47 pages • 1 hour read
Esau McCaulleyReading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Freedom Is No Fear”
McCaulley reflects on Black people’s experience of policing. He discusses Romans 13:1-7 and John the Baptist in Luke 3 to demonstrate that the New Testament provides the beginning of a Christian theology of policing. The theology of policing is a theology of freedom that calls upon the state and its stewards to recognize the impact of their duties and their responsibilities to the people. McCaulley himself had an encounter with a police officer: The officer assumed that he and his friends were engaged in illegal activity, so McCaulley’s sense of anger and powerlessness arises out of his recognition that his actual crime was “being young and Black” (27).
Romans 13:1-2 is typically read and criticized as Paul advocating for unquestioned submission to government authority. However, McCaulley asserts that the passage is a statement about God’s sovereignty and the limits of human discernment about God’s use of human actors to undermine corrupt institutions. He considers the passage alongside Romans 9:17, in which Paul references God acting through Moses to remove the Pharaoh due to unjust and tyrannical rule (32). McCaulley then turns to Exodus 2:11-5, in which Moses responds to the Israelites’ oppression by killing an Egyptian, and Exodus 3:1-22, in which God brings liberation to the Israelites in his own time. Moses’s violent response was not mandated by God, but God nonetheless used Moses to free the Israelites.
Romans 13:3-4 grounds Paul’s call for submission in a description of how the state should act. Paul’s focus on the power structure, rather than the individual attitudes and behaviors of police officers, implies that the state has a responsibility to direct its power and its stewards in a way that does not cause fear for the innocent. Paul’s use of the word “sword” in Romans 13:3-4 is a literal reference to the ever-present Roman police force established by emperors Octavian and Augustus to maintain order throughout the Roman Empire (35-38). Therefore, Roman Christians were likely to encounter police in much the same way as Black Americans (38).
Where Romans 13 deals with the government structure, Luke 3 addresses the personal responsibility of police officers. John the Baptist calls those who heed his message about the coming Messiah to preparation, and he offers practical suggestions to different groups, including police officers. In Luke 3:14, John the Baptist condemns extortion, dehumanization, and greed on the part of police officers, reminding them to uphold the dignity of the residents that they serve. McCaulley connects these mandates to Matthew 27:27-30, in which the innocent Jesus is brought up on faulty charges and treated poorly by Roman soldiers (44).
Chapter 2 Analysis
McCaulley begins to show how the application of the BEI method expresses the Power of Scripture in Addressing Contemporary Social Issues. He couches his theological analysis within wider historical and social frameworks to demonstrate that his concern with policing is not abstract. For example, McCaulley’s own story of his encounter with the police illustrates the real implications of stereotyping and the police’s role in the “historical legal enforcement of racial discrimination” (28). McCaulley’s insistence that there must be truth-telling regarding the function of police in American society is an important precursor to Chapter 3’s discussion of the church’s role as a political witness.
He then underscores the practicality of his consideration by examining Paul’s words in Romans 13:1-7. His technique in this chapter, as in others, is to introduce the prevailing reading of a piece of scripture before arguing against this reading, thereby aiming to convey the originality of his work and suggest that it stems from thorough research. He goes on to assert that Romans 13:3-4 is a political commentary that holds the government accountable for how it directs its police force. Paul focuses on power structures rather than individual actions because “[t]he problem […] does not reside solely in those who bear the sword, but those who direct it” (39). McCaulley emphatically reinterprets pieces of scripture in simple terms to reinforce his counterargument to prevailing readings.
McCaulley finds that the New Testament also speaks to the actions and behaviors of police officers in Luke 3. His reference to innocence and the false accusation of Jesus alludes to his earlier “crime” of being young and Black. This link reinforces the text’s sense of the relevance of scripture when it comes to contemporary issues. Therefore, McCaulley finds in the New Testament guidance for holding the government and the police accountable for their actions.
McCaulley cannot arrive at conclusions about people’s right to hold those in power accountable without first contending with the dominant interpretation that Romans 13:1-2 instructs good Christians to submit to authority or run the risk of opposing God’s will. When McCaulley considers Romans 13:1-2 in light of the other passages, he reads Romans 13:1-2 as Paul’s commentary on the limits of humans to discern how God uses human agents to bring down unjust governments. Thus, McCaulley’s interpretation of Romans 13:1-2 lays the groundwork to begin constructing a theology of policing in Chapter 2 and a theology of political witness in Chapter 3.
