Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

Content Warning: This section of the guide addresses enslavement, racism, violence, and oppression. The guide reproduces the terms “slave” and “slave master” only in quotation.

McCaulley acknowledges his rootedness in the gospel and his love for hip-hop. As a child, he felt that rappers identified with his experience of being a Black boy in the South. At the same time, Christian faith was his foundation: He grew up listening to gospel music, reading the King James Bible, watching Christian cartoons, and attending church, Bible study, and Vacation Bible School; he majored in religion and history in college. He highlights the confrontation between Black hope and Black nihilism. However, he argues that his foundational aspects are not in competition, but rather informing one another. He does so by explaining the 1990s-era hip-hop controversy, particularly rapper Andre 3000’s suggestion at the 1995 Source Awards that Southern hip-hop—while influenced by elements from East Coast and West Coast hip-hop—needed space to be its own thing. By likening the Black ecclesial tradition to Southern rap, McCaulley illustrates that there is no inherent tension between Blackness and Christianity.

He presents BEI as a key element in the fight for hope and locates it within the oral traditions of African American Christianity.