gets to so much stuff in culture. One is, like, who controls media. Oh, I like this. So what I mean by this, it doesn't actually matter what it's true.

It matters what the microphone says. Yes. So, and it gets to the colonization of black culture. It's actually way, there's a lot going on, but let me give you like both of those things. The first one is there was in black culture the language of woke that existed. And it simply meant to be socially aware of like the history of discrimination and to use that awareness to contend for more equal treatment today. And even within black culture, there was a mocking of people who were too well. from within our community.

Really? So, yeah, there's, like, videos and memes. Like, I think it's, like, of, like, oh, this brother is so conscious. Like, he's so woke, he never asleep. And there was a way that we used to laughingly critique this. We would call him Hotef. There was a way of saying, like,

bro, you're doing too much. And, like, the whole joke was, they saw everything as a conspiracy. And so within our own context, we have both socially conscious and we have policing someone who was too woke. Like, bro, you're just, like, everything. ain't the enemy, right?

And so that was an entire interior conversation. And it was mostly related to, like, black culture. So they say, like, one joke used to be, like, oh, we used to, like, what's up, King? You know, we was all kings in that. Everybody couldn't be a king. Like, all of us weren't kings in Africa.

Like, somebody had to be the assistant king or something, right? And so that was the way that we were joke about it. You can't call everybody a king, right? We weren't all kings. And so that was a joke that we used to have. And so now, so that's the first part. And so the fact that we had a way of talking about it But because people control media

They can redefine a term Right, yeah Right, and then redeploy it for their own purposes But the fact that they chose a black term And they used the black term as the moniker For all things that are bad Is the particular form of cultural colonialism And you can go back through the history of time,

A history of American culture Of how many things they started off in black culture they were then appropriated, redefined, and then because they're appropriated and redefined, we don't use it in the exact same way anymore. And then we create a new thing, and then it gets colonized. And so we're always, like, in this idea of struggling to have something that we get to control. And so now, if you say, woke means any left-leading political idea that I don't like,

that is actually taking something from black culture, exploiting it, then using it to your advantage. And but because we don't have the ability, we don't control any media. We can't fight back against it. We don't, but if some, everyone says that this is now the definition. And then it becomes an ideology.

And then it somehow gets like tied to Germany. And now somehow Karl Marx has been woke. It's like, no, it's like a black dude in Chicago. And so like that, that entire process is an example of like what happens when we like create something. It gets stolen and distorted. And so I understand what people would now mean

Like we lost the battle When it's first happened we talked about it a lot But we lost the battle And now we just have a new language We find the way of describing it When did you feel like the battle was lost? Like we were like a couple years ago, 10 years ago? So when it first happened

We I mean Like mid mid 20 teens When did the language of woke become like Completely ubiquitous? I don't know There was a time where I could say That's not what it means but I don't even try to do that anymore

but everybody knows we all know like all the black people know there was that commercial that funny commercial or the SNL skit the woke jeans yeah I've not seen that it's actually hilarious this is me I think that's the first time I heard

that is the first time I heard the word woke because I was like in context I can see what they're saying but I was like when I say I was saying woke in like ninth grade in 1994 so there's a There's, do y'all do clips in your, in this podcast?

There's this thing called, there's a video. And I forget, and maybe it's in the movie CB4 or something like that, where it goes, I'm black, I'm blackety black, black, black, you know that guy? That guy with the hat on, like the Africa hat, he, yeah, the movie was Chris Rock, but there's a scene where he's doing a rap song. That guy will be for us super woke. He was super conscious, not super liberal, super conscious in a way that almost parodied itself. There's tons of people like that.

I guess, have you ever seen the movie, what's the name of it? Oh my goodness. Boys in the Hood. Yeah. You know, Furious Styles, the dad, who's like trying to educate him about life in the hood. He would be considered woke back in those days. Like the socially conscious, like Denzel Washington. Like any Denzel Washington movie would.

Denzel just like giving you the knowledge about how to live as a person. Yeah. And so Denzel Washington would have been like that paradigmatic, socially conscious black man of, or even, like, this is going to be weird because he ends up, you know, doing the stuff that he does. I mean, breaking all kinds of laws and assaulting people. But when Bill Cosby, when the Cosby first came out, when Cosby show was popular when we were, when we were at school, he would have the HBCU jersey, HBU sweaters, HBCU sweaters that he would wear on the Cosby show that would bring attention. and two these historically black colleges or universities. That was considered being woke back there. Is that Howard?

But he had Howard. He had all of them. He would just wear different sweaters of different HPCUs. I mean, I can give you tons of these examples. That's what they used to mean. So how do you feel when you see, when you hear like conservative, typically white, politically conservative people using term woke and a kind of derogatory like, oh, that's woke? At this point, it's like, or is it just kind of throw up your arms?

There was a time where people should have known. at this point it's now just we don't control language it's just been like taken over so I don't use it like I mean it wasn't a huge part of black culture it was just like a thing that we knew about

and so I don't miss it now that it's gone we have other ways we're talking about it I told my audience my theological audience that you were coming on I said hey do guys have got any questions for Esau, and I got a bunch of questions. I'll look, I can get to all these. I'll answer them quickly.

In your book, Reading While Black, Dr. McCulley considers whether the Bible needs to be rejected to free black Christians, page 9, for example. Here is my question. Does the Bible need to be rejected? Did he read the rest of the sentence? Yeah, I don't, because you didn't. I didn't say that. Can you explain what you made? No, no, no, no.

So, yeah, he misread the book. Okay. God bless you. I asked the question rhetorically. I remember that, yeah. And the answer. You weren't, you weren't, like, saying we... Like, no, no, no.

I said, do we, that question... Like, the whole point in the book is that we don't need to do that. Right, exactly. So the answer to the question is no. And I said, um... So this is what actually I tried to. This is what I try to... And to be fair, I think he's saying, do you consider...

I think what he's saying is you raise the question. Yeah. He's not saying you answered yes. Yeah. So I can sit... So it's a question that people are answered. So you used to watch, um, MacGyver. I'm this is going to be a real old people's territory.

So in order for McGuver, like he was always in this situation that he had to like find a way to get out of in the last moments. Yeah, with a piece of string. Yeah, and so, but the only way for the show to be interesting is that if you thought he was in real danger, even though we know he's going to get out of it, the scenario seems to be real. Oh, no, the bomb's going to go off in a minute

unless you can do the thing. And so to me, compelling writing has to ask the question that the culture is asking the way that they ask it so that you can answer it properly. You do this all of the time in your books. And so if there are black Christians who are asking this question, I have to put it in the book

in order to answer it. Yeah. And so what I tried to get it is you end up with these two options. Either you say, like, God can still speak to us and speak to us in a way that compels our obedience. Or

we're left with the social consensus of like left-leaning modern, liberal democracy. in the West. And I said any time you've had just relying upon the social consensus of moneyed liberal Westerners,

black people have ended up suffering. And so I'm actually skeptical of saying toss the Bible aside and trust us. Like, no, I don't trust you. I'm skeptical. Like, I believe that, like, you need something that can critique culture. And God's word is the means for which we critique culture. And even without the

consensus, right? And so historically, you want to say, oh, And this isn't just, like, a conservative thing. Like, eugenics was a liberal who were doing this stuff. So, like, there's liberal racism. And so this idea that I'm going to say, I'm going to toss us out the Bible and casting my lot with the consensus of secular democracies. Right. I don't trust it.

And so what I was trying to raise in the book is this, and there's a certain sense of, and I say this in the book, the belief that their social consensus is invalid. the infallibility of our consensus that we've come to from our section of the West. Because it's not a global consensus, right? It's not the consensus of Africa or South America. It's actually white. It's actually Western white liberalism has a way of being. They say you should follow us. And I was like, no, I needed something or God provided something that critique them and critique me.

They were under the same authority. and then we're trying to discern together what that authority has to say to us and it's obviously not just the Bible it's like what it's the God who speaks to us through the Bible and so like I submit to God God has revealed himself

generally in creation but particularly in scripture and that's the place where I go from my authority and I don't think that liberation for black people you can't liberate yourself from your creator and if there is a creator who orders history, then you find your freedom by orientating yourself towards him.

And so that's what I was trying to get at. The book was actually, I mean, five years, five years in, I would hope. I remember this one person got mad at me. It's like, you realize that like reading my black is a critique of a certain kind of liberalism, right? I got that within the first time. People didn't get it, right?

And so there's obviously a critique of a certain, it's a critique of a certain kind of liberalism. That's what it is. Because that's the people, and maybe I think I've said this a lot but evangelicals tend to see their enemies

like okay our enemies are like people to like the left of us and anyone who doesn't follow our political and cultural program their goal is to side with our enemies and I want to say that people

Well, no, my enemies in the black space is like the nation of Islam and like now the Hebrew Israelites on one side, right? Kind of black nationalism. They're growing, right? Yeah, like a form of black nationalism on one side. That's my actual, like, one set of people. And then there's like black secularism on the other side

that has an intellectual critique of Christianity rooted in our people think that is white supremacy. And so when I am critiquing the lack of concern for justice it's because the Hebrew Israelites and the black nationalist movements are saying the black church doesn't actually care about what's happening to black people

so you should stop being Christian because Christians can't actually meet the needs of the community so I'm pushing back on that side so if I don't talk about justice then I'm going to hand people over to that community or I'm going to hand them over to the community that says because the black church doesn't care about justice, you shouldn't be a believer at all. It's the secular protest. And so I have to talk about

race and injustice because those are my enemies, not enemies, those are my dialogue partners in trying to help people understand when it's being a Christian non-contextext. And so you just can't necessarily always reframe a black conversation and put it back into like the ways that people tend to think about things evangelicalism and have to make sense. So, all right, next question. Daniel, as I've sorted through the evangelicalism of Trump 2.0, I've seen a lot of cynicism and even hate towards Maga Christians from anti-Trump

Christian public figures trickling down to the broader church, sometimes leading to deconstruction. How do you see the path forward for unity, true unity, spoken of in John 17, while maintaining the prophetic voice of love Maga seems to ignore. I'm not sure what that last... I think he's saying, like, how did you critique Maga and not become that which you hate.

Sorry, hate is the wrong word. That which you critique. Yes, yeah. I think this might seem, like I talked about my book, how far to the promised land. I haven't talked about it. And this will get to MAGA. It may not seem like it will because it's about my black dad who dies,

but you have to go on the journey with me. The book is about my father. I had to write the eulogy for my father, who wasn't a part of my life growing up and who struggled with addiction. throughout most of his life. And he dies through dramatic circumstances. And I'm called upon and write the eulogy

for my father who I didn't know very well, which takes me on this journey of understanding his past and my family. So how far as the Promised Land becomes a book about my family's history. But one of the things that I struggle with in the book is this idea that I didn't want my father to change.

Because if my father doesn't change, if he stays an addict, then that justifies my hatred of him. And so then my resistance to him becomes a part of my testimony. I overcame this guy who did these bad things. And I realized that if he changed, I would have to change. And so I realized I didn't want him to get better because that then means I got to forgive him from all of the things that he did for me.

And so what did forgiveness look like for my father? It didn't mean I could be a part of his life because he was still struggling with addiction and he was still destructive. But for me, forgiveness was even from a distance, the best for him because I was able to see his story as a tragedy apart from me. In other words, the story wasn't Esau was mistreated by his dad. That's one story. The other story is there's a man whose entire life he was addicted to drugs and he lost his

entire family. And that's a sad story for anybody. You wouldn't want anybody to have that story. Like that's your life that you got hooked on drugs and you lost your family. That's the end of your story. and I was able to say even though I can't be the person who fixes you

or I can't be engaged in that part of your life I can genuinely want you to be better because I want you to be free and I think it's what ends up happening to cut across hopefully you still buy the book it's out one awards you should buy it

tons of awards y'all didn't want to buy it because it's a redemptive story of anyway so what happens is he winds up in the fullness of time believe it or not in Tony Everest Church and he's like converted all this stuff happens

all the say is I think that what it actually means for a Christian in this moment is to say to see the people who are actually trapped in deception is not just objects of wrath but object of compassion because these politicians don't ask sorry I don't think any of these politicians actually care about us I don't think they do

And so if there's someone who's being manipulated, who's being sold products, whose entire identity is wrapped up in a lie, yes, that lie negatively impacts me, but that life is also a tragedy. And so I can genuinely say, I can't be the one to engage all of that stuff because that's just not what God has called me to. But I can genuinely pray and say, I hope that you find, like, liberation. One of the things, like spiritual freedom is probably what I'd say. One of the things that happened in the 1950s and 1960s, you can look this up if you think I'm lying. They had these things called the Dixiecrats. I don't know if you know about them.

The Dixiecrats were Democrats who were like conservative. There were Democrats who were in the, they were political, Southern Democrats, right? But they benefited a lot from the social programs that were coming out of the New England Catholic Democrats in the Northeast. But it was actually doing the civil rights movement that the Dixiecrats switched over to the Republican Party who were in favor of smaller government

and all of those other things. Now, whatever you think about, like, smaller government and deregulation and all of those things, for the Dixiecrats who were in the South who actually benefit a lot from those government programs, switching parties actually against their own economic interest. Forget about, like, what happens later with, like, some of our, like, the social concerns

that we have now. That wasn't it. It was, like, around, and that's when the parties flipped. And so you had poor white tenant farmers on one side employed black tenant farmers on the other side in two different parties. When they would have benefited from being in the same party

and advocating for more economic opportunities in their context. But they didn't. They voted against their own self-interest in order to like maintain this kind of status quo. And so I would say what I would hope is that the people who are involved in the MAGA movement

like get more than we get to own the liberals like for their vote more than just like feeding their like rage and so I don't think that like maybe a lot of times I want to say this because this is also true whenever we talk about politics I don't think the solution to all of this stuff it's for everybody to become Democrats

because Democrats aren't sending us free either and this isn't like a third way thing or that there's a moral equivalency is the solution to the problem isn't like just flipping parties because the Democrats don't love us either and so it is actually a prophetic like for me the outcome

that I would love to have in the church politically as a politically dangerous church and by that I made a very simple question that a politician would have to ask themselves before they made the decision is this true or false? If it is false, then the Christian is going to be against me. If it's true, the Christian is going to be for me.

And so they'd have to actually analyze their political decisions by the truthfulness of what they were saying. And now I don't think they have to do that, either on the left or on the right. I think they can just say, if I make this kind of decision, I get this chunk of the vote and make that kind of decision,

I make that chuck on the vote. I wish they saw us as discerning voters who were always oriented towards the truth, no matter who said it. And I would say I can then critique like the MAGA movement whenever it's like against the truth. And I can do that with the hope that I'm actually not just building my platform by yelling at them. So it's actually one of the best for them. That might be a long way of saying, want the best one.

I love it, man. I think you and I have very similar political theology. I spent the last hour talking to Caitlin. And we overlap quite a bit, but she's good at pushing back on some of my political theology. but it's a... Taylor's a professional. I'm a Bible guy.

Me and you... That's all right. You said, we're much more conceptually in the same way. Yeah, I'm coming out from a biblical theology. She's a real theology.

Yeah, she's an actual political theology. Which is why I love to say, you know, I'll say, here's how we should think. Then I'll kind of stop and say, is that, is that right?

You know, like, help find doing me. But, yeah, I often say, you know, whether you're kind of, like, if you want to critique MAGA, don't do it from the perspective of the, the secular left do it from the perspective of truth from the perspective of the kingdom of

god and don't just don't be a sheep and just go to the other side and just be used by that side you know like you want to have a lean i think this policy is better than this one this politician might be less corrupt than this one who's more corrupt whatever i whatever but like don't give your allegiance to like a certain party to fight their enemy which is the other side to get wrapped up into battle that's not your own and i think i think that like what tends to happen is like I'm a like it's like your team like once you have a sports team no matter how how Christian how Christian and Bratrous you are you want to kind of excuse your team you know what I mean like oh my my player kicked that guy oh why they kicked that guy maybe the guy did something to him like

he deserved it bad to see what he did and lost yeah it's like well hold on maybe we're anti kicking maybe we you know or you kind of go oh man they got arrested last week Well, what did he do before? It's a big game next week. Like, you got to go, well, hold on. What have I become? And I think it's the same thing with politics. Like, there's an inevitability where because we're cheering for our team,

we want to downplay our parties or our guys send and overwhelm, like, and look at the other guy. I said, no, what I'm talking about the guy? We're talking about your guy right now. Let's talk about your guy for 20 minutes. And so, yeah, that's always tricky. You got some time for some extra inning, Go ahead. Go ahead. Offline. This is, okay, so this is going to be more of a private, uh, small group.

Oh, this is the Patreon? This is a Patreon thing. Okay. Patreon. Now y'all get to make. So we're going to get a little, you can be a little extra raw, a little, a little more honest. Okay. I feel like I'm telling y'all the truth. Before you close this one up, you should introduce your guests. Oh, I'm Esau, I'm gonna call it. We never. I'm the, I'm the host of, hold on one second. Let me do this. Hear me my book. I'm Esau Macaulay. I'm the host of, what I'm the host of?

What I'm the creator, creatively entitled, Esau McCauley podcast with Holy Post Media. We're in my studio and recorded a podcast with someone else. And I got a book that I think you should buy. So maybe you can, but maybe you can because this interview isn't about the book. So there's that. It's about barbecue. I write, what do I do? I have a job at a...

What's your title? What's your title? It's too long. What is it? The Jonathan Blanchett, Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College. Come on, man. You're going to wear that. That should be a badge.

I'm a pastor of All Saints Anglican Church in Naperville, Illinois. Pastor or a priest? Or is it the same? Listen. Listen, Baptist. You didn't come for an ecclesiology lesson. You can call me pastor, but I'm also a priest. You wear a collar, right?

Yes, I wear a collar. I need to get one of those. How can I get one of those? Can I have them? They're all sold out. Can I order? You need a hierarchy of sacraming. I can order communion online.

No, you can't. Whatever shows up online. See, he's trying to trigger me by talking about order to... Anyways, while we're still a friend, you should ask me the Patreon questions. Are you looking for news with a faith-based perspective? Then tune in to the pour over today, the podcast that delivers the world's biggest news stories

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