On Monday, March 31 at 7 p.m., a crowd of Wheaton College students and faculty, as well as local residents, gathered in Barrows Auditorium to hear Esau McCaulley, Jonathan Blanchard chair of New Testament and public theology, lecture on how the Bible had been used to support pro-slavery and abolitionist arguments in the 19th century.
The event was presented by the Litfin Divinity School and was McCaulley’s inaugural lecture as chair. He is the second African American chair in the history of Wheaton College.
Amy Peeler, professor of New Testament, introduced McCaulley and applauded him for bringing the good news of Jesus while recognizing people’s pain. Although Peeler knows him on a personal level, she acknowledged that much of the audience knew McCaulley from his books, lectures or New York Times column.
“It is abundantly clear that Esau McCaulley is more than qualified for such a post,” she said. Peeler also emphasized McCaulley’s choice to stay local.
“He is, I think, such a successful public theologian because he has chosen the less glorious path of remaining a local one. He has chosen the neighborhood church, the 40-person classroom, the backyard barbecue,” she said.
McCaulley then took the podium, opening with the story of how he first became involved with the issue of scriptural views on slavery. His dreams of an academic career were originally small.
“I wanted people to be changed by an encounter with the text that studies them as much as they study it,” he said.
After completing his doctorate in Scotland, he returned to America in 2016 amid a tumultuous election season. Considering how his children would process the national conversations around race, he felt compelled to examine such questions from a Christian perspective.
“I had this conviction: There had to be a record of what the people of God had to say about what was going on,” he said. “There had to be a record saying that the God of justice, the God of holiness, the God of righteousness, were one and the same.”
As McCaulley rose in popularity through a wide readership of his books and an increased media presence, he felt increasingly uncomfortable with his existence in the public sphere.
“I say this not to brag, but to be honest in saying that it was just too much,” he said. “I had just wanted to teach the Bible, and I found myself talking to and about God in public. Most days I wanted it to end. I wanted to go back to something approaching normalcy.”
At the same time, he recognized that the Black church never had the luxury of privately debating theology. “Our people were suffering publicly in slavery. So our theology had to be public,” he said.
McCaulley quoted abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who affirmed that the teachings of Jesus stand against slavery. “‘If you demand liberty to yourself’, it says, ‘grant it to your neighbors… It is because I love this religion that I hate the slaveholding, the woman whipping, the mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that exists in the southern states of America,’” read McCaulley.
“‘It is because I regard the one as good, and pure and holy, that I cannot but regard the other as bad, corrupt and wicked, loving the one I must hate the other, holding the one as I reject the other.’”
McCaulley emphasized Douglass’s characterization of the American slaveholder in the role of the Pharisee. “‘They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy,’” he quoted.
Many pro-slavery people believed in inherent racial hierarchy and that the Christian principles of “loving thy neighbor” supported slavery. “Since God has ordained slavery for Africans, it would not be loving to free them,” McCaulley said was the belief in the 19th century. The argument likened slavery to the refusal of a father to allow his child freedom if it will bring them harm.
McCaulley closed by saying that, while the debate over the scriptural position on slavery was intense in the white American Christian tradition, the pro-slavery argument never found roots in the Black church.
“One thing that has gone unreported is that while there was a divide in white churches on the whiteness of slavery, there was no such divide in the Black church,” he said, “Pennington, and most in the Black church, found a wealth of text, mostly from the Jesus tradition, that spoke not of their oppression, but of their liberation.”
Theon Hill, associate professor of communication, opened a time of questions. Audience members asked McCaulley about the relevance of his research to colonialism as a whole, the relevance of the book of Exodus to the slavery debate and how he thinks about teaching Black theology in an “anti-DEI regime.”
“I’ve worked too hard to become myself to be anybody else,” McCaulley responded. “To be my whole Black Christian self, it took too much work to get to that place.”
He explained that though he used to avoid controversial topics, he has since realized the importance of using his experiences to serve God, even when it is divisive. “What’s the use of doing any of this stuff if it kills you on the inside?” he asked. “You don’t got to win, you’ve just got to be a faithful witness.”
President Philip Ryken ended by thanking him and expressing gratitude from McCaulley’s colleagues. “Thank you for dignifying the name of Jonathan Blanchard by saying yes to this chair and carrying on the founding mission of Wheaton College,” Ryken said. The event closed in prayer.
In a followup interview, McCaulley discussed why he has stayed at Wheaton College, although being offered many esteemed positions elsewhere. “I want to serve particular people in a particular place,” he said. It is overly ambitious to change the world, “but there is no way I could do something national without doing something local.”
By Orli Strickman, Sports Editor; Claire Taylor, Guest Contributor
