Episode 122: Emerson Powery - The Bible as a Source of Liberation

In this episode of The Bible for Normal People Podcast, Pete and Jared talk with Emerson Powery about biblical interpretation in the Antebellum narratives of the enslaved as they explore the following questions:

• Why did enslaved people adopt the religion of their enslavers?
• What is intertextuality?
• What was the significance of Paul for enslaved people? 
• What books or passages were emphasized in slave spirituals?
• Why is resurrection not emphasized in slave narratives?
• What was the significance of the curse of Ham in the Antebellum period?
• What is proof-texting?
• Is the Bible a book of liberation?
• How is biblical interpretation a living tradition?
• How has Emerson’s study of history influenced his experience in his faith community?
• What is the power of imagination in biblical interpretation?
• How did enslaved people understand Jesus?

Tweetables

Pithy, shareable, less-than-280-character statements from Emerson Powery you can share. 

• “Love God, love neighbor seems to be a fundamental starting point.” @EmersonBPowery
• “If my reading of the Bible dehumanizes someone, there’s probably something wrong with my reading of the Bible.” @EmersonBPowery
• “I think the Bible cannot speak for itself, I think the Bible always has interpreters.” @EmersonBPowery
• “Communities read Scripture best when they are committed to one another and committed to others.” @EmersonBPowery
• “How does one use the Bible in relation to the other?”@EmersonBPowery

Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: The Genesis of Liberation
• Book: Stony the Road We Trod
• Book: Slave Religion
• Patreon: The Bible for Normal People

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[Introduction]

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Pete: You’re listening to The Bible for Normal People. The onlyGod-ordained podcast on the internet. I’m Pete Enns.

Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.

[Jaunty Intro Music]

Jared:Welcome everyone, to this episode of The Bible for Normal People. Todaywe have with us Emerson Powery, who is a Biblical Studies Professor at MessiahCollege and it was a very interesting conversation. We brought him in because,Pete, you had heard him before.

Pete:Yeah, he came to Eastern University a couple of years ago. He gave a talk onthis topic, which we’re going to talk about in a second. And it was just veryimpressive and really awakening in just, ya know, listen, you hear people talkabout things they know something about and you don’t know much about it at all,and it was just very impressive and I felt like I was missing out on so much. Ijust knew I wanted to keep talking to Emerson about this topic.

Jared: Wewant to be clear about the topic, so we’re putting it off because we want totalk about it a little bit - it’s biblical interpretation in the antebellumnarrative of the enslaved.

Pete:Right.

Jared:And that comes from the subtitle of his book and so, let’s just talk a littlebit about what that means. We’re talking about biblical interpretation, how theBible was interpreted in the antebellum narratives of the enslaved. What’s theantebellum narratives of the enslaved?

Pete: Beforethe civil war.

Jared: Right.So, while they’re enslaved, there’s these narratives that historians likeEmerson have been able to recover and read and see how the Bible’s being usedin these letters, and he calls them narratives. I think there’s letters andother parts of texts –

Pete: Right.Well, they’re telling their story –

Jared:Right.

Pete: Andfrom the point of view of those who were formerly enslaved. So, these storiesare really being documented, let’s say, after the end of the civil war. But,it’s just a wonderful window into, really the nature of Biblicalinterpretation, that we’re all doing things like appropriating texts in waysthat are meaningful to us, and, you know, I just thought it was a fascinatingdiscussion when I heard him first a couple of years, and when we have thisinterview with him. And, the title of the book is The Genesis ofLiberation, that’s the main title. And that’s what we’re going to talkabout today, and we had a really enlightening time talking with Emerson about atopic he’s thought an awful lot about.

Jared:Alright, well, let’s get to it!

[Musicbegins]

Emerson:I think the Bible cannot speak for itself. I think the Bible always hasinterpreters.

Pete:Well, if there’s no one concrete way of understanding these texts, if we’re allsort of reading these things in light of our experience, how do you ever knowwhich side is right? And the answer might be, well, how are you treatingpeople?

Emerson:No, I think that’s right. You know, love God, love neighbor seems to be kind ofa fundamental starting point. So how does one treat one’s neighbor? How doesone use the Bible in relationship to the other?

[Musicends]

Jared:Welcome, welcome Emerson, to this episode of the podcast. It’s great to haveyou on!

Emerson:Great, thanks to be with you guys.

Jared:Yeah, I’m real excited about our topic for today. Before we get there thought,can you just give us a little, one or two minute spiritual biography, both yourspiritual journey, but also how did you become interested in this topic, theBible as a source of liberation, and how the Bible was received in theantebellum period, and all the things that you do now. How did you get intothat? So maybe start there.

Emerson:Okay. I grew up in a Christian home. My father is a minister, retired minister,and my parents actually came to the U.S. They came from the Caribbean and theycame to the U.S. as missionaries. So, I grew up, in many ways, a missionarykid. I was born in New York. My two other brothers were born on the islands,but I was born in New York. So, I grew up in a home in which there was lots ofscripture reading, lots of engagement with the Bible. My parents also workedfor the American Bible Society, so they were also very ecumenical and that alsoshaped my own kind of engagement with the Bible as an early, in my early years.Even though my father was the Pentecostal, was the black Pentecostalrepresentative at the American Bible Society, they had a white Pentecostal anda black Pentecostal representative at the American Bible Society, that’sprobably a conversation for another day, but that meant that the way we readscripture was very much about our experience and our, how it can inform ourspiritual lives daily. And I grew up in that environment and that, I’m sure hada lot to do with my own kind of, trajectory, in terms of thinking aboutBiblical studies as a future. I didn’t begin there. I have an associate’sdegree in aviation administration, so I began off in a very different route. Mytwo older brothers, one went into accounting and the other one went intocomputer science, and I was kind of headed in that direction too, but somewherein the middle of my college years, I felt a call to go into something moredirectly into ministry. Although, it didn’t feel like pastoral ministry.

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So, itdidn’t feel like the traditional pastorate, but I went and got an undergraduatedegree in biblical and religious studies and then I went to seminary andcontinued on this journey, wrote a master’s thesis on Moses and the fourthgospel, but was really engaged in trying to figure out how lots of differentpeople were utilizing the Bible. So, my own journey from those early years wasstarting to kind of inform larger theological questions for me. And so, Icontinue to pursue them and went on to do a Ph.D. study in what was called atthe time Christian origins, early Christian origins, and wrote a dissertationon how Jesus used scripture. I was still very much interested in the functionof scripture, how scripture was functioning for different communities, and allof that led me into investigation of how early African Americans in thiscountry engaged the text, engaged the Biblical text. There was recentdiscussion when I was in grad school, Cain Felder’s edited volumes Stony theRoad We Trod came out, and a number of my peers and I were kind of readingthat on the side while we were doing our other, more formal work. And althoughat the time I didn’t quite see how intertextuality and black life was goingtogether in direct, kind of, formal/theoretical ways, when I looked back at mydissertation, I had footnotes in there about Sojourner Truth and how she says Idon’t just read small things like letters, I read texts and nations, right?

Pete: Mmhmm.

Emerson:So that was kind of informing behind the scenes, that was kind of doing somework on me.

Pete: Now,Emerson, before we go on, you mentioned a word intertextuality?

Emerson:Yeah.

Pete: Canyou explain that?

Emerson:Yeah, so, I think about it simply as the way later texts interact with earliertexts. So, and that could happen in a variety of ways. So, I mean, earlyChristians reading from their sacred scripture, and how they might reread it ina specific kind of way. I’m just thinking, I was actually looking at a passagetoday in a class, we were looking at Deuteronomy 24 and then how Jesus reads itin Mark 10.

Pete: Mmhmm.

Emerson:In Deuteronomy 24, it’s talking about a male, right, giving a bill ofdivorcement to his wife. And it’s in a women in the Bible class, so in Mark 10it was not just that the male could be allowed to give the bill of divorcement,but a female could be allowed to give a bill of divorcement, without going intoJesus’ own intention over divorce. You know, it’s just kind of an interestingengagement of one text inside of another text, and how that text functionsthere, but also how later readers engage with an older text. So,intertextuality, I know can be defined in more sophisticated, theoretical ways,but for me it’s as simple as one text getting new life in another text.

Pete:Yeah, and both of those texts are part of, let’s say, Christian scripture,right?

Emerson:Yeah, that’s right. 

Pete: Becauseit’s within our Bible we see this relationship between texts, that’sintertextuality.

Emerson:Yeah, that’s right. That’s the way intertextuality is generally used inbiblical studies, yeah.

Pete:Yeah. So okay, I mean, that brings us then, I think, to our topic, becausewe’re looking at the, and something you’ve written about recently, fairlyrecently, the way in which the Bible was used, can we say appropriated?

Emerson:Yeah.

Pete: Ormaybe reimaged or something like that –

Emerson:Yeah.

Pete: Onthe part of enslaved African Americans before the Civil War. And that’s anexploration on your part on just, on hermeneutics, on interpretation, right?And on how people have used texts and why they’ve used texts the way they have,right?

Emerson:Yeah, that’s right.

Jared: Well,that bring us to something we were talking about earlier before we hit recordthat we thought was really interesting, which is, you know, at the verybeginning when we’re talking about enslaved peoples, it’s interesting thatAfrican Americans adopted the religion and the religious texts of those whoenslaved them. And just curious if you have theories or thoughts on, or studieson why that is, like what was going on that led to that? Because it seems alittle counterintuitive.

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Emerson:No, I think that’s right. I think that’s, I would not say that that was theoriginal question behind our work, but I would say that we were surprised by itas well, right? I mean, it’s one thing to, and it’s complicated. So, someformerly enslaved folks, and I’ll kind of use that, because most of the workthat I was working on was working with traditionally called slave narratives. Ilike to refer to them as freedom narratives, because these are all written byformerly enslaved individuals who were then reflecting back on their timeduring human bondage. So, but some folks, when they heard “slaves obey yourmasters,” one particular writer by the name of Charles Ball, he talks about hisgrandfather. My grandfather finally heard “slaves obey your masters” enough,and finally walked away from the Christian religion altogether, and decided toreturn to the faith of our African gods. So, it’s complicated. Some peopleheard that message, “slave obey your masters,” and they decided to try to findanother way to read Paul, right? So, and found, in Paul, a person, a fellowsufferer, a co-sufferer.

Pete: Uhhuh.

Emerson:One that we could use, he now stands with us, right? And so, the Paul of Actswho says, God hath made, they’re all reading the King James version, right? Godhath made of all nations one, made one of all nations, right? This idea fromActs 17, that’s the Paul they wanted to engage with. So, that was a way ofputting in conversation with, hang on – the “slaves obey your masters” can’t bethe final word. Must be something more.

Pete: So,they were capitalizing, is it fair to say they were capitalizing on the complexportrait of Paul in the New Testament itself, because Paul can sometimes soundlike he’s not questioning the institution of slavery, and elsewhere he’ssuffering at the hands of oppressors.

Emerson:Yeah, no –

Pete: So,you take, you sort of run with, and who hasn’t done this, right? You run with thoseparts that speak to you more directly.

Emerson:Yeah, the themes that you find, right, that kind of support your view.

Pete:Well, one question, just backing up from that a little bit.

Emerson:Sure.

Pete: Idon’t know if this is even answerable, but, all, what we’re saying now assumessomething that is still hard for, I think, some of us to understand, which iswhy that would’ve been an important argument for some enslaved peoples to make,which gets back to I guess Jared’s original question, like, why even have aninterest in the religious system of people who were oppressing you? Is it, Imean, do you have an answer to that? To me, that’s a curious thing. I mean, wecould just say cause they discovered that God loved them, and, you know, theywent with that. But this is a foreign concept you would have to think.

Emerson:Yeah, I mean, I think that many of them were religious people, right? So, I’mnot thinking here now of kind of first-generation folks who came over fromAfrica. They certainly came with some religious perspective. Al Raboteau andhis Slave Religion book shows this. But those who were second, third,fourth generation here, and still in human bondage, the Frederick Douglassperiod, the Harriet Jacobs period, these folks grew up in circles, not justwithin the families that they serve, the white families that they serve, butthey also knew other folks who were having religious ceremonies, right, in the brushharbor meeting. So, they were religious folks, and there are certainly lots ofstruggles. You can hear some of that in the spirituals, although we don’twrestle with the spirituals in biblical interpretation. You could, but in thespirituals how those songs played out, right? So, there’s lot of spiritualsongs about, a couple people have written on this, where there’s lots ofsuffering in the spirituals, and even crucifixion, Jesus, right, Jesus dying. Butthere’s not a lot of spirituals about resurrection, right? So, it’s kind of, sothey’re religious and trying to understand what God is doing in the world, butat the same time it’s very complicated.

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So, it’san attempt to, I mean, what does one do if you’re having to develop your owntheological construction, right? If the one that has been given to you doesn’twork, because it doesn’t, it’s not that it doesn’t feel right, it’s hard tobegin with a God who doesn’t like me –

Pete:Right.

Emerson:That’s tough, so there’s lots of engagement, I think, through those songs, andwe know they are, Frederick Douglass tells a story, not in the first narrativethat he writes, or even in the second narrative he writes, but one that hewrites towards the end of his life in which he found several pages the Biblethat were soiled. They were just in the street. He says he just, he got aholdof them and he just cherished them, because he thought, here he got some accessto the text that, yeah, his mistress had taught him to read, and by the way shetaught him when he was nine years old, or seven years old, I can’t remember nowwhich year, but it was very young. From the book of Job, that’s what he’slearning for the first time! I mean, can you imagine? The book of Job as achild, right?

Pete: Ohgosh, yeah.

Jared:Wow.

Emerson:So, he found these pages and he thought, I can read now. I get access on my own,I can kind of start to develop my own thinking. This is now, this is theDouglass, the later Douglass reflecting back on that. So, trying to wrestle outa theological system or a faith in God that feels and looks different than whatyou might be hearing on a regular basis, right? It doesn’t begin with God wantsme in human bondage, he wants me enslaved; it begins with God loves me and thisis, something’s wrong here. And so, Allen Callahan who wrote a book a number ofyears ago, different, very different, because he was looking at lots of AfricanAmerican sources, but he talks about the Bible as giving the early enslaved anopportunity to ask questions. So, it wasn’t just answering questions, it wasgiving them an opportunity to ask questions. And I find that to be very usefulin my own, kind of, reading of the slave narratives. There’s lots of wrestlingwith scripture, so, that seemed to be just kind of part of the faith practice,part of what it meant to be a follower, part of what it meant to go out to the brushharbor, to sing these difficult songs in the middle of difficult times.

Jared:Well, when you’re talking about the spirituals, it made me think, you know, yousaid there’s a lot of emphasis on death and not as much on resurrection. Itmade me think, you know, we talk some on this podcast about how we all pick andchoose from the Bible because it’s so diverse. And we can pick differentstarting places, like what you were saying, so do you find that in some ofthese freedom narratives, or in these freedom narratives, you find themes of adifferent starting place or what books or passages would’ve been emphasizedover others and what does that kind of tell us about the faith of these folks?

Emerson:Yeah, one of the things we were actually, we never did it, but we had wanted toput kind of an index in the back of this book because we were really pleasantlysurprised to see how many books of the Bible, how numerous passages that arejust kind of referenced or highlighted. We went after some specific themes inour own work, but there were lots of books of the Bible that were being readand engaged. Harriet Jacobs, her critical biographer, Jean Fagan Yellin, whosays that during her time, during Harriet Jacobs time when she was stuck in thegarret, an attic of her grandmother’s house. For seven years she was up there.She actually ended up developing some significant leg cramps the rest of herlife from this, but during that time she had no one to communicate with, butshe had her Bible. Her grandmother had given her her Bible, and she just pouredover those pages, and there’s lots of evidence of that in her narrative. Shejust has Job and Isaiah and the gospels. I’m actually working on somethingright now where I’m looking at Harriet Jacobs’ engagement with the GoodSamaritan. I mean, just, lots of different texts that show up in her narrative.Some more subtle, some just seeming like just kind of an illusion. Other placeswhere she’s really engaging the text more fully, and you can see it kind ofplay out in the narrative. So, there are lots and lots and lots of, for ourwork, we were trying to do a couple of things. On the one hand, I mean, it’shard not to tell this story without thinking about how masters used Paulinelanguage.

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So, wewere trying to then think about how the formerly enslaved, not only retoldthose stories in those settings in order to get some sense of reactions tothose sermons, but also how they might’ve re-appropriated Paul and I mentionedearlier about the fellow sufferer of Paul, the Acts Paul, the Paul whosometimes we have a number of stories in the narratives where Harriet Jacobsactually tells one, but she’s not alone. Solomon Bayley tells one where theywould hear a “slaves obey your masters” type sermon and the enslaved wouldsimply hear the sermon and walk away and never come back. So just kind of asilent critique and then sometimes the narrators would tell you how the whiteminister would respond. There would be some reaction to it. So, there are lotsof ways for engaging with Paul, but we also found that they wanted to thinkalso about race and racial construction. So, the Genesis 9, curse of Ham myththat’s probably the dominant myth, Biblical myth, of this moment, antebellumperiod, there was some direction reactions to that.

Pete: Canyou explain the curse of Ham for those who might not be familiar with it?

Emerson:Yeah! So, Noah and his sons and his entire family, right, they survived theflood in Genesis 9. And now Noah has had a little too much wine, and he is in,he’s drunk in the Genesis 9 narrative, and Ham, one of the children, sees hisfather’s nakedness. He comes out and he tells the other two brothers, Shem andJapheth, and they march in backwards with a cloth, with a garment to covertheir father. They cover their father, Noah comes to, and he curses Canaan, theson of Ham. So, he doesn’t curse Ham directly, he curses Canaan and he says,well, one of the things he says is you will be, servant of servant shall yoube. You will serve your brothers and their families and so, of course, there isright, in Biblical scholarship there are ways to think about that inrelationship to Israel’s relationship to Canaan. For the nineteenth centurycontext, that curse of Ham, or curse of Canaan became really crucial forthinking about, at least one rationale for why African people could be enslaved,right?

Pete: Itwas a proof text, right?

Emerson:Yeah, that’s right.

Pete: Forpro-slavery people and let’s say, a very creative appropriation of that text.

Emerson:Yeah, that’s right.

Pete:Because it really has absolutely nothing to do with this, but again, it’s a wayto hook an existing belief into a sacred text.

Emerson:Right, and in the nineteenth century context, it would fit in well. I mean, notjust in terms of the pro-slavery argument, but the idea that lots of people,even those not thinking about slavery directly, although it’s hard to imaginepeople who weren’t. But in the nineteenth century, lots of identificationconversations were going on, right? As people groups and migration and themovement of ethnic groups was happening, lots of folks were reading the Bibleor listening to the Bible and they were finding potential proofs for theseidentification markers, right? So, and they were using, yeah, there were lotsof proof texts in this way. So, it would have fit quite naturally in thatsense. Ah! That might explain it, right? Because lots of people are digging upstuff in the nineteenth century to think about identifying markers like that.

[Musicbegins]

[Producersgroup endorsement]

[Musicends]

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Pete:Yeah, and this, I mean, I don’t want to introduce more terminology than we needto –

Emerson:Yeah.

Pete: Butwhat we are talking about here is how communities receive this Biblical textand what they do with it.

Emerson:Yup.

Pete:Right? And that’s just a fascinating thing because I think we all do that onsome level. We engage the text based on what we already believe and what weknow to be “true,”-

Emerson:Right.

Pete: Andwe find hooks. I mean, maybe, I don’t know how you feel about this Emerson, butmaybe a contemporary example of that is finding immigration reform in theBible.

Emerson:Yeah, no, I think that’s a good one. I think there are several that one canfind and when folks think about the present political moment and then they goto the Bible with that question, right, that’s all of a sudden, it’sinteresting. It’s really interesting kind of interpretations that happen. Exegesisjust -

Pete: Tosay the least.

Emerson:Right!

Pete: Iguess, of course, in the period of time we’re talking about now, there isdehumanization happening.

Emerson:Right, that’s right.

Pete:Systemic dehumanization. So that might be, ya know, well, cause the question.You get this, I get this all the time. Well if there’s no one concrete way ofunderstanding these texts, if we’re all sort of, like, reading these things inlight of our experience, how do you ever know which side is right?

Emerson:Right.

Pete: Andthe answer might be, well, how are you treating people?

Emerson: Yeah.

Pete:That’s sort of the first thing to go to.

Emerson: No,I think that’s right. You know, love God, love neighbor seems to be kind of afundamental starting point, so how does one treat ones neighbor? How does one,how does one use the Bible in relationship to the other, right? And so, if myreading of the Bible dehumanizes someone, it’s probably something wrong with myreading of the Bible.

Pete:Right.

Emerson:So, yeah.

Pete: Okay,well let me throw something at you then, and just to see how you would respondto a statement like this. The Bible is not really a book of liberation, but itcan be read that way. Or would you disagree with that? The Bible is a book ofliberation.

Emerson:No, yeah. I know lots of good people, people I would consider friends who woulddisagree with that. I don’t disagree with that. I think the Bible cannot speakfor itself. I think the Bible always has interpreters. That is what complicatesthis, for lack of a better term, the American Bible, or any Bible in anyparticular culture, but this is where we are and this is, so the Bible comes tous through a variety of traditions, but it has to, we want it to now saysomething or at least those of us who are committed to having the Bible as aresource, as a theological resource, are committed to finding ways to allow itto speak in our contemporary moment. But part of what that means is I have tointerpret it. So, it just can’t speak directly on its own.

Pete:It’s never just there.

Emerson:Right, yeah. So, I would agree with the way you put that.

Jared:Well, but, you know, just to add onto that, I think it doesn’t, you said itcomplicates it. I think it does complicate it, but it’s also, as you’re saying,it’s also that particular element of a text is also the opportunity for us tohave it be relevant, have it be connected to our lived experience. So, it’ssort of two sides to the same coin. We can’t necessarily have it be relevantand connect to our lived experience without that, the risk of that interpretiveelement that it’s never just there. It’s never uninterpreted, but that’s thevery act of making it alive today.

Emerson:I think that’s what makes it a living tradition. Yeah, that’s right, is theongoing attempt, our ongoing attempt to interpret. And to interpret incommunity, to engage one another and not just to do it on our own. That’s whathelps keep us all, I think, somehow, I mean those of us who are committed toreading the Bible within community, it helps keep us all in check. So that waywe can call out one another if there is a dehumanizing, because I do think thatdraws the line. Someone within my community has to say to me, Emerson,something’s not right about that.

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Jared:Good, well maybe you can carry on that line of thinking, because that’s exactlywhat I was going to ask is what are the values of, I would have grown up in atradition more in line with sort of, it’s me and Jesus and this is a personal,devotional book. And there would have been a sense of community, but itwouldn’t have been the emphasis of reading this book in community and the valuethat it brings, so maybe, could you say a word or two more about the value ofreading in community and maybe even what does it look like to read incommunity? What are the actual, like, just very simplistically, what does itmean to do that?

Emerson:Yeah. I mean, and first of all, I would say, you know, I’m not opposed topeople reading the Bible devotionally. I think that’s a necessary practice, butI think that’s one practice, right?

Jared: Mmhmm.

Emerson:And people need multiple practices with scripture. And a practice that I findvery useful is to read it along with others. To read it with others with whom Imay, I’m committed to but I may not necessarily agree with. I may not agreewith them in terms of their own theological systems that they’re speaking from.I may not agree with them in terms of even their political agendas, but to readscripture in communion, in that way, puts lots of, I think, really hardquestions, both to the text and maybe we can hear the text differently. We canhear the Biblical text differently in that way. And I think to make this even,maybe more simple, I think as communities read scripture best when they’recommitted to one another, and committed to others, right? Committed outside ofthemselves, so they’re looking at others around them, and I think readingscripture in the middle of that setting will raise the kinds of issues and questionsand force us into actions, so, I don’t think that should be separate from,right? So, Harriet Jacobs, she was engaged in not just reading scripture, butshe was running anti-slavery reading room. She was raising money, right, at theend of the Civil War for schools in D.C. and down in South Carolina andAlexandria, Virginia, and then down in South Carolina. I’m convinced, eventhough she doesn’t say this explicitly in her narratives, I’ve read all of herletters. The University of North Carolina published her letters and she’s theonly African American female formerly enslaved for whom we have letters, andextraordinary, extraordinary documents. We can kind of trace her history andher faith is really crucial for the things that she’s doing. Her reading ofscriptural texts and her engagement with others kind of go hand in hand, so, Ithink if we’re reading scripture on behalf of others, for their well-being, Ithink that’s a good starting point.

Pete:Mmm. Well, let me, let me ask, Emerson, I want to get back into the OldTestament a little bit here. I’m thinking about what you explained earlier, theformerly enslaved people writing freedom narratives. And, you know, clearly,the Exodus story is an obvious source of, let’s say, their spiritual imaginationfor how they relate to their creator and how they can have hope for, you know,eventual liberation. But how, I mean, how did they handle, I mean, if we knowthis, something like this, but how did they handle those places in the OldTestament even in the book of Exodus where it seems like enslaved people werenot really thought of as fully human.

Emerson:Yeah, well, I mean, James Pennington, who publishes his narrative in 1849, heis a prominent minister, Shiloh Presbyterian Church, pretty fairly large churchin New York City at the time. He sat outside the classrooms at Yale DivinitySchool, they wouldn’t let him inside the classroom, and he kind of secured sometheological education that way. Eventually, at the end of the 1840’s, rightaround the time when he’s writing, publishing his narrative, he also receives ahonorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

Pete:Wow.

Emerson:James Pennington is actually the one, who when Frederick Douglass escaped, hewas, along with Anna Murray, he married Anna Murray. And Anna Murray was a freeblack woman, but she lived in Maryland with him and came north with him. JamesPennington married them. James Pennington is well connected, he had one of themost popular narratives in that day in terms of just sales. He puts it this wayabout these passages – if we could find some Canaanites, maybe we could enslavethem.

Pete:[Laughter]

Emerson:I mean, he really found this, kind of right this way of saying, what’shappening? All of a sudden, on the one hand, people do these literal readingsof biblical texts, and then they stop doing it, right? And that was, that’s oneway to respond to that.

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Pete:Okay, if I were speaking to him –

Emerson:Yup.

Pete: Iwould say, okay, I get it, but also, it’s the assumption, at least in Exodusand Deuteronomy, that you can have Hebrew slaves.

Emerson:Yeah. No, I don’t think Pennington would have any problem with, not having themnow, but this was something that ancient Israel did. And it wasn’t, right, bythe time of Jesus, there’s still slavery going on.

Pete:Yeah, yeah.

Emerson: So,he actually writes, he gets the honorary doctorate from Heidelberg because hewrote a volume called The History of Colored People. Sometimes itshows up as The History of Negro People, but I think The History ofColored People was the original title. But, very much aware of, he startswith ancient Egypt, right? So he’s very much aware of ancient populations,ancient slavery, ancient practices; he just doesn’t think that those practicesshould have continued. Now, I don’t know, at least I haven’t found inPennington’s work where he thinks it stopped, right? I don’t find, but he justthinks what happened back then in biblical days needs to remain back then, withregards to slavery anyway. God has no, this is his, I’m summarizing him, but heuses this language of the immaculate God. The immaculate God has absolutely nothingto do with human bondage, with slavery.

Pete: Mmhmm. It’s inconsistent with like, the nature of God or something, yeah.

Emerson:Completely inconsistent.

Pete: Imean, that argument was made, by origin for example, talking about violence,divine violence.

Emerson:Hmm, yeah.

Pete:There’s no way.

Emerson:Right, right.

Pete:There’s no way the creator would do this, so we’ve got to do something withthis story. Again, it’s starting with spiritual experience in this sense, andsaying, these things are just incompatible, and you wind up picking andchoosing. And I know people say that’s like, a bad thing, but I don’t knowanybody who doesn’t do that.

Emerson:That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Who’s continuing to cast lots, right? I mean,there are some Mennonites who continue to cast lots, but they’re few and farbetween. I mean, right, but nothing said stop casting lots, so I think, right. Ithink, in some ways, if we had different language besides picking and choosingor selecting, it might work better, right?

Pete: Exactly.It sounds very negative to put it that way, but it’s, yeah.

Emerson:Right.

Jared:What are some of the, you know, you’ve done a lot of historical work. What hasbeen the impact of that on how you currently engage scripture in your faithcommunity?

Emerson:For me, one of the things it does is to recognize the significant value of, weall read from a certain vantage point, and so, when I’m in my community, wehave different positions. Sometimes, I’m male, so I have certain power as amale, right? There are certain powers statuses I have, and there are othertimes I might not, and to help people to kind of think about when they’rereading and engaging scripture out of their perspective of power. That’s onething it’s done for me. That’s, I think that’s one of those starting points, tohelping us to do as much as we can to read on behalf of the other. To read onbehalf of the one who, I mean, if we can all, right, I mean obviously – if wecould all be like Jesus that would be great. But I mean, but even Jesusimagining the Samaritan, right, just to imagine the other as the hero of hisstory, what a great, what a great hermeneutical principle! Imagine that myreading of scripture, whatever passage I’m dealing with, would be best if Iplaced the one who is less like me or one I cannot even conceive of assignificant at the center. If I can imagine like that, then perhaps that mightbe a better way to conceive of God’s work in the world.

Pete:Hmm.

Emerson:Working for these years with the documents of the enslaved, and trying to, kindof, hear them, trying to hear them well, has made me think about my own, youknow, I have a Ph.D, right? And I operate from a position of authority in myclassrooms, right? Even in my church setting, right? When we –

Pete: Youhave authority in your classrooms? How do you pull that off?

Emerson:[Laughter]

Pete: I’mstill trying to find it.

Emerson:I have to keep reminding them.

[Laughter]

Pete: I’mgoing to retire.

Emerson:[Continued laughter]

Yeah. Oh.

39:40

Jared:With that, I mean, what I’m hearing you say, maybe I can reframe it usinglanguage that is more common for me, but is, it reminds me of what Jesus saysin Matthew 7 about good trees bearing good fruit and bad trees bearing badfruit. And basically, our reading strategy, what I hear you saying is we needto actually first adopt a Jesus ethic of, we have to have a priority or aprioritization of those without power, those who are oppressed, those in oursociety who are looked down upon, and our reading strategy, we have to beginwith that ethical framework and assumption in order to read the Bible well, andwhen we don’t do that, when we read it from a place of privilege and we don’trecognize it as privilege and we use it to defend our places of privilege, weare inevitably going to find ways to do that. So the Bible doesn’t necessarilycorrect the ethical framework, it’s this adage that Jesus says that, you know,the bad tree, if you start with the bad tree, if you start with the badhermeneutic or bad ethic, you can get bad fruit, but it’s bad.

Emerson:Right.

Jared: Andif you start with a good foundation, a good root system, a good tree, and youread the Bible through that framework, you’re going to end up with good fruit. Andso, the Bible, in some ways, can be a neutral source of what we come to itwith. And that just is a, it’s an interesting thing because in my tradition, itwould have been, no, you start with the Bible, and if you read it as it shouldbe written, or read, then you come out with a good ethic, and in some ways itsounds like it’s flipped that we begin from this place of, the Jesus way ofseeing the world, and that includes then, how we read the Bible. Would that bea fair way of saying that?

Emerson:Yeah, I think so. We almost, with the Genesis of Liberation book, wealmost published the book without writing an excursus on Jesus. And the excursuson Jesus we wrote was because the editor said you can’t write this book - ifpeople in the Black church get this book, they want to know about Jesus. And Ithought, no, that’s right. That’s right. That’s the starting point. And that’sthe starting point for the enslaved. So, in our excursus on Jesus, because wewere really dealing with scriptural passages, right? Biblical passages,scriptural texts, and we thought well, I mean, I know Jesus is a kind of text,but Jesus is not really a text, but Jesus is a text! And for the enslaved,it’s, we actually called the, we titled the excursus “Jesus Christ was Sold tothe Highest Bidder.” That actually comes directly out of Peter Randolph’snarrative, because for them, the starting point was yeah, you’re about to sellus and break off our families, but Jesus is on the auction block with us. He’snot with you, selling us. That’s impossible for us to conceive of Jesus thatway! Right, so, it begins with Jesus. Jesus is the text. And then you go to thetext next, and I think that’s right. I think the way you put that, Jared, Ithink that’s right.

Jared:Mmm.

Pete:Well, listen, wonderful. Emerson, we’re really getting to the end of this timenow we have together, sorry about that.

Emerson:Oh no, wow.

Pete:Pretty powerful stuff, but anything you want to leave us with, like if you’reworking on anything at the moment? I know you published this book not too longago, and you’re probably grading things too. Or just where people can find youif they want to connect with you at all online.

Emerson:Yeah. I mean, I have a Twitter account, that’s my activity in the social media,@EmersonBPowery. And I’m actually working on a project on the Good Samaritan,thinking about the Good Samaritan through both in terms of Luke’s context inLuke 10. Luke’s the only gospel that has it, but also in later voices. So,Augustine and trying to dig deep in Augustine’s world, his conflict with the Donatistsand his telling of the Good Samaritan there, and then Howard Thurman. I’mputting Howard Thurman in conversation with Augustine. Howard Thurman’s littlevolume Jesus and the Disinherited was carried around by Martin LutherKing and his, along with his Bible, he carried Thurman’s little book. And thenI’m putting a conversation with Harriet Jacobs and her reading of the GoodSamaritan in conversation with a Nicaraguan community from the 1970’s, theSolentiname community that was led by Ernesto Cardenal. And they have thesegreat, popular Bible studies and a number of engagements with the Good Samaritan,so I’m putting those in conversation as a way of then going back and thinkingabout Luke’s context, right? And just, how Jesus himself imagined the other asthe hero of the story, so.

Pete: Yeah.Well, these ongoing conversations between the horizons of the ancient anddifferent contemporary moments. That’s powerful stuff Emerson, we appreciateit. Thanks so much for being with us, we really had a great time, glad you hada chance to stop by virtually.

Emerson:Great. Thanks for having me on!

Jared: Absolutely,thanks so much.

Pete: Seeya.

Emerson:Bye bye.

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Pete:Well folks, thanks for listening to another episode of The Bible for NormalPeople. We hope you have a chance to check out Emerson’s book and find himon Twitter and engage him further on, to understate the matter, a veryimportant topic.

Jared: Yeah, andwhile you’re online, we did just want to remind everyone that we appreciate allthe support that we get on Patreon. So if you can, we would appreciate youheading there to https://www.patreon.com/thebiblefornormalpeople. There areways to engage in the conversation we just had as well as many others there fordifferent levels of support, so we really appreciate everyone that makes thispodcast possible, and we’ll see ya next time.

Pete: See ya!

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