David Capes
You’re areas are also New Testament and public theology. You write a column, an opinion piece, for The New York Times. You write pieces for the Atlantic. You’ve written pieces for the Washington Post as well.
Esau McCaulley
I’ve been on NPR, ABC, and CBS.
David Capes
What kind of things are you writing for them?
Esau McCaulley
I think that basically, I try to just live my life and listen, and when I hear or see something that is interesting, I write about it. Sometimes people think of public theology as making arguments about God in public or arguing for God in public. But that’s not exactly what I do. As a pastor, you can open up your Bible and say, here’s what this verse says. Here’s how you as Christians ought to live in light of this text. Because there’s an agreed upon authority that’s orienting the life of the community. What if someone doesn’t agree with that premise? What if they don’t believe in your Bible or your God? You can’t say because God says this, you should do A, B or C. That won’t work. So, what can you do? I have learned that to say, here’s how my faith shapes how I see this topic. And by people looking at how I think through things they see, hopefully, the influence of God on my reasoning.
And they wonder, whoa, what about who they are makes them talk and think in this way? What are the ways in which Christianity, or my faith, upsets the standard ways of looking at things? The language that I like to use is to say, perhaps I can’t tell you what to do. What happens if this world was actually infused with the glory of God, and how might that influence how we see people? What kind of dignity would it convey to them that is irrepressible?
The other thing is (and this might sound either good or bad), I’m not “Christian” all of the time in these public places. In other words, if you see me on any given day, I might be talking about sports or raising my kids or a TV show. Every time you see me, it’s not all Bible, all at the time. And so, when there are things happening in the world, I just write about them, because that’s my actual life. I almost think of it as having a friend of mine who is not a believer. I neither add God in nor edit God out. And sometimes, as a friend, I can say, here’s the wisdom that I can give to you. Just ask human to human.
If every time you came to my house, I gave you another gospel presentation, you would stop coming to my house because you would think that I’m just manipulating you. But I love you as my friend. And we talk, we have a relationship, and there are points in our relationship where I say, you know, I don’t go full-on Jesus on you, but in this particular circumstance, the only advice that I have for you is, here’s a bucket of Jesus. I don’t often. I don’t always use my faith in arguments, but when they’re relevant and when it’s appropriate in the context, I will talk about it.
A good example to this is I found out that my ancestors were owned by a Christian minister, a guy named Matthew Bone who was a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. And this person was well respected in the area in Alabama, where we’re from. My grandfather eventually joins the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, the black version. Because it splits into two versions, and he becomes a famous pastor. And there’s two guys who are known in the same area, separated by 100 years, named Reverend Bone, who are famous for really preaching in the same place. And I reflected on, what does it mean to be a Christian who knows that his ancestors were owned by other Christians. And why I’m a Christian still. Now that was an explicitly religious piece, but it was reflected from my own
personal wrestling with this narrative.
We kind of found this out in the context of my mom. The plantation where my ancestors were enslaved still exists. You can still go and visit it. It’s two families removed from the original owners. The people in my family sold it once. They’ve been sold a second time, and that family still owns the place. My mother managed to buy, not the land, but a graveyard on the land where my ancestors are buried. She bought the graveyard for $500. My mom owns the plot of land my ancestors are buried on. I talked in the piece that at the resurrection, they will be raised on free land, where they were once owned, That’s a kind of
redemptive narrative.
That was obviously an explicitly religious piece that talks a lot about my faith. But last time I published something it was about Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark in the WNBA basketball rivalry, because both of those things are part of who I am. I just try to be myself. The hardest thing probably to do as a Christian is to be yourself and not be the person everybody wants you to be. So, it’s not about finding an independent you, the part detached from the life of the church, but actually being the person that God wants you to be in the way that God made you to be, in obedience to Him. You aren’t just a copy or
conformity to what somebody else would have you be, and so I’m trying my best to be myself to the glory of God.
David Capes
Thank you so much, Esau.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
