Special Event – Conversation with Dr. Esau McCauley: Mark Lanier 10/13/24

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[00:00:00] I am very excited to have Dr. Al McCauley here. Uh, he is, uh, David Cates, Dr. David Cates last hire at Wheaton. When David, uh, when David was. Uh, uh, Dean of Theology or New Testament theology or at Wheaton, uh, before he, uh, got promoted to, um, scholar in residence out here. And uh,

that was funny. It was funny. Okay. Maybe not. But anyway, he hired Esau and then left before I got there. And before he got there. Yeah. It wasn't because Esau was coming, um, uh, Esau has spent time working out in England and [00:01:00] he was gracious enough to give us his weekend. And this is time away from his wife and four kids, and he is a marvelous scholar and a wonderful Christian gentleman.

So would you join me in welcoming Es on the thank. Okay, so I've got your interview. Yeah. And it's really gonna be fun. Yeah. The problem is I've got way too much to ask you and way too little time. I'll be brief. No, no, no. Don't. Because you're the one we want to hear. They're sick of hearing from me. Yeah.

Um, I would like to start with you telling us a little bit about your journey in life with an eye toward how you got into, not just Bible, but biblical scholarship. Yeah, I mean, I was raised in the church. There were, um, where were you born? Oh, so I'm from Huntsville, Alabama. So I'm a Southerner and Alabamans, and I was raised, you know, Alabama almost lost again yesterday.

I know. But we didn't though. We didn't, we [00:02:00] held them all at the last minute. Now you played football. I, I did play football, so, but not at the tide. No, I did not. The tide did not see fit to recruit me. They didn't think I was good enough. They were right. They were right. You was right. No, no, no. You were a linebacker at the University of University South University of the South Division three College in Swanee.

Yeah. So I was raised in the, in the Black Baptist Church and I had ministers on both sides of my family. And I always say the McCaulay tend towards binaries. It's either like the church or the streets. And so I chose the church and so I was the church kid growing up my, my mom gave me. Like one of those, um, bibles, those, uh, cartoon bibles, and I read the whole thing from cover to cover and I came to my mom and said, I read the whole Bible.

I remember that. It's like, this is guilt that sticks with you. I had skipped the caption summaries at the top and only read the dialogue. I remember thinking as a kid, is that a lie? No, I kind of read the Bible. Anyway, so I grew up in the church and the Bible was always this book that thrilled me and in our context, our faith was the way that you made it out of a difficult context.[00:03:00]

I went to college. Um, alright. Time out though. I, I want to interrupt and I apologize. Yeah. What year were you born? I was born in 1979, so I, that's right. 'cause I'm old enough to be your father. Um, thank you for that. I guess, I don't know. I, not really a compliment. Yeah. But, um, I thought much about me or you.

Yeah. Um, um, so, so you were born in 79? Yes. You went to a black church? Black Baptist church. Black Baptist Church? Yeah. Did you go to an integrated school? Um, actually my mom, who was um, was the first people in our family to go to integrated schools, so her grand, my grandparents went to segregated schools.

When the schools integrated, they had closed them and then they united them to have one school, and my mom was the first one to go through integrated schools, and so my mom and I went to the same high school. When she went, it was mostly white, but after they integrated, most of the white families eventually [00:04:00] left.

And so when I went to the exact same school, it was by that point all black and the, and the economic realities of the city had dramatically transformed Northwest Huntsville and it was an impoverished community. Interestingly enough, the demographics has shifted again, and now it's becoming a middle class community as Alabama has grown.

So, um, wow. I went to a largely black school. My mom went to the same school. There was a largely white, that school has now been torn down. And in that place where the school used to be, there's the park where there actually are very few black families there. So it's a bit, it's an interesting history of Alabama, Northwest Huntsville through the land of that school.

So when I was there, it was kind of a, a under-resourced, uh, tricky place to, to get an education. But my mom always inspired us to say that we could be whoever we wanted to be if we focused on our grades and trusted the Lord and all of that good stuff. And so I went to college, um, and I didn't know a lot about.

Kind of the wider world. And so I went to a secular of school and I said, oh, our major in religion. Like what, what can be [00:05:00] better than studying the Bible at the university? And I would just say the way they taught religion at university was different than the religion I was taught as a kid. And so that, that led to a spiritual crisis.

You know, the professor, it sounds like a bad version of God's not dead, but it wasn't like that. Um, but it was like they. Asked a lot of questions that that, that I had to wrestle with. And part of my own intellectual journey was saying, I know what it's like to be in a context where it feels like the intellectual thing to do is to abandon your faith.

And I wanted to be able to give people the intellectual resources to see in the Bible of God who's a friend and not an enemy. And so what initially began, actually, can I tell you this? My wife, my wife comes to this part of the story. I'll never forget. I'm sitting there and I'm working on a Romans Bible study at this university, and the woman who would become my wife was in this group and I remember teaching and they started writing note style.

I remember thinking, why are you writing notes down? I know. I don't know [00:06:00] what I'm talking about. And I had this idea, this is this problem. If you're a speaker, what if you tell someone something that isn't true? What if you, you, you mislead them? And I said, well, the best way I can make sure that I don't mislead someone is to go to seminary.

Learn the original language. Learn Greek, learn Hebrew like we talked about, learn ame. So whatever part of the Bible I opened up, I could look at the original languages, understand the context and explain it to people. And that was the original goal, was to go to seminary, get a MDiv so I could teach people the Bible and then go all.

But from there kept going. And I ended up getting a PhD at the University of San Andrews studying at the T right? The end. Uh uh. Alright. No, but but we can't just zip over some of this 'cause it's just so important. Um, uh, as someone, I, I was in school, uh, not at the University of the South. I was up at Lipscomb in Nashville.

Oh yeah, I know about close by. Yeah. And I was a biblical language major. Yeah. And we had different ways you could major in religion at Lipscomb. And so we had some people who were [00:07:00] mission majors. Yeah. And they would say, if you want to know about Jesus in any part of the world, uh, be a mission major. And, and then we had those who were majoring in theology.

Yeah. And they said, if you want to know what people say about Jesus and God major in theology. Yeah. Then we had those of us who were biblical language majors. Yeah. And we said, if you want to know what God says, be a biblical language major. Yeah. Um, uh, uh, so you went. To seminary at Gordon Conwell. Gordon Conwell.

Up in Massachusetts. Massachusetts, yeah. And took a bunch of languages. I took, um, Greek and Hebrew, Nancy Dominguez. I met a lot of people like Mark when I got there. What I mean by that is there are people who had been studying this stuff their entire lives and they already knew the Greek and the Hebrew, and I felt like I was way behind.

Starting the languages at the age of 22. You were, yeah, I know. And people walked in with all of this stuff and so I had to work like twice as hard to make up that lost ground. 'cause I wasn't a biblical studies major. And so I took, [00:08:00] um, beginning Greek and then intermediate Greek and then I took, I don't know, as many Essis classes they allowed me to take.

And they did the same thing with Hebrew and as many exegesis classes they allowed me to take. And so it was, while I was there, one of my professors handed me, um, assigned a book. New Testament and the Victor, no New Testament and the people of God by NT Wright. And I read that book and it like, I can't believe this, God, this is, this, it, it just, it blew my mind.

And I'll never remember, forget he came to campus one day and I stood in line like for a long time to get him to sign this book. And so it was like one of my most cherished possessions and I got to the end of my, um, graduate school and met a professor. Who was trying to get convinced me to do a PhD, and at the time I wanted to be a missionary and I said, well, I only want to go to a place that's free.

That's my requirement. And he's like, no, you should just go wherever you can get into. You should go to the best school. He like, I can't afford it. He said, go into debt. I said, sure, and actually did go into [00:09:00] debt eventually, but he said that I recommend, but if it happened, and he said he was arguing, having this argument, I was like, I, I don't care.

I'll just go wherever. It's cheap. I just wanna be a missionary, serve the Lord overseas. I don't need a fancy degree. I'm never gonna like apply for a job. I'm only gonna be in the majority world. And he says to me, where would you go if you could go anywhere in the world? I said, I'll go and stay with nt.

Right. As a way of like get into our, the conversation. He said, well then apply. I said, well, I will. And I applied and he took me, I said, oh, now I gotta go to Scotland. The funny thing about that is my mother-in-law, um, is from South Carolina and she wanted her babies, her grand babies to be, um, in the back in the south.

And so everybody else in my family celebrating, they knew who NT Wright was and, you know, so that was the big deal. So I had to call my mother-in-law and said, I got into like. A PhD program in Scotland and she was like, oh. [00:10:00] And then she said, my pastor managed to get his doctorate. He didn't have to leave home.

Why can't you do that? He had done a DM E via distance, like, well, Tom just let you fly back and forth. Like, no, you gotta move to Scotland. And so for a long time I was a failure to her until her pastor found out. And asked to get a book signed by N NT Wright and then I was back in the family's good braces.

Alright. Tell us about your wife and your four kids. Yeah. My wife is, um, a na, a captain in the US Navy. She's a reservist, so she was active duty during the first half of my marriage and then she went into the. So she's been serving in the reserve since then. She was deployed, um, during the pandemic for eight and a half months.

And so it was me and, uh, four kids, and that was an interesting time in our life. She currently works at, um, a Christian community development center, um, that serves under-resourced, um, children and family. She's a pediatrician there, so people on, um, [00:11:00] everyone, Medicaid, Medicare. If you don't have insurance, you speak English, you don't speak English.

It's all of the languages 'cause it's outside of Chicago. So she drives about an hour, two or three days a week to go and serve there because you know that missionary spirit that we had as a family. Never left us. She's actually, I call it the impressive Macaulay. She's a captain. Um, and so, and she's a doctor.

A doctor. And so you're both doctors, you're a paradox. Yeah. So they, they, they call, they call my, they do. The kids say, mom's the real doctor. 'cause she actually holds people. You just talk about God, like I can do that. She, my, my oldest, my oldest daughter's, like, I've heard you talk so many times, I will go and do it for half the price.

So yeah, we, so I have a 16-year-old, a 14-year-old, um, a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old who, um, we were over, like you said, for six months in Yarnton as a family. And so part of the [00:12:00] reason we wanted to go to Europe was we had spent, um. That eight and a half months separated as a family during the pandemic.

Yeah. And that was a really hard season for our family, and we kind of thought of that time in the UK as kind of like this extended time together as a family. So it really was healing and it really was during its blessings. I'd like to say publicly again. Thank you. You don't understand how that fit within the wider narrative of what God was up to.

And our family's life. And so, um, yes, my wife, she's amazing. Alright. And, and your four kids are great. It's something that I find interesting. First of all, tell us the adult books that you have written. Oh, so, uh, my first book is called Sharing the Sun's Inheritance. It's the dissertation that I wrote with, um, with Auntie Wright about inheritance in Galatians to what Paul means when he talks about the inheritance.

I think Paul believes that Christians share in, um. God's new creation, we are actually gonna inherit the world, um, in the renewed creation with Jesus. And that's our, that's what we're due. [00:13:00] We will have our place in God's kingdom. The second book that I wrote was called Reading While Black African American, the Book of Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope.

That book was written, um, when I came back to the United States, and it was during the height of the kind of racial unrest, um, in 20 16, 17, and 18. And I remember listening to someone. On the television saying that this is different than your parents' civil rights movement, that we're gonna do things differently.

And I thought, well, no. The African American church was often motivated by their faith, and the relevance of faith for social action is still important. In other words, I thought that the witness. Of the black church to justice was something we, we, we needed to maintain. And a lot of times those people did that because of what they saw in the Bible.

In other words, it wasn't the Bible or caring about the poor. It's because what the Bible says, we care about the poor and the mistreated people. So that was Book two. I wrote a book on Lent and then I wrote a book that was my family story, um, called Share, um, how Far to the [00:14:00] Promised Land my father died.

In 2017, and he has struggled with addiction through most of my life. And I didn't know him and my family when he died, asked me to write the eulogy. Um, and his name is actually Esau McCauley. So we share the same name. It's a really odd phenomenon to see a tombstone that says Issa Macauley, when your name's Issa Macaulay, when you say, I commend Issa Macauley to the ground.

And so the process of when you do a, you have to. Find out about the person's life story and in the process of finding out about my life, my father's life story, it actually expanded out into a family history and that family history and wound up becoming the book How Far To The Promised Land, which covers my family over four generations trying to make a life for themselves.

In the South and what they experienced from Jim Crow all the way up through the war on drugs when I was a teenager. And so that was a, a personal book, which is kind of surprising. You write all of this academic [00:15:00] stuff and then you write, um, a memoir. And so those are the adult books that currently exist.

Well, in addition to that, you took advantage of the time where you were. Uh, basically a single parent while your wife is doing service for all of us. Yeah. Um, uh, you started writing also some children's books? Yeah, so at the time, like my wife was deployed, if you remember, 2020 and, I don't know, I think the Illinois might be different than Texas, but they were pretty locked down.

In Illinois, we couldn't really go anywhere, basically the backyard, um, I remember playing football, we, we could invite people over and they were on one side of the yard and we were on the other side of the yard, and our kids would throw the football to each other and there was pizza in the middle and they would go and get the pizza, but they couldn't get close to one another.

So this actually, that was actually what it was like. And so some of my public, my publishers reached out to me and said, have you ever thought about writing a children's book? And at the time it was such a hard, my wife was gone. I couldn't do anything. That [00:16:00] academic, I just didn't have the brain space. And I said, yeah, it'd be really helpful to start writing children's books.

And so I wrote one that was about my, um, my oldest daughter, second oldest in the family, and then it came out and it did reasonably well, and the kids got, the other three got mad, like, why did she get a book? And so I had to quickly call the, um, editor and say, I need to write three more books. It's gonna be like the, who's the favorite thing is gonna reach the fever pitch.

And so I wrote, I wrote three more, um, books. Um, they're gonna come out over the next couple of years. So I wrote three more children's books. But then I got a call from a different editor who saw those same books and said, oh, could you write a children's Bible? And it took me back to when I was a kid, well, not, you don't write a Choice's Bible, you kind of translate a Bible down.

These aren't Issa college stories. They're stories from the Bible. And so it, it taught me back. It brought me back, and I knew what it was like. To have a book as a kid that introduced me to the love of scripture. [00:17:00] And I was like, yes. And I probably had more fun writing those books than anything else I've ever written.

And my kids, um, they love them. And if you, you can kinda look at them 'cause they, the pictures look like my kids. Um, I made it so it doesn't look like me. The guy who is me in the books has hair and so, you know, you know, it's fiction. Um, but the, the kids look at the kids. And my wife actually, they changed her too.

So the parents aren't the real parents, but the kids look basically like my kids. At that age during the pandemic. So it's also a snapshot. Okay. I've met you. I've met your wife. Yeah. Um, uh, I did. I don't remember if I met your kids. I think I may have. Oh, you've met a couple of them. Miriam was really upset about this and she wanted me to tell you.

Hello. Hello. Oh, good. She said she was really sad. She, I didn't get to meet Mr. Mark, so she was really, really sad about that last night. So she says hello. Would you tell Miriam that? Uh uh, we treasure. She comes with you next time because Okay. Then we'll [00:18:00] come back. You, you said she was her your favorite?

Yes. No, we have four daughters. They are all absolutely convinced each one of them Yeah. That they are my favorite. You have two boys and two girls, and so there, there's a battle and so the older daughter was the one who's the first book was about. And Miriam was the one who demanded a book, then led to the rest of them.

So, alright. I asked you to bring your computer. Yeah. By the way, uh, those who, who have not met you, you're, you're, um, a black American. Yes. Your wife is a white American. Yes. We are in an interracial marriage. And actually one of the things, my favorite chapter, and not that you have to buy the book, don't worry about it, but if you decide to buy our, our, our story, um, how far to the Promised Land, there's a chapter called Fools Fall in Love.

That tells the story of how I met and proposed to my wife. It's my favorite chapter of things that I've ever written. I would say I have two favorite books. Um, the chapter in How Far to the Promised Land people. Um, [00:19:00] talk about the audio book, and I don't know if this is true 'cause I'm not listened to it and they say my voice changed because I read the audio book when I read the chapter about how we met one another.

I dunno if that's actually true, but if they say that I sound, I sound like I am. Give us three minutes of how you met one another just so we don't have to read the book. Oh man. We met in that Bible study you met in the Romans Bible study at Suwanee the Roman, and it was, our coach used to tell us, um, like the day before the game, you should like stay off your feet and get rested.

But she, it was before homecoming, we were playing our big rifle and she said, do you wanna go on a hike? And I said yes, and that's when I knew I had it bad. And I don't even like hike. So I'm like chasing her around this mountain and like she's talking about stuff and it's just, I don't know. There was, there was just this, um, she really loves the Lord.

I think that, I mean, I'm not, this is not marriage advice class, but like there's something about a shared commitment to Jesus that makes a [00:20:00] marriage or relationship work and we both are serious about our faith and. We got along and she, she still likes to hike. I still like to avoid it as often as possible and because I'm still like in love with her, I still go on mountains.

She even got me to climb Mount Fuji one time, um, when we were stationed in Japan, and I don't know, that's when I knew, I was like, this is not gonna go away it night, believe it or not at night, because it's better to start at night. So then you can see the sunrise to the next morning. And I said, also it means if you fall off the mountain, they won't be able to find you.

But, but I did it. I climbed Mount Fuji. Yeah. Alright, so you've got, uh, children. Yeah. Um, do what, what's their skin color? How, I mean, does, does it vary on the range? I mean, they look like, they look like our kids. I mean, they look like, um, uh, our kids, I don't know how to describe it, like brown skinned kids, but I mean, do they all look the same?

Because like they all, some of our, they all, they all, you can't even tell. If [00:21:00] you look at the pictures of my daughters, um, they are like, at the ages, they look like they, they look like twins. In other words, they all look the same. I mean, they all look like their siblings. Alright? Yeah. 'cause some of our kids wound up having blonder hair, some of them darker hair.

All of, some of them of them. I mean, just like, I mean. I don't know how to describe. Well, let's look at the kid's book. Look at the kid's book. I made you bring the, the, the, the computer to show. Yeah, you can see some of it. So let's put up here. So this is, you can, you can see that's my oldest son, Peter, no, sorry.

That's my, um, youngest son, Peter there in the middle over to, what is my right is Miriam. She's the actually the baby of the family. And then there is Luke. And then there is overall on the left. Wait, they're not gonna be happy if they see this on video and we don't point it out. Yeah. Sorry, I should give, who's this?

I should give them the fictional name in fiction. They're Josie. That's everyone's middle name. Also Claire, [00:22:00] my daughter. And then that's Who's this? That's me with tons of hair. That's you and your dreams? That's me. That's me in the eighties. That's you until you look in the mirror. Yeah, that's what I see on overseas.

Who's this? That's Peter. Who's this? And that's my wife, Mandy. And then that's Luke, and then that's Miriam. But obviously in the book what we did is we gave all of the fictional characters their middle names. So that is, um, Josie, my middle, my daughter's middle name is Josephine. That's Andy. His middle name is Andrew, 'cause he was born in St.

Andrew's. Um, that's Isaiah because his middle name is Isaiah. Isaiah is my favorite prophet. And then there is Miriam whose middle name is Anne named after. Um, that's a family name on both sides of our family. And that's, um, her, so, okay. And, and this book comes out when, in December you can get it for your kids for, um, a Grandkids for Christmas.

It tells the [00:23:00] story of the role, um, basically of the black church in marching for justice in this erase movement. And so Andy hears about, um, a march and he thinks, oh, it's March. Marching off the battle. Like, no, Christians don't battle that way. They battle using prayer and song and, and marches for like justice.

And so it teaches them the role of faith and pushing for change in the United States. Dear friend of. Mine. Uh, he's become a dear friend and, and a hero of mine that I interviewed right here on this platform, in this class within the last year. It just occurred to me, you might know him. Fred Gray. I know the name.

I don't think we met personally. Okay. Fred Gray was Martin Luther King's lawyer. Yeah. Yeah. And he preached. Yeah, he's still, is he still around here somewhere? Yeah, he's, well, he's in Tuskegee. Yes. And he's 94 right now. Yes. Um, uh, uh, and, uh. Just doing great. Okay. [00:24:00] Now you've got, I asked you also to bring just like book illustration from the kid's Bible.

This is something, I didn't draw any of this, so I can't steal any credit, but this is like creation. One of the good this, this Bible tells the story of the biblical narrative. It doesn't have all of the stories. It has maybe 15 in the old seven and 15 in the New Testament, but it points at God's desire to create.

A multi multicolored kingdom from people from every child, tongue nation, like from the promise made to Abraham. You'll be a father to many nations to the very end of the story where the nations gather in. And so it's helping people to understand, first of all, the biblical story within the biblical story.

God's desire to bring people together. And so I love the illustration of this, and you can see this is an example of the fall. I thought that was pretty beautiful right there. You can kind of see that image representing it, but it's also kind of gloriously. Synchronistic and the fact that it has people, um, both from the present day and from the biblical narrative.

I wanna see if I can find one. This is [00:25:00] the, the story of Noah right there. I love the artwork in it. There's one of them that I wanted to see. This is one of my favorite pictures. Um, if, you know, there's this part in Genesis 10 when they give a Table of nations that show how all of the peoples of the world are connected together.

And so in this one it obviously has different kinds of people. Who are all involved in the Table of Nations, that shows kind of the interconnectedness of all people in God's story. And so I just love the art and I think that the person who did it was great. Now you cannot buy this book so you can see it.

No one has seen it except for the seven. How many people are in here? 300 of you all. So it's gonna come out like a year. We're about five. We're, we're about 500. 500 is 500, and we're about 200 on the internet watching 500 of my closest friends. You can get this book sometime in 2025 is probably when it comes out, I think in the fall of 2025.

You can't even pre-order it yet, but it's, keep it somewhere in the back of your mind when you're thinking about, um, Bibles for kids. I, it's probably one, like I said, these things [00:26:00] have a special place in my heart. 'cause I wrote 'em when I was locked down with my kids. And I would actually, I could, the way that I practiced is if I could read the story and my kids didn't wander off, then I knew it.

I hadn't bored them. And so it's kind of a joint project between me and the Macaulay kids for the rest of the world. Hopefully y'all eventually see it and you'll like it. Alright, now what do you teach at Wheaton? Very boring stuff. Just ordinary stuff. The Bible. So I teach like a class on Galatians. I'll teach a class on Romans.

So normally I do the gospels and Paul's letters. So the last class I taught was John, um, the class that I kept coming up next, introduction to New Testament, and I'll teach on the prison epistles, so it'll be Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon. So I teach. Just different books on the Bible. I have PhD students, and [00:27:00] so I usually tell them whatever they're focusing on for the doc TAL research, I would teach that class.

So they're working on John. I teach the class on John, so I just accepted another John student and I have a Luke student, so I owe a Luke class to my Luke student and a John class, my John student, and so everybody else can come too. But yeah, I just kind of teach different books in the Bible. Sometimes I do thematic classes, so next year I'll be teaching a class on the Bible and slavery.

Um, and how we think through the ways in which, which what I gave a lecture about last night, the abolitionist and the pro-slavery party, how both of them used the Bible to argue for their views and the way that we can use the Bible for good rather than for evil. Um, which is so commendable. And I loved your lecture last night.

Uh, uh, my wife is, uh, uh, doing stuff with kids and grandkids in Florida today, and we were talking this morning. And I was walking through your lecture with her. Yeah. And how profound I thought it was not just dealing with the racial issue. Yeah. Which, [00:28:00] uh, uh, is, uh, uh, to use Pastor Jar's talk this morning.

A line in the sand for, for the believer. Um, but, but even beyond that, uh, those arguments that were used to justify slavery. Yeah. The arguments that were used to combat slavery. Yeah. Are some of the same arguments that are propounded today on the issue of immigration? Yeah. On the issues of how we treat the poor, regardless of skin color.

Yeah. Um, uh, on the issues of how we treat women and what their place is. Yeah. And, and I wanna explore some of that with you in some ways we didn't get a chance to last night. Um, why don't you take, first to set it up three or four minutes and explain. The Readers Digest, if anybody Yeah. Remembers what that is version of, of what you did last night.

So a lot of people say that the abolitionist didn't have a very strong biblical argument and that they couldn't use [00:29:00] Jesus to support, um, the claim for deliberation of the slaves and that the pro-slavery party had a better argument. And I said, well, actually, I don't think that's true. Let's walk through what the abolitionists actually said.

And if you look at what the abolitionists used, they use Jesus all the time. To argue for the end of slavery. They talked about what Jesus said about loving your neighbors yourself. They talked about Jesus' own experience of poverty and his ministry that focused on the needy and the oppressed. They talked about Jesus' own genealogy, that that had different ethnic groups in it, showing that Jesus had a desire for all people to be a part of his family.

They used all the, even his cross the, the blood of Jesus. Says everybody equally. Therefore, you shouldn't enslave your fellow brother or sister. And so the pro-slavery party had to find a way to justify not showing compassion. And what they actually ended up doing was not using Jesus so much as using racism.

They used the [00:30:00] cursive ham, this idea that God had cursed African Amer African peoples to be slaves forever. And so at the, at the, at the heart of the. Pro-slavery, reading of the Bible was not just the interpretation of the Bible, but a, a racist interpretation of the Bible. And if you take away their racial interpretations of the Bible, then the argument kind of falls apart.

And the only argument that they actually had was Jesus didn't condemn slavery. And so I, I talked about. The role that racism played in biblical interpretation. And the reason that was so important is you often think about this in the abstract, does the Bible support slavery? Does it not support slavery?

That actually wasn't the question during the time period. The question was, does the Bible support erase a hierarchy that then allows the slavery to occur? 'cause there was, at this point, no more enslaving of fellow Europeans. They had actually. Ended slave, like there was not slavery of, of whites in the United States after a certain period of time.

And so once you combine the racist interpretations of the [00:31:00] Bible, um, with the slavery stuff, you begin to understand what the pro-slavery part was actually arguing. And I wanted to contend that the, that Jesus rightly understood was on the side of liberation. And that's what the pro abolitionist party wanted to say.

You have to imagine what Jesus and the disciples would call the church to do if they had the same money and resources as we have in the United States. And their understanding of Jesus' ministry was that if Jesus was in the situation of Christians in the 19th century with money, resources, the votes and the power.

That Jesus and the early church would've been on the side of liberation, not on the side of oppression because of Jesus's ministry towards the marginalized neo oppressed. Um, you know, one of the things that it caused me to, to think through last night was, um, we can make those arguments as Christians [00:32:00] and, and as Christians explain that the Bible says everyone.

Is a child of God. Yeah. Made in the image of God and to be treated with the love and respect of God and, and that God calls and Jesus instructed people to go into all the nations. Yeah. And to preach the gospel not only into Western Europe where there are white people to preach the gospel. Yeah. Because the church is for every nation and for all peoples.

Yeah. And we can make that argument, but the people who don't believe in God. Are in a much different situation now? Well, yeah. I, I, I would say that like, um, GK Chesterton says something like, um, Christian, what happened with the rise of secularization is a lot of Christian ideas were detaching Christianity and now just run wild without the same intellectual foundations.

And so we do have this idea of tolerance love as a supreme good, um, that. [00:33:00] We should care for diversity as if that's just a universal human idea. But those ideas were Christian ideas. If you had asked, you know, a, a Roman in the first century, what's the highest ideal? Sacrificial love for neighborhood?

Would've not been there. And so we created this context in the West. The sacrificial love for neighbor was something that we ought to try to practice even when we failed in it as Christians. This is fundamentally a Christian behind that. A Jewish idea like this isn't just from Christianity. Obviously the Old Testament teaches the same kinds of compassion and you, and you do see that, that there are, and this is one of the things that always try to convince my, my beloved Christian brothers and sisters 'cause I teach at the university and our students care a lot about justice.

And sometimes, and that's a good thing, anybody who talks about justice will do, they don't actually care about the intellectual foundation. And so I'd say you either give students a [00:34:00] biblical foundation, you help them to understand how this is integrated in their faith and flows from their faith. So then they're stable in life.

They can see, um, how these things fit within the Christian life, or you create a conflict in the student between compassion and Jesus. And what I want to say to people is you don't have to have that, that tension, that the bi, that the God that we worship and the God that we serve. Is the God who, like he says, I've seen the suffering of my peoples in Egypt.

I've come to rescue them. This is a part of our heritage when in the Old Testament it says, why should you care for the widow and the orphan and the foreigner? 'cause remember, you yourselves are slaves once in Egypt. So the memory of oppression was supposed to inform Christian compassion. We talked about this in the lecture.

One of the things that was really interesting about the slavery debate. If the pro-slavery party was trying to explain why the love command, love your neighbor as yourself, do unto others as you would have been doing unto [00:35:00] you, did not apply to the slaves. And so they were saying, I know it may seem reasonable based upon the love command to help the slaves.

Here's why you shouldn't do that. And one of the things that I, that I see sometimes is we do the same thing today. We try to find reasons why the command to love your neighbor doesn't apply to certain people. And the point is, and I think this is the story of the Good Samaritan, who is my neighbor? The person who is in need.

And so I think that if we as the church lead in that direction, then we're less likely to lose our, our young people who care about these things. And this isn't following after culture. It's actually saying what is in our Bible That our, that the, that the Bible that we consider the word of God. Has a lot to say about suffering people and that our silence on that is not biblical fidelity.

It is editing the Bible. One of the things they did, um, for, for the slaves, they gave them an edited Bible. [00:36:00] They took out the Exodus story, they took out the prophets. They took out a lot of Jesus's miracles because they knew that if they had the entire Bible. That they would lead to their unrest, and so they gave people in an edited Bible.

What I keep saying to people is that we don't need to be less biblical. We need to be more, just don't edit the Bible. Give them the whole thing. Give them the justice, give them the holiness, give them the ethics, give them the whole thing. And I think that the vision of Christian life included in the entirety of the Bible is sufficient for the Christian life and it's beyond us, right?

It's this thing that we see. This immature, who Jesus is, that we can never fully attain to. We never become like Jesus. But the chasing after him is a life that is filled with joy. The hardest thing we'll ever do, 'cause we can never actually achieve it. But His grace keeps us from despairing, and that's what I just want us to give to our students, give them the whole book.

Wow. That's fantastic. Yeah. Um, [00:37:00] I was, uh, uh. Uh, got a chance to be a part of the, the preaching seminar that, that our church did. Uh, earlier this week, uh, out at the, the Learning Center, uh, pastor Jart brought in 250 different preachers and at it's a lot of ing Yeah. To, uh, I tell you some of those, some of those breakfast prayers are about 30 minutes long.

Oh, that was just warm up. Those prayer sermons. Yeah. Yeah. That was just a warm up. Um, uh. They, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. They, uh, um, um, although, look, time out. Come up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you, come on. Come on up. Come on. Is, is this mic working as well? Can we, can we make this mic work? Yes, yes, yes.

Come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All the way up. Introduce yourself to everybody. Hello. Uh, my name is Kiwi. Uh, [00:38:00] like the fruit or the bird? Um, yes, it is my real name. Yeah. Um, anything else I have to say? Uh, yeah. Um, uh, so where's your heritage? I, so my parents are originally from Korea. Um, but I was born in Jamaica, the Caribbean island.

I'm a paradox, but, but Right. You, you can speak Korean. You speak Korean at home. I do. And you go to Korea. You, you can navigate in Korea. Tell them. About the biggest church in Korea. Yeah. There is an Assemblies of God church out in Korea. Um, it's hundreds of thousands of people. It's like six or 700,000 people.

Yeah. Now they meet every morning for prayer. At what time? At five 30. In the morning and they'll have 60,000 people show up for a five 30 prayer service every morning. Right. [00:39:00] Wow. Yeah. And, and it still happens today and in Korea, most Korean churches, if not all, will have a 5:30 AM service. Can I, can I tell you, this might be, you may not believe this, but actually pastor.

In a Korean Presbyterian church. And I didn't know about this five 30 prayer service that was not in the interview process. And I'm like, what? So I thought I loved the Lord. But yes, I was when I was, I mean that's a lot of praying. I mean, I'm sorry, like I'm like 30 minutes at seven 30. I was like, that was good.

But like. And they, no one told me this, like, we're gonna have a prayer at five 30. What do you mean? We're gonna have prayer at five 30? The sun's not even up yet. Yeah. And there's snow on the road. It was when I, when I used to work at Dartmouth College and there was a camp, there was a campus ministry that was at Dartmouth College and there was the outreach of a Korean Presbyterian church.

And it started off as like an inter Asian ministry, like different, um, ethnic groups within, within Asian ethnic groups. And then it actually turned into a [00:40:00] multicultural group. So they had white students and African students, and African American students and Caribbean students. And so they said, we need to, we want to have like leadership that looks like that.

So they hired me. So it was like 50% Asian, 20 per percent, 25% white, and 25% black. And yes, I, I, I had my first at kimchi. It was great. It was, um, early morning prayer. It was, it was, no, I mean, I'm not kidding when I say that was my favorite experience of ministry was being a part. And they just vocal me into the community.

Um, so anyway, sorry. Yeah, you reminded me that we, I didn't know. Well, well, you reminded me of it because you were complaining about 30 minutes of prayer thinking five 30 every day, baby, because I think you guys are starting that here this week. Um, yes. Yes. Kiwi and you'll be leading it and, uh, that'll be great.

Uh, by the way, if I've taken you up here and, and for a moment, um, Kiwi runs. One of the most incredible organizations in the Christian world, in my [00:41:00] opinion. It used to be John Stotts Ministries, John Stot, the Christian Mind. That stuff great, great, uh, Anglican theologians back in the day. No, no, no, no.

Everybody, no, everybody else is standing up. I feel like it's No. I'm, I Here, here, there we go. Just here, here. I'm kneel. Never go. So. No. So, so anyway, he, um, um. It's now called Lanham Partners Partnership. Yeah. Lanham Partnership. But tell them what y'all do. Sure. I I don't run it. I, I have the privilege of being on the team.

A wonderful team, uh, of Lanham partnership. We're called a partnership because we exist in the United States, but there's also partners all over the world in Canada and the UK and Australia. Uh, and John Stot, his heart was to see the level of biblical teaching. Elevated for leaders and Christians and pastors in the majority world, most pastors have no formal training.

In the majority world define majority world. Majority world is anywhere [00:42:00] outside of the west. And so USA, Canada, uk, Europe, Australia. And so any other country outside of those developed countries, we now call the majority world. Because the majority of the people live outside the West, that that's the only reason why we call it the majority world.

And how many PhD programs have you funded your, your organization funded? Yeah. So, uh, since the founding of our ministry in the ear, the late fifties, early sixties, we've now been six decades, uh, into the ministry. Um, there are 93 scholars, maybe 96. 90 plus scholars serving all over the world that have graduated from PhD programs that are now back in their home context, leading and serving in, in, in various ministries.

That's fantastic. Thank you ki we appreciate it. Okay, so. Raising up scholars around the world to have a difference, to make a difference. That's also what you're doing. You've served tell 'em [00:43:00] the various churches where you have served, uh, around the world. So I've served in, in including your recent church plant.

Okay. So Virginia, well, Alabama, Virginia. Um. I'm trying to do it in order so I don't forget them. Then I was in Okinawa, Japan, and then there we go, Okinawa. And then I was in Jacksonville, Florida, and then I was in St. Andrew's, Scotland, um, and then Rochester, New York. And now I'm planning a church if everybody wants to move to the Midwest.

High property taxes, bad weather. Um, but we are planning a, a multiethnic Anglican church in Naperville in Illinois. We just started that a few months ago. So even though I was in academic, I felt like. Um, it needed to touch the actual local church. And so I felt this strong call that I didn't just want to be, and not to say that traveling and speaking isn't important.

I'm happy to be here, but I didn't just want to travel and talk to people that I didn't know about. Jesus. I wanted to do the stuff that you all do, that there's a [00:44:00] community that you call home that you can serve in on a consistent basis. And I felt like I needed something. I felt like God was calling me to do something that was more grounded.

So. Um, people won't see me travel as much as they had in the past because I'm really excited about what God's gonna do, um, in Naperville. So we just started that, um, about two months ago and we haven't even had our first meeting, our first official launch, if you're hoping to launch, um, on Easter. So if you're in Naperville on Easter, come and say hello.

Alright, fantastic. Probably be snow on the ground, so you should be, I'm warning y'all, Texans. It's like you might need snow tires, just like four wheel drive, but you'll be fine. Yeah. Okay. Now, um, uh, you have ministered through these churches. Yeah. Um, I did not know about Rochester, New York. Yes. Um, I lived in Rochester.

Yeah. It's a, I mean, one of the things that, um, I've ministered in, in tons of places. I, I left out Massachusetts, um, and New Hampshire, so actually I forgot about those. And so I've served in [00:45:00] different places in Christianity. The gospel doesn't change like the truth of who we are and our call doesn't change, but the questions are different depending on where you are.

Um, Rochester and New England are very secular places and there's a lot of skepticism of Christianity, and they really want to know, um, what I like to say in, in New England, they know about justice. They don't know about Jesus. And you often have to say, okay, here's all of this stuff that you're passionate about.

Here's how Christianity answers both those needs. And the spiritual needs that you don't know that you have and that's that work in different parts of in in the, in the nor New England and upstate New York. When I was in the South, there's kind of this residual understanding of who Jesus is. More of a de church come back to Christianity kind of thing.

But they struggle to understand how Christianity isn't just this personal thing that I have. The Christianity brings us out to the community and love and service. And when you're in England it's really interesting 'cause like in completely secular places. [00:46:00] They have no concept of Christianity at all.

It's like you come from the moon if you say you're Christian in parts of Scotland. And so I've just, or even in Japan that it's like 0.01% Christian. And so the gospel doesn't change, but the things that you need to, um. Due to make a difference. I remember when I was first started, um, we had this ministry in Japan where we collect, we, we bought food from one place that was helping the homeless transition out by buying a garden.

So we would buy the food, make some soup, and then take it to a different place where the actual, the homeless still were. And one of the hard things that people didn't understand is like, why are you doing this? Because there was, there was this idea in, in that culture that if you were poor, you kind of deserved it.

And so even that compassion work had to be explained, like, why are you out here camp with these people? You know, some of the, because the, some of the residual stuff around Buddhism was like, you are there because you did something in your past life. And [00:47:00] so even in those places, the compassion takes on a different kind of tenor and explaining like why we were so committed to doing these things.

And so I've done ministry in a lot of different places and in all of them I've tried to have the same. Kind of philosophy, where is the way that you can effectively bring the truth of Christianity to that group of people so they hear it, understand it, and see the beauty of what God might be able to do in their life.

Alright. You regularly write columns for the New York Times? Yes. Um, uh, how do you decide what to write? I just pay attention. And so, so I mean, one of the things is I, it sounds, that sounds very simple. But, uh, I, I, I, I live my life and I listen and I look for stories and I see the ways in which, um, there might be something that I can say to a second audience that might change the way they view the world.

So if you're a Christian, you can [00:48:00] say something like, the Bible says A, B, and C, therefore you should do A, B, and C. But if you're not a Christian, you can't tell people what to do in the New York Times, what you can do is show, Hey, here's how my faith influences how I see the world. And maybe this view of the world is interesting to you.

So rather than saying what you must do like to say perhaps. Um, and so I, I kind of get, I, I, I talk about my family a lot. Um, I talk about, there is this one article that I wrote, um, that talked about being married means not getting exactly what you want. And they, in order to really, yeah, I know they thought it was radical too.

Uh, because it was, sorry. There was, there's sometimes you can have these kind of. Self-actualization stories that the job of your partner is to help make all of your dreams come true. And you know, those kinds of stories, if they can't help all of your dreams come true, you should toss 'em to their side.

They're like, no, no, no. Like marriage involves a form of death that who you thought you might be has to go away so that you might become what you might both be together, [00:49:00] right? And something beautiful emerges from that compromise. Now, in that story, I didn't mention religion at all. Like I didn't say, you didn't say, Paul said, love your wives as Christ, love your church.

No, I didn't do that. I just say, I said, sacrificial love can create something beautiful. And people, some people were annoyed by it. Like, no, I want everything, you know, I want a, a coboss. Like, well, no, that's not how it works. And so there are times where you can just talk about the ways in which you see things differently.

And so that's part of it. And sometimes they're explicitly religious pieces. My mother, um, did a lot of family history and we located, this sounds odd, but it's true. We located the place where my ancestors were enslaved. That plantation still stands. And the, was it in Alabama? It's in Alabama. It's in a place called Mayville.

You can still, like, you can Google it. Um, and so if you wanna look it up, but the article's called the, the Faith of the Cotton Fields, you, the Esau Macau Plantation, Christianity, New York Times, it'll come up. But the story is my mom buys the, [00:50:00] the, um, the graveyard where my ancestors were buried. So for $500, they don't sell to the rest of the property.

We couldn't afford it anyway. We could only afford to buy the graves. And in the research we found out that the people who owned my ancestors were actually Christians. He was a Christian minister in the area. He was in the com, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. His name was Matthew Bone. He's remembered in the denomination is kind of this heroic figure.

My grandfather. And the happenstance of history actually becomes a Cumberland Presbyterian pastor in the black version of the denomination. And I talked about how I was still a Christian, despite the fact that Christianity had been used to oppress my ancestors. And that was a distinctly Christian story, but it was also personal story.

It was like we found this story about our family history. There was a guy named Matthew Bone, who was a famous preacher. My grandfather named Theodore Bone a hundred years later is a famous preacher. They're both Cumberland Presbyterians. The land where my ancestors were enslaved. It's only [00:51:00] been to two families.

One family who enslaved this had it. They sold it to one family, then another family bought it, and that family still owns it, and you can go and visit that plantation. My family's been there. And what does it look, what does it mean to like be in that place and to see the graveyard? That my ancestors own.

The piece talks about, it ends with the state without the resurrection. That when my ancestors are called from the ground, because they were Christians, they're gonna be raised on free soil. And that was a deeply Christian piece, right? Because that was a part of my story, but it wasn't prescriptive, it was descriptive.

It's like, how do I wrestle with the reality that Christianity was a force for evil? And what I said is Christianity rightly understood can also be a force for good. And that was the legacy that my grandfather passed on to me, and that's what I try to pass on to my children. Wow. What an amazing story.

But y'all join me in thanking him.

Um, [00:52:00] it is time for us to, to, to bring this to a close thanks to the folks on the internet. Thanks to y'all for being here. Uh, traditionally as I close class, I pronounce a blessing over the class or a prayer blessing. Uh, would you please do that for us today? Sure. And then, uh, we will, uh, close May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May the Lord make his face, John, upon you, may the Lord turn his face towards you. Be gracious to you and grant you peace. Amen. Amen.