With The Perrys - Reading While Black with Dr. Esau McCaulley

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

If you heard someone use the word “Black biblical interpretation,” would you have any idea what they meant by it? We didn’t until we had a chat with Esau about it and we soon realized it’s a practice the entire church would greatly benefit from.   To purchase a copy of Reading While Black: https://amzn.to/3NCChT3  Subscribe to the Perrys' newsletter: https://withtheperrys.myflodesk.com/zhfus4jx1s Join Preston's discipleship community for men: https://www.patreon.com/PrestonPerry/membership To support the work of the Perrys, donate via PayPal: https://paypal.me/withtheperrys Shop BOLD Apparel: boldapparel.shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Saints and Names. Welcome to 30 Minutes with the Perry. What's good? How y'all doing? How are you doing? My name's Jackie. Bill Perry. My name's Preston Perry.

What's your middle name? It starts to the end. What is it? None of your business. That wasn't funny. It was. I'm supporting him, though. I'm supporting.

I'm the guest. I got to laugh at all. Right, right. He's all laughed. I can see why he thought it was funny. But we do have a guest with us here. his name is Esau, Professor Esau McCauley, Dr. Esau. What else you got?

This is it. Esau will be fine. Well, you're a professor. People got to respect you. Yeah, let's some respect on my name. I was just saying. Now, if you know anything about anything, you already know Esau. But if not, tell us who you are.

I don't need to introduce you. I'm an associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. I'm a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. I have three books, only two of which anybody might have read. The second book is called Reading While Black, African-American biblical interpretation is an exercise in hope. And the third book is a children's book called Josie Johnson's Hair and the Holy Spirit. And I have no idea when this podcast is going to drop.

But it came out and made the tent yesterday as is right now. Dope. Now, this wasn't, I didn't even think to ask this question until you introduce yourself. Do you have anybody in your family? that like puts a little before your stuff like oh yeah your little book you got your little phd you're little friends you could go to your little college and teach yeah yes little all of the all the little is like black shade one-on-one no it is and underneath it is a bit of pride but we don't want you to feel that yeah yeah you you ain't all that with your little book it's like it's the main one your little articles

Yes. Okay, so Issa, we saw each other a couple weeks ago. And we talked about how you released an article on Easter. Yeah. And I made the, it wasn't a mistake. Oh, it kind of was talking about just, I'm joking, joking. But I retweeted it with the quotation from the article where you said that when my body is raised, it will be a black body. Now, listen to my home.

Kind of logical. Listen to Mark. I thought that was the least controversial part. It's like I'm black. Of the article because I'm just affirming or you're just affirming that we will be raised as ourselves. Like our ethnicity doesn't go away. But people were so angry with me. Yeah.

People get in their feelings. People got in their feelings about me saying that I ruined Easter. I missed the point of the resurrection. You've ruined Eastern. You know, it's like, I didn't think I put him back in the tomb. I thought he was risen in my article. I could say a lot about that. I can say a lot about that.

One of them is, like, how we talk about Christian truth. You know, there's certain things that, like, everybody affirms, you know, about the resurrection. Anyone who's an Orthodox Christian affirms things not the resurrection of the body. But I think that sometimes people don't always consider, like, what does it mean to apply? a text to particular groups of people. And so the point of the article was the following. Historically in America, black bodies have been devalued. This isn't even that controversial, right? From slavery through the Jim Crow, through all of these things, the black body was devalued. And so what I was actually pushing back on was the denial of the resurrection of the body.

In other words, this idea that when you die, your soul goes up to heaven and you're in a better place. That's the end of the story. Actually, that's insufficient because black people have been suffer in their bodies. So for example, you imagine all of these pictures of lynchings where they literally hang and burn a black body. Well, that was the final statement on earth about this person's body. So the question then goes, well, what does God think about that statement? Does God think about what happened to that body was good and just? Well, the resurrection of the body is a rejection of the evil done to that black body. So that when this body is resurrected and it comes back, ass black, it's saying that this thing that you tried to destroy and devalue,

value, God himself values. And one of the things, now I to get into it, because this is the New York Times we can't do, chase all of these Bible things down the road. One of the things that talks about in the book of Revelation is God will wipe away every tear from our eyes before we come into the new creation. So in other words, the Bible depicts this idea that when we are raised from the dead, we actually don't forget all of our trauma. It doesn't say that. It says that God ministers to our trauma for the final time before we enter the kingdom of God. Well, then I need to ask people this question. What will black resurrected people be possibly traumatized by, potentially racial trauma?

In other words, God menaces to that racial trauma. Then he ushes us into the kingdom. And so I think that what people really don't like is when we start asking the question, how does this general truth for Christianity broadly sometimes touch the particular needs to black people? Now, I want to say with as much love and caution as I can, that rule is almost only in place for black people. This is what I mean when I say that. So when you're sitting there at a wedding or at a youth retreat or at any other kind of subgroup of people, we say, how does this text speak in particular to young married couples?

In other words, if you're at a retreat and there's 25 young people who have married for one or two to three years and you have a Bible text, you ask you a particular question. How does this Bible text touch this married couple? Now, if you were dealing with people who are widows, same text you preach it differently. So we actually understand what it means to shape a sermon. They're still biblically faithful to the particular needs of the community. But it's only the case when we started talking about how this Christianity touch the particular issues of black racial trauma that people get in their feelings. And the reason people get in their feelings is because they feel sometimes implicated in the racial trauma.

In other words, when I say this is how the gospel speaks to the things that black people have experienced, they have to then reflect upon what actually happened to black people in America, which then may raise issues of guilt or whatever is going on. But that's not my problem. My problem is I want to say something that helps a particular community while not denying this universal, the universal implications of the gospel, which we actually do, which we actually do for every other stuff. I mean, from children to marry, to divorce, to greed, everybody gets their own ministry,

except for black people. Yikes. Y-I-K-E-S. Wow. But also, too, and I want you to speak to this because I think now we're in such a unique time in which race and culture when it's talked about, it's almost deemed as like a no-no. Like certain circles in Christianism are being conditioned and being taught that to talk about race is literally you veering away from the gospel or you not trusting in the scripture. and you're putting your race over the scriptures. And so I guess for those people who have been, who are being conditioned to think that, man, if I bring up race,

am I talking too loud? You're very loud. If I, if I, if I, if I hear yourself, if I talk about race, or if I hear somebody talking about race, the first thing they think about is, man, this person, all this person thinks about is race, race, race, race, race, race. So can you talk to those type of people? Yeah, I think that one of the things that I would say to those people is that

we sometimes, we too often, and I'm speaking from experience, people use the language of stick to the gospel, once again, only when it deals with issues of race. And what I want to do is I want to always, I was always going to sometimes step back and speak via analogy. So for example, you can say, you know, you can be a couple that really, really loves Jesus, but your financial history can be jacked up. And you can be super converted and still not know how to handle money. And so the church says, you know what, we're not just going to preach the gospel to you. We're going to tell you, how the implication of the gospel impacts your money. You could be a group of people who really love Jesus. You could be converted, but you actually don't know how to talk to one another. They communicate healthily in a relationship. He said, you know what? I know you save. Now I'm going to disciple you on communication.

In other words, we are always as a church thinking about how the gospel actually hits flesh with particular issues. Same thing in parenting. Just because you save, you don't get the Holy Spirit. Don't automatically teach you exactly how to parent. right, because you inherit all of the dysfunctional parenting habits that you might have passed. We said, you know what? We need to have a retreat. Get these parents together so they don't jack their kids up.

So the question then becomes when we say, just preach the gospel, we tend to believe that racism is the only sin that disappears magically a conversion. Or maybe it's possible that you inherited, and this is hard to hear, stereotypes, ways of thinking, ways of acting that may not be in accord with the gospel, in what you actually might need to do in the same way that you need to read and figure out how to be a Christian parent, how to be a good Christian spouse, how to manage a money as a Christian, that you need to think intentionally and theologically

about race, racism, and its impact on people. Now, the other thing that I want to say, and this is actually, and I had a really nice white student come up to me and ask me this question. Genuinely, genuinely good kid. He said, I was talking to my black friend about race,

and I just wanted to make sure he doesn't get too much into his race these days focused on Jesus. And I say, okay, man, why don't we take a step back and, like, look at the history of the church and say, like, what does actually cause more damage in the history of the church? Black people care too much about their race or anti-Black racism in Christianity. In other words, like, we tend to be afraid of the smaller problem. Now, before we got into this super kind of controversial moment kind of in the church, I think you know this. Black people used to talk about black people too into being Black.

Like we used to joke about folks who were like super woke. It was a whole meme before woke became political thing. Like, man, listen, you can't be conscious. Everything ain't the system, right? Right. So we had a way of actually dealing with that in-house. We knew people who was like super black. Who was deep at breakfast.

Yeah, you know, and I. Why is it making this black? The man being everything. You remember about like CB4? I'm blackety black, remember that? So we've had, we've had in the black community. an ongoing conversation about being excessively conscious.

So we actually police this in our community. The idea that somebody outside of our community can say that you're being too black in a context where like black cultural expression is often minimized. Sees to be super problematic. And so what I would say, what I think that they believe is that like if you,

if you downplay, if we downplay our blackness, then we'll have a use. that kind of emerges naturally. What actually happens is we'll just all conform into white culture. And since they don't recognize white culture as a particular culture, we'll just think that we're all unified. And I love, listen, I love, and I'm not one of those people who only like Kirk Franklin.

I love Kurt. He used to go, like, that's my lane. But I can take a worship song. Like, I can do both, right? I can do a good worship song or gospel. But if you're saying the requirement for us to be unified in Christ is to adopt only one particular cultural form, then that's colonialism. And I know that sounds hard, but it's actually true. If you think what is normal is what you do in the majority culture and the unity means everybody else is adjusting to you, then that's not unity.

That's actually colonizing people's culture. And the whole point of the gospel is that the gospel transforms culture. and then each one of those cultures offer those gifts to God. And so the reason why I'm not willing to let go of my culture is because God made me black on purpose. And that a redeemed black culture is a gift to the body of Christ that nobody else can give. And so if you eliminate my culture, you eliminate the work that the gospel is done in my culture. So I'm fighting for not an exclusive black context, but the gifts of black Christians to give to the body of Christ. So you wrote Reading While Black, everybody liked it, right?

And I believe the premise of the book is teaching people or like exalting that we need to all have. Not all have, but black biblical interpretation is a thing, right? Yes. Why did you think that that was necessary to even write a book about? Well, a couple of things. One is I had in mind, I was living in the UK at the time. And I saw a lot of the stuff that was going on with a lot of the protests in like 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013. And I remember people saying this was not your parent civil rights movement.

And I was like, man, these are black people who are saying this. And I was like, man, the African-American Christian tradition has often been on the side of justice, not an enemy of justice. And so I wanted to write a book that articulated, like, how African-Americans came to the conclusion that the Bible was a friend, not a foe, the procedure liberation. But another thing that was kind of undergirding all of that is, and a lot of the African-American kind of theological enterprise, one of the normative ideas that is called Hart Hermione Deuce's a suspicion, which is meaning that you have to kind of wrestle liberation from the text that it's not fair, that you kind of have to read against the grain of the text to find freedom. And that actually had been raised to trust the scriptures,

and by trusting the scriptures, find liberation. And so I wanted to write a book. And so I wanted to write a that had at its center kind of like what I believe the African-American posture towards scripture, they were normative in most of the black churches that I knew. And most of the black churches that I knew in the Alabama and the South growing up, we love the Bible, but we also believe that in that Bible, it spoke about the essential work for all people, and that God didn't enjoy it. God wasn't in favor of what happened to us, and God was on the side of people like Martin Luther King in his liberty of work. So that was like the, the, the origin of it.

And that's relates to African-American biblical interpretation. People get mad when I talk about this. And they kind of go, what a skin color got to do with biblical interpretation? Aren't you making everything racial? This is once again when they call me a heretic. Let me explain to people what I mean. First, I want to say is

to talk about being black. What does it mean to be black? I don't actually argue that having dark skin makes you a certain interpreter of the white. It doesn't like create these magical interpretive insights. But what I do say is they're kind of common, not universal, common experiences that go along with being black in America. We kind of experience certain things. And this collective experience raises certain questions that we then bring to the biblical text. And in bringing those

black biblical questions, those questions arise from being black to the biblical text, trusting in God to give us an answer. And the fruit of that is what I call black political interpretation. One of the examples that I use all of the time is, I don't know. any white churches that have to actually consistently deal with this idea is Christianity white man's religion because that's not a critique for them. But if you're a black growing up, you got to know what the Bible says about, you know, the Bible not being disparate. And so that's one example. One of the other things that I say, and this is really important to understand, this is the only way to describe it, the best way to describe it. Historically, there are times

to the debates going on in America during the abolitionist period. And then during, again, during the civil rights period and other points of history. And there was one group of people who were saying the Bible supports slavery and we should enslave all these black people. And these are the biblical reasons why. And then there was a big clump of black people who started historically black churches who answered and said, no, that ain't what the Bible said. And so there is a historical group of people who are called, I mean, they were called black

churches. Why do black churches exist? Black churches existed. Sorry to give you history on top of history. and so they were literally kicked out of white churches. So the best descriptor for these churches that were kicked out of white churches that had to find their own denomination so they can worship God freely for black churches.

Those black churches read the Bible differently than majority white churches. And there's a historical record. You can go back and look and say, oh, black people are staying during the slavery time? Well, white people saying it during the slavery time. And so when I talk about African-American American biblical interpretation,

I talk about, first of all, the literary deposit. What did we say at these different points of controversy. And what kind of habits of Bible reading arose from having to answer black questions they then encountered in kind of racist churches? So African-American Bill of Interpretation then is the African-American method of finding freedom through trusting the scriptures that has kind of marked black Christianity in America throughout time.

And once again, I'd like to get people like history because this is important. And can I be nerdy for one second, Jack? Go ahead, Professor. Okay. These are the people, so this one we're talking about. So anybody who studied the Reformation, I don't know how nerdy your listeners are. They will say, okay, this is what was going on in Germany. You studied the Reformation, Jackie?

Mm-mm. Okay. So they say, okay, this is going on in Germany. This is what Luther was going through. This is what Luther was experiencing. And these experiences that Luther had in Germany with the Catholic Church led Luther to read the Bible in a certain way and see in the Bible God's grace. In other words, everybody understands that Luther's theology came out of a certain context but was nonetheless true, and that Luther's theology was informed by his experiences. So in other words, somebody else he didn't experience with Luther had experience may not have come up with a doctrine of grace.

But although that was a unique German experience that Luther had, he still nonetheless spoke a theological truth. And so, if you believe in the Reformation, you believe the social location can give rise to theological truths, that are universally applicable. So what I want to say then is that African-American biblical interpretation comes out of a particular set of circumstances that are none of this universal and applicable to other people. The other thing that I would say is that anybody who studies theology recognizes that cultural temperaments influence how theology is done. In other words, British theology is actually a little bit different than German theology,

which is a little bit different than what they're doing in the Scots. In other words, they have things like their German theology. Serenital of Scottish theology, and nobody says, stop talking about race and start talk about Scottish theology. No one says stop talking about British theology. No one actually says stop talking about German theology. We all recognize those in traditions. The difference is we tend to think that America only has one theological tradition, and it

doesn't. It has sub-traditions. An African-American theology and biblical interpretation is a sub-tradition. I mean, even Australia, anybody knows that Australian evangelicalism is different than what we're doing here. And so we recognize cultural difference and how that influences truth. They can nonetheless be universally applicable, but only black people aren't allowed to have a particular culture that gives things to the variety of body of Christ because we're the ones you're talking about race. It's a rule that is uniquely given to us. So my question is, what do you think

that stems from? Like this idea that American Christians all have to conform to one style of worship, to one way of thinking when America is a plethora of different cultures and, you know, people. I think at the heart of it, in the most generous interpretation, it's this idea that the best way to solve race is the race issue is to kind of be colorblind. In other words, if I don't acknowledge difference, then I can't judge an evasive difference. And so I just won't take it into consideration. And so I think that people think that they're trying to solve the problem. by kind of not acknowledging race.

And I think that that has historically not been helpful as far as helping us overcome. I mean, if you imagine it's something bad happening in your family two or three years ago, the best way to solve it isn't say we're never going to talk about it as a family. The best way to solve it is to talk through it and figure out what happened, what went wrong and how can we avoid doing those things again. And I do think that there is another truth that we have to acknowledge if we are, if we're being intellectually honest. And I think this is once again, one of the interesting hard parts about these kinds of conversations that people don't understand what actually happens in black communities, what we actually talk about. There are people who talk about race in ways that are helpful.

And there are people who talk about race in ways that are like spiritually destructive. And so in other words, there are people who say Christianity itself is so irredeemingly racist. or whatever, that black people shouldn't be Christians. I think that there are people who have spoken about race in ways that aren't helpful, and they've used, not used. I mean, that's the wrong word. One of the things that I'm really sympathetic to is people who experience racial trauma. In other words, I can't, I mean, I lament people who walk away from the faith.

I lament anybody walks away from the faith. But I understand the frustration with Christianity that causes them to question the things that they believe. leave. And so what I want to say is if there's someone whose racial trauma has sent them hurtling away from the faith, the solution to that isn't to say your trauma isn't that bad. We're united in Christ. The solution to that is to say, here's how the gospel ministers to your trauma. And here's how the gospel provides you with something more than retribution. And so I think that some people are so afraid of dealing with the mess of reality of the church's racial history and that they can't imagine a kind of biblical faithfulness on the other side of these hard questions. And one of the

things that I say for good or bad, and the black church is imperfect. We've got to own dysfunction and those other things. But we've always known how to be Christian while being deeply disappointed with other Christians. And there's one thing we specialize in is that we know what is like to follow Jesus when everybody around us who calling his name ain't serving him. And so this idea that we can't as a church. church fully owned the evil and the wickedness and the things that we've done in the name of Jesus. And then on the other side of that reckoning, still be biblically faithful and theologically sound. It's something that people can't imagine. If I acknowledge these things, then I'm going to,

people are going to lose the faith. But what I want to say is what was done in the dark needs to be, the light needs to be turned on. And after the lights are turned on, yes, we will see the evils the church is done. We'll also see the goodness of God shining through as well. I want to come back to this this black biblical interpretation thing because I think the part of it that's really intriguing to me is how people really don't know or perhaps don't have the tools to identify the frameworks or the biases that they bring to passages and having a framework and having a bias isn't even necessarily a bad thing I think it becomes bad where you don't see it So even something small, like a couple days ago, I'm studying 1st Samuel 1 because I have to do this Bible study on prayer and stuff like that.

And I was reading about Hannah and how I said Hannah had no children. And I'm looking at commentaries and literally is as if like nobody really lands or stays on the fact that Hannah is barren. They just move past that and go into, you know, El Cana's genealogy. and polygamy. And I was just like, huh, I think I care about her barrenness as an implication of what it was like to be a woman because I'm a woman. Right? And so I'm asking questions of this text because I'm a woman with friends that are barren

and all of that. And I was just like, huh, even the commentaries are affected by people not identifying their frameworks. So here's the thing that I think people don't understand about this. Your experiences lead you to ask questions that the day. text itself can answer. In other words, you're not like distorting the text. You're saying, no, no, no, people who don't have these experiences are downplaying them. I'll give you an example. I won't cite this person's name. I'm reading this commentary and he's talking about a slave passage.

This is true. God bless this brother. And he said, well, during the ancient world, most people were free at the age of 35 or whatever. So slavery wasn't that bad. And then in a footnote, we're going to lead that to the side. That was the first part. We're going to let that, we're going to let that ride. Okay, but it got, it gets worse than the footnote. The footnote said like, and I quote something along the lines of, except for women, most of them weren't free.

So, wait a minute, that's half the population. So you know, but he, it didn't even, it didn't even, like, it didn't even registered to him that he was trying to make this point that for men, this would be really good. We gotta go, but women didn't get that benefit. So he could have kept that whole little part to himself.

Another part I was reading in this commentary, I think he was talking about the Good American, a different commentary, or something. He said, there's certain groups of people who, like, as soon as you see them, he's trying to apply the text. As soon as you see them, you start to get nervous, kind of like somebody in the Middle East. And I was like, well, no, if you had asked me as a black man from the South, who was the person who, like, initially kind of gets my nervousness up? It would have been a different analogy. In other words, I don't think we often realize how much our interpretive commentaries have as their target. People who they're

applying their text to kind of the white middle class. And so like, and that has a distorting impact on the things that are emphasized and the things that are downplayed that are in the text themselves or how the text is applied. I remember, I remember one of the things in my book, and I was so mad about this, there was two parts in the book in the chapter on Black Identity. There's two parts of the story that I didn't even know until I was literally researching the book. One of them was when I was talking about Ephraim and Manassah. And I don't know if they've been read that chapter, I knew about it, but no one ever applied it to me. That like Abraham's, are Joseph's two sons who are then adopted into the nation of Israel were half Egyptian and half Jewish.

And that when Joseph brings his two sons to his father, the father says, God made a promise to me. You're going to make me a father in many nations. Therefore, I'm going to take these two kids, Ephra Manassah, and I'm going to adopt them into the 12 tribes. In other words, Joseph's father said, because of these boys' ethnicities, because I see ethnicity, I want to adopt these boys. And they're Africans. And nobody ever said, well, how might this apply to a young brother of African descent who's wondering about his place in the kingdom of God?

The other thing, I'm reading X. And listen, I'm going through the commentaries. And the commentaries mention that, yeah, they're, you know, half Egyptian, none of them lands it. The other one is, and this is also in the book, when it says after the, after the plagues in the people of Israel, are leaving Egypt. There's this line in there where the writer says a mixed multitude went up with them. And I'm like, what is the mixed multitude? They can have me get back in my Hebrew. The mixed multitude means different ethnic groups. That's what the word means. So the Bible is sitting there telling you, where are they? They in Egypt. These are African peoples who are in the twill who are,

who said, you know what? They said, you know what? I want that God, not y'all God. So after the plagues, a bunch of African people said, we go on with them. And so these are things that are actually in the text. The scholars, for the most part, haven't had, haven't had, they haven't been concerned with these issues like ethnic identity because that's not a question for them. And so the reason that black people can look at interpretation is helpful, not because we distort the text, but we find things other people might not find because they're not looking for them. It's the same thing with women, right? Women can see things in the text. that we might not notice unless we really,

because it might not be a concern for me. I had, sorry, this may be too much information, but I had a student who just gave a paper, and she was talking about some of the menstruation laws in Leviticus. And she started going through, like, you know, the woman's cycling all of this other stuff, and I had never considered how all of this stuff landed because I never had a cycle before.

And so she was walking through the text. And so all these ways in which the whole point that I think is, we think that we don't need each other and I want to believe that we all need each other to properly discern the mind of Christ different cultures bring different insights that as long as you're committed to the authority of scripture

we can then judge according to what the text says and see if this insight is actually good or bad this is why we say diversify your library your commentaries your seminary course book what do you call them things what you call them the little thing syllabus

Textbook But see here's the thing Here's the thing And I love God's church And I love the American church But I think one of the One of the things that the American church Do when we think about diversity

We only think about skin color And so a lot of these churches We'll try to diversify a church And by putting black, white, Asians or whatever But the moment somebody come in Who's culturally or from the hood You know what I'm saying?

They don't really know how to accept And so I think I think trying to make people conform to one way of things thinking it can be diversified all it is but if you don't have a plethora of different cultures but that's diversity though yeah that's so so so you're saying we need we need to articulate what what diversity is absolutely because somebody might say my church is diversified i have black whites but is all is your books diversified though yes yeah that's that's that's the question

yeah one of the one of the hard things to do is to have a this is hard to have these conversations in public there is no we all know that there's no one single essence of blackness that everybody who's black agrees. For sure. There isn't like a monolithic blackness. And so, but we also recognize there's like cultural norms, right? There's kind of habits and ways of being that culture being a part of the black community. And so when you talk about what happens a lot is that, man, this is going to be complicated.

People say that we just can't find the right fit. And what that often means we want to find a black person who thinks like we do so we can have a black person up front who doesn't like challenge a sense. That's what I meant. That's what I meant. And so even if you don't completely agree with everything to the black community says, if you're raised in it and shaped in it, you intuitively got to understand. And so I say this all the time of the time of people who want to diversify their staff.

Sometimes the very black person that you're trying to find who makes you feel comfortable, isn't going to connect with the black people you're trying to reach. Yikes. And so that's the hard part. If you're uncomfortable, that's probably the black person who everybody would be like, yes, That's somebody who we actually... So I was going to say that's the reason why certain black people in certain white spaces are so exalted, right?

I'm trying to leave... See, in this... Hey, man, we can take it there. We could take it there. No, we can't. Yeah, we can't. No, we can't. I'm taking it there.

Esau here. This is the conversation I'm going to say is complicated. And where I didn't want to essentialize blackness, right? So that anybody who disagrees with us ain't authentically black. Black people are as diverse as any other culture. We have people who have a variety of opinions. The question is, who chooses who speaks for us.

In other words, there's one thing for me to notice, this is a brother who I've met in the streets and I've seen him, but nobody listens to this brother. But if everybody, if somebody from outside of our culture goes, this is the black person who gets it, that's where it becomes problematic. Then I got to say, well, hold on,

I'm not questioning his blackness or her blackness. I'm saying nobody or 95% of us have come to a different conclusion. And if you want to have, and it's not my job, It's not my job as an African-American to respond to the black person that you like. Absolutely. And that's the only thing that I want a lot of, you know, my white brothers and sisters and white evangelicals to understand that if you, that you can't say in one sense, oh, it's all about race, but then think that if you find a black person who thinks. It's not all about race.

That it's not all about race. But if you find a black person who thinks like you, then that person is qualified to speak. speak on the whole of black people. Totally about race. Because in that way, you've made it totally about race. It's like, no, like, what you just say is very important. It's like, man, like, why can't we choose

who kind of speaks for black culture or black people? You know what I mean? And I think if we choose it, I think they'll be able to learn from people like me and like you. And I think it's also posture. In other words, like, if you put like five black people in a room

and on a panel, and it's a black audience from black communities, everybody's going to know kind of where the community stands. And if you're coming from a minority position, it's going to change how you talk. In other words, you're not going to talk like everybody's on your side and everybody who disagrees with you do is ridiculous. You're going to have at least a posture because I know, sometimes I will push back on common ideas in the black community, but I know what I'm doing that, right? I know when I'm doing that. So one of the things, for example, in reading while I'm black, the hermeneutic of trust,

the idea that the Bible itself as written, leaves the liberation. It's not the normative position of all black academics. So I knew that that part of the book was going to be controversial. People are going to love the liberation part.

They weren't going to love the repent of your sins to be saved and follow Jesus and pursue holiness part. So I knew as that book traveled into a black community, that part of the book was going to be complicated. So I spoke in such a way to say, here's why I'm doing that. I think that in the same way, if you are a black person, speaking in a majority white setting,

you have some responsibility to accurately communicate the opinions of the community that you claim to represent. And when you separate yourself from that and you have your own take, you need to offer that take with some humility. That's excellent. And especially, and when I say this, I'm talking about black people who love Jesus and love the scriptures like you do. who disagree. And so that's, and I try to be, I try to as a writer and as a thinker

be as clear as I possibly can when I'm doing me versus when I'm articulating kind of the heart of what our community has always believed. I mean, you said it all, Professor. I apologize. No,

it's exciting. I guess we could end with this. You got a new book about the Holy Ghost and black people. people, black girls. Yes. People are, if you, hold on, I need to warn them. If they didn't like to eat the article, don't buy this. No, I love that.

No, I love it. And I love it because I read it with my daughters because now when I get books, my oldest is seven she can read. And so I'll have her read it to me and her sister. And I guess having her read words that I haven't considered that she hasn't read, like Pentecost. You know, it was like nations, tribes, tongues, flames of fire.

And I was like, oh, X is really, like, creative when you think about it. But then my four-year-old, almost four-year-old, she didn't care nothing about the words, but she looked at the picture. She said, her hair like mine. And I was like, wow, that's, like, really special to not only have this communication of the Holy Spirit

and dwelling all peoples and nations and tongues and things, but even to have, like, this illustration that looks like my children. Like, obviously that was intentional with you, right? Yeah. Yeah, well, a couple of things. I told them that I wanted a black woman to illustrate it because I knew that she could draw the hair.

Yeah. And what I think, and this is probably, maybe my whole life ministry is kind of, I don't want to say it's summed up in that book. But I feel like there's certain places where you can go to get black cultural affirmation. And there's a certain place where you can go to be spiritual affirmation.

and I want to put things to put these things together. I'm not the only person who does it. I'm not talking about that. What I'm saying is I wanted both of those experiences to kind of be there for parents. They can actually have a book that has pictures that look like them that talks about the gods they worship at the same time. And we all, listen, I love, you know, I love super book and I love all these little cartoons where everybody is white. That's fine. God could use that too.

But my daughter needs to see somebody who looks like her trying to follow Jesus too. and so even if even if nobody buys it but your daughter and she had that experience then I think I think I did my job and we ain't buy your publishers in it but I will buy copies no you don't got to buy a copy

well you bought you was arguing me about holier than now I'm like I'm trying to to take it to you for free I know I feel like I feel like my friends I feel like if there's somebody who's work I support y'all can get 20 at my dollars so everyone who emails me and says esau can i send you this influencer box or like no y'all keep the box i'll buy it or send it to somebody else i ain't never said

because i just i just feel like because like each little each little like sell means something right yeah it does i feel like and i feel like you're not securing the bag by me taking a picture in the box but every sale that you make then you can say i sold this much that means they got to pay jacky more for the next book. So I feel like I'm contributing towards like your future sales. This is a learning, a learning thing for some people who might be list. Securing the bag

means securing how much money you make. You see? It's not all about color. It's about culture. Raising the amount of the events. Securing the bag means about like keeping getting all the money. Oh, M.G. Yeah. So

no, the reason I say, this is, people don't understand this. This is just I don't understand. People who maybe they don't care about this, but I care about this. I know people say that you should support black writers and those things. Y'all really should. Because if you buy the books, then the publishers have evidence that these books sell and then more produce. So every single cell is literally not just a deposit into someone's bank account, it's a deposit into the creation of a culture. So I'm glad to read the while black sold, not for me, because I'm going to be fine. I'm all right. But that's it people looking for the next reading while black,

not for me, but from some other, like, writer. And people tend to think the black books don't sell. So if I sell black books, then that means somebody else can sell black books. And so I consider it, like, doing whatever I can to create or support the creation of a market. So there's an ecosystem of black work. And sorry, this isn't it. This wasn't in the podcast. I'm going to say this.

No, it's necessary. What happens, though, this happens a lot, especially, cannot say, like, Orthodox, traditionally-minded, whatever you want to call what we're about. It's for a long time, our voices were suppressed. and then people say, well, why, I can't find any books like this? I was like, because y'all fired us every time we start to talk about Jesus and race, right? And so then you only allow a certain kinds of black art to be produced, the black literature to be produced. And then that creates a, it reinforces the stereotype.

So then when you have someone like you or others who produce the books, we've got to support them so that there is a, the breadth of the black Christian tradition is accessible and print of people. And so I'm passionate about it. It's one of the things that if I can do nothing else, is that I really want to support black writers and black artists to continue to produce things that think of life given to our culture. Awesome. Well, thank you, Professor Esau. This was very informative and frank and smart.

You should write a book too next. You next. I'm writing the book right now. Okay, then. What's it called? No, no, no. Never mind. Don't tell us yet.

We're not ready. He don't even know. I don't know what it's called yet. I know what the topic is, and I'm in the thick of it. Okay. All right, brother. I'll talk to you later. All right, bye, bye.

30 Minutes with the Perry's is a production of Ivy Media Podcast. Edited by Angie Elkins, video recording and audio production by Kim Powell, artwork by hop and music by swoop. Join us on Patreon for early access to With the Perry's episodes and other exclusives. You got two options. You can go to www.com forward slash with the Perry's, or just go ahead and scroll. You'll find a link in our show notes.

We are the Perrys. Thank y'all for listening. Now go with God.