How Have African American Interpreted Paul? | Dr. Lisa Bowens

they will talk about these conversion experiences in the language of i'm a new creation so this sense that my body has been made new and i think um it's very important to highlight the significance of that adaptation of paul's language for their own experience their bodies are made new and when you think about how these african-americans bodies were constantly beaten and tortured and for their bodies to be made new through these conversion experiences [Music] well thank you for watching another episode of the ju3 project podcast as always i'm your host lisa fields the founder of the g3 project and i'm so excited to bring you another special guest dr lisa bowens welcome dr bowens thank you thank you so much thank you for having me thank you for joining me as i uh said before we started recording that you came highly recommended from two of my dear friends dr issa mccauley and dr dennis edwards they put me onto your book and i'm so excited that we're gonna talk about it today and as i said before we started recording we have the best first names i'm excited that we can connect on that level for those who don't know who you are just give us a little bit of background about you well i want to give a shout out to esau and dennis they are great colleagues i really enjoy working with both of them um and thank you again lisa for having me today so um i teach new testament at princeton theological seminary and i've been at the seminary since 2008 came there as a phd student and then god opened the door for me to stay on his faculty so i've been there for quite some time my interest is paul i love working in the field of pauline studies and so i wrote my dissertation on second corinthians chapter 12. i'm originally from wilmington north carolina so i'm a southern girl and um yeah so i'm very much interested in the new testament and i teach a variety of courses i teach introduction to greek i teach second corinthians african american pauline hermeneutics the topic of our discussion today as well as introduction to new testament exegesis and paul and apocalyptic as well awesome well paul is a hot topic in this day especially around african-american readings i'm i'm reminded of the book jesus and the disinherited where uh howard thurman talks about his grandmother wouldn't let him read any paul uh texts because he'll be used against her and so uh from that time to this day of understanding of paul uh has been challenging for african americans so i'm so excited about your book i have it here african-american readings of paul um what was the inspiration behind this new book well i'm so glad you brought up howard thurman's story up about his grandmother nancy ambrose because that was one of the impetuses for me to write the book so a couple of things happened so i was writing my dissertation and as i said earlier my dissertation is on second corinthians 12 paul's ascent to the third heaven and so as i was writing that piece i also wanted to include in the my dissertation a chapter on how african americans have interpreted that particular passage and so my doctor father at the time he was like well lisa i think this is probably a separate project so at the same time i was having that conversation with my doctor father i was going to these different conferences which um and at these conferences they were lifting up howard thurman's story about his grandmother nancy ambrose and how she um talked about hearing paul preach to her because she was a slave and um it's a very powerful story and she tells howard thurman that because of how he was preached to the slaves that the the slave masters minister would often say slaves obey your masters and so she did not want to really hear anything else from paul other than first corinthians 13 when she experienced freedom so it's a really powerful story and i kept hearing that story as i went to different conferences and that story became the way or should i say people assume that that was the way african americans approached paul they had some type of aversion to paul because of this complex history in which paul was used to um sanction slavery and so as i kept hearing this story told i started wondering is this really the case like what is the relationship between african americans and paul and so that experience and experience with my doctor father just led me to say well why don't i just do a separate project and expand it from just 2nd corinthians 12 and just look at how have african americans interpreted paul from the 1700s and originally my goal was to talk from the 1700s to the present but that was it was too much too much material too many interpreters so i cut it off at the mid mid of the 20th century so it really was just an investigation and i wasn't sure what i would find but i was curious because i wanted to see how have african americans interpreted paul how have they interpreted his letters um how have they written about him and so that's how this book came about really an investigative journey if you will that's amazing so tell our audience what is african-american uh pauline hermeneutics okay so i would say it is an examination of how african americans have interpreted paul from the 1700s to the present i mean that was that was my original goal to look at all of the material all of the interpreters the book stops at the mid-20th century but i think for african-american pauline hermeneutics more broadly it's just asking that question and seeking answers to that question of how blacks have interpreted paul and so in the book i look at a variety of texts slave petitions i look at essays autobiographies of african american sermons and it's really a historical journey because you're looking at a lot of historical documents but it's also a biblical journey because they're using different appalling texts and they are quoting paul they are echoing palm many of them are taking on a pauline mantle if you will and they're using paul in these wonderful ways to critique white supremacy to argue for justice to argue for their freedom and it really was an amazing experience for me to see how african americans took this apostle whom um many slaveholders were using to justify their enslavement they reclaimed paul if you will i like to think of african-american pauline homonetics as also a protest hermeneutic or resistance hermeneutic yeah so they are resisting how many white interpreters are interpreting paul and they're protesting the racism the injustice all of these things are happening in their society that's that's powerful and i think that's helpful and that i think fights against this narrative that people that our ancestors weren't critically thinking about what they were receiving and i love that um you have your forward by dr emerson powery which we've had on the podcast before talking about his book genesis of liberation yes he told the fascinating story that sticks with me to this day about a slave who is challenging his slave master because the slave master was like your curse and he said well when i read scripture miriam's skin turned white um and so it's like we have to reshape i think for for the next generation and i'm so glad you wrote this book because we do a historically black college and university tour called this christianity in white man's religion and there's this this narrative that you know slaves were just taking scripture as the slave masters were giving it to them as if our ancestors weren't critically thinking and this what you're saying really pushes back on that narrative so i i love that and that leads to my next question why is it significant um that i think um you could speak to as well yeah i think you i hit i think you hit the nail on the head lisa it's significant because it pushes back against this idea that um slaves were passive right that they they didn't have agency and i think what one of the things that i love about my research um is that it shows that african americans had agency and they used it to protest what they saw as injustice and racism and white supremacy and many of them in doing this risked their lives but they saw it as important to make life better for the next generation and so i think you'll see that pushback that as you were saying of this narrative that african-americans weren't fighting weren't um or just like passively receiving scripture um they were constantly engaged in a counter-hermeneutic they were constantly engaged in a resistance and protest hermeneutic and the fact that i could not cover all of the material in my book shows i think the amount of resistance and protest that was going on in these periods and in their utilization of paul to to do that to protest so um yeah i think you're right it's significant also because many of these figures were important people in american history and i think a lot of times people tend to separate american history african-american history but it's all intertwined and so african-american history is an integral part of american history and so many of these figures are people who who lived and moved in um historical significant moments for instance i talk about daniel payne who goes and meets with abraham lincoln on the eve of um signing um the emancipation proclamation for washington dc he has his meeting with lincoln and so these are many of these figures are people who um used the positions that god gave them to work for justice for the larger society but then there are some figures in the book that may are not on the part of daniel payne not well known but when you look at what they've done and um the impact of their work they may not be well known but their work speaks volumes and i think it's important that we kind of recover you know our history and even for me there were some people that in this book i had never heard of until i began doing the research and i was like wow why have i not heard of these wonderful interpreters and so it really was a journey for me and i hope it will be a journey for the readers as well that's awesome when we think about um just going deeper into your book what were the early petitions for freedom that cite paul and you mentioned um already some but what are some others that you would like to highlight for our audience yeah so um this is one of the interesting facets of my research so as early as 1774 we have enslaved african-americans writing petitions and writing petitions to the government we have one 1774 written to massachusetts government we have another petition in 1779 written to the government in connecticut and these enslaved africans are using paul to argue for their freedom so for instance in the 1774 petition you have african americans citing paul's words about the family how husbands should love their wives and um children obeying their parents and they're citing this these texts and they're citing them to critique the slavery project right so if scripture if you're saying this is a christian nation and we're supposed to abide by the words of scripture then how can we as husbands love our wives when part of slavery is separating the family taking away the parents from the children there's no way we can do that yeah and it's ingenious the way they craft their argument in this petition and say we deserve to be free we deserve to um have our families stay intact we deserve our justice and then you have in the 1779 petition where um the enslaved africans who are writing that petition cite paul's words in acts 17 26 where paul says god has made of one blood all the nations of the earth and they use that to um argue against the idea of the white race being superior to the black race that that is you know the scripture does not condone that because we're made of one blood of all nations of the earth so you have these really um ingenious arguments in these petitions in which they are citing paul to argue for their freedom and to argue for um justice and to argue against white supremacy and these petitions are before the abolitionist movement so the fact that they are already doing this work before we have the abolition movement in place is really remarkable and i think it speaks to the power of black faith it speaks to the power of um black intelligentsia and it also speaks to the power of black fortitude that even in the midst of their really um horrendous circumstances they were willing to stand up and use scripture and say this is the way scripture is to be interpreted that's so so powerful and uh i'm i'm excited because i know that while when we're able to get back uh to our tour i'm definitely going to be recommending this to the students because i feel like they need to know this information it is so so empowering and powerful and just them pushing back and saying hey you're telling us to become christians but you're not giving us the tools to obey god right yes yeah is so so powerful um because they're contradicting what they're trying to push on on the slaves and they're they're pushing back against the hypocrisy which i think is in ingenious and so amazing that you captured that um what role did pauline language uh play in the enslaved conversions yeah so um what you just lifted up lisa is very important um about the hypocritical nature of what many of these interpreters saw in white christianity and in the book you will see that these interpreters did push back and saying what you were just saying about you are presenting to us a christianity that is not real that is not right because we can see in the way that you're living that it's not right and so these interpreters go about um trying to live out the gospel more faithfully and john jay for instance one of my interpreters i talk about he actually calls out his owner on that like you are not living the way you're supposed to live when you look in scripture so they're definitely pushing back on this hypocritical practice of christianity and i talk about frederick douglass in the book who has this fantastic um distinction between what he calls slave holding christianity and the christianity of christ and that was a distinction that many of these interpreters made the christianity practiced by these slaveholders was not the christianity of christ and not the christianity practiced by paul when we get to these enslaved conversion experiences which is another fascinating part of the book that i really enjoyed researching you have these african-americans who have these really profound encounters with god um i'm pentecostal so you might want to call these pentecostal experiences yeah i grew up in the country too so they have these really fantastic supernatural experiences with god in which they experience visions sometimes they are experiencing trances they see angels and all of these um experiences transform them in really powerful and profound ways and when you see them tell this story see tell them read them reading them tell how these conversions took place often they are using pauling language to describe their experiences so they will say you know as paul says in second corinthians 12 i went to the third heaven and they'll describe the angels they saw and some of them will even describe their family members that may have passed away long ago they see them they will talk about these conversion experiences in the language of i'm a new creation so this sense that my body has been made new and i think um it's very important to highlight the significance of that adaptation of paul's language for their own experience their bodies are made new and when you think about how these african-americans bodies were constantly beaten and tortured and for their bodies to be made new through these conversion experiences these conversion experience were not just religious or spiritual experiences but they were also political experiences because when you think about it it was also that religion played a large role in how laws were made and so if i'm having these really profound experiences with god this confirms my humanity right that these laws have been made to deny my humanity to say that i'm not human i'm three-fifths of a human being um i am having these profound experiences with god which testify to the fact that i am created in the image of god god loves me god loves um who i am god loves my black body and he affirms who i am and so these these conversion experiences they were religious experiences but they also had political and social implications because it empowered these african-americans to resist to protest and to say yes we are human and i think sometimes in our own modern context it's hard to imagine that there was a time when african americans were considered not human and how devastating that was for um african americans but when you look at these conversion experiences and how they talk about them they're they say that god is affirming my humanity i'm a new creation they also use the language of paul workmanship i am god's workmanship god created me and um if you said that in the context of other creation stories that were out there that were promoted by slavery proponents there were creation stories that they would tell slaves that god didn't create them that um they were created for manual labor so when you when you read these conversion stories and you see that these stories combat those narratives that were often preached and proclaimed to the enslaved that's that's powerful and i didn't i didn't it didn't even register about the new creation and the bodies like that just completely uh gave a different light to everything and how they were processing that and even the creation story that you just mentioned i think is so powerful because it's like they had to dehumanize them in order to soothe their conscience to treat them any way that they wanted to because if they said you're made in the image of god like us the guilt and the shame of what they were doing but to to try to warp their consciences they gave the new creation narrative right so yeah it brought dignity as you're saying for them to really look in scripture and see what god said about us as african people so um that's so amazing um yeah and that's why yeah and that's why you have this push to prohibit african americans from learning to read right because if i'm giving you as a white slave owner if i'm giving you my own version of the creation account i want to try to limit access to to the ability for you to learn to read so you can get in scripture and read for yourself and so and you'll see other interpreters i talk about in the book who um who such as jupiter hammond he's a very controversial figure on it for a number of reasons but one of the things he talks about is he he urges his um enslaved brothers and sisters to try to learn to read and one of the reasons he said so you can learn to read scripture for yourself and you don't have to rely upon what the white slave owners minister is preaching to you and so i think so when you have all of these dynamics in place it's so remarkable that these african-americans not only read but they interpret scripture for themselves and i use the phrase that i borrow from brad braxton they seize hermeneutical control when they're interpreting these scriptures for themselves they are you know um taking up they're using their agency to say we are not going to listen to what you all are telling us we are because we know we know better we know that this is what you're telling us is not true and so i think it's important to think about just the remarkable tenacity of these interpreters and seizing hermeneutical control of the scripture and being willing to proclaim that to others even though they realize their lives may be at stake that's that's powerful especially i love how you shared about how the anti-literacy laws were were created to keep people from reading scripture and i always tell uh students who like i don't want the bible is oppressive the best protest against white supremacy is to read the bible from genesis to revelation because they never wanted us to read it to begin with so if you throw it away you're actually doing what white supremacists wanted you to do in the first place and so to protest is to read it and so i love that you you brought out um that point considering and in light of um history of african-american pauline interpret um hermeneutics where should uh we go from here yeah so yeah that's a really good question um i think there's a lot more work to be done um i think as i stated at the beginning of the interview i couldn't cover all the interpreters and all the material there's a lot a lot of sources that i didn't include in the book a lot of people that i didn't include in the book so one of the things i hope the book does and i say this in a couple of places in the in the monograph it's kind of like an introductory volume so i hope that yeah so i hope that one of the things the book does is kind of spur interest in this particular subfield of new testament and i think you know we have a lot of african-american biblical interpretation and that is fantastic we need that um but to have just like a subfield where we just focus on paul and how african-americans have interpreted paul i think it's important so i'm hoping that this book will spur interest in this field that people will begin to do more research on interpreters and sources and i hope that also we can like expand so we look at historical documents but also what about paul and the spirituals like um how how has paul's words been taken up in spirituals that that we've seen um paul in literature i mean i'm hoping that people will kind of examine um novels and the uses of paul so i'm just hoping that this book is just kind of like a starter um an introduction because i think the field is wide open there's a lot of possibility there and in doing that i think we reclaim a part of african-american history and a part of ourselves that is so important historically theologically biblically because we have been engaged in biblical interpretation for hundreds and hundreds of years pauline interpretation for hundreds of years and i think it's important to keep the conversation going that's awesome what was the hardest chapter for you to write and why oh yeah that's a hard question um i think the early chapters were harder um and i say that because in a lot of the earlier chapters i was actually dealing with enslaved autobiographies and those are often very difficult to read because you you you get a sense of the horrendous nature of their daily lives and it really touches you i mean i i wasn't um i went through a range of emotions as i was you know reading and writing and sometimes i would just have to take a break i would decompress by talking to my family members but reading the enslaved narratives i think it should be required reading for every american citizen because i think we need to know the really historical nature of slavery and i think sometimes people say oh yeah slavery happened a long time ago it's not important but i i think it you know it's it's something that really needs to be understood because it was a dehumanization on so many levels it was a dehumanization through laws through biblical interpretation through social realities and the fact that these african-americans endured so much but did not let go of their faith that was i mean that's inspiring it's challenging to read these texts but it's also inspiring because you see how no matter what they face they would not let go they refuse to give up so even though writing those chapters those earlier chapters it was hard it was also inspiring um to yeah just to hear and read these stories and i felt really connected to these interpreters as i was reading them and incorporating them in my book they have such powerful voices and i just hope the book gives does justice to the beautiful legacy i think they leave us that's amazing um what other things that we haven't discussed that you would like readers to take away from from this work um i think it's important for us to recognize the complexity but also the powerful tradition that african americans have in terms of using scripture to protest what i call resistance and protest hermeneutics i think it's important for us to receive that legacy and realize that scripture is relevant and you when you see these interpreters you see how they see scripture as relevant to their context in which they live it's relevant to discussions about race it's relevant to discussions about white supremacy and injustice and oppression scripture is relevant to that conversation and it can be a resource and a source against these um powers that um we are constantly fighting against even even in our day and time so i think it's important that um we understand our legacy and also see these interpreters as guides to ways to go forward and so i think they they speak for their own time but they also i think give us a word for our time as well how do we interpret scripture faithfully and well they show us how to do that how do we interpret scripture as a force against injustice they show us how to do that how do we stay faithful to god in the midst of really every circumstance that tells us to let go they show us how to do that how to be resilient and so i think these interpreters are important for us to engage and embrace and um see what we can learn from them i think you can learn a lot i think you could learn a lot that's amazing as you were talking i was getting the thought of hebrews the great cloud of witnesses yes uh that's really just that them being able to hold on i remember dr powery said that as he was reading the narratives for his book he was amazed like why did they hang on yeah and you're saying that and we have so many people falling away from christianity because of the current cultural climate and to hear that they in spite of like they were in it in it you know yeah and still held on i think it's an encouragement for us who are struggling right now many that may be listening to hold on uh and i believe they haven't known because they believe that it was the truth yes and that's that's that's encouraging um for us to keep the faith because we have have the truth um yes yes so how can people get a copy of this book and i beg of you all that are watching get definitely get a copy how can people get a copy of it yeah so it's available on amazon um so you can go to amazon and you type in african-american readings of paul it will come up you could also get it from the publisher erdmans um but i think uh most people are buying it from amazon that's awesome for those who are interested just in this topic in general any other additional resources after they grab your book and and um digest it what other resources we or next steps book would you recommend to them yeah so you lifted up my great colleague emerson powery who who i love dearly he's been a wonderful um encourager and support of my work and i love his work as well so i would say for those who are interested in african-american biblical interpretation more broadly emerson powery's book that you mentioned earlier lisa genesis of liberation that he wrote along with rodney sadler that is another great monograph i use it in my classes as well another book about african-american interpretation biblical interpretation by alan callahan called the talking book that's another great resource um another book i would lift up is um the new the first and only new testament commentary written by americans true to our native land i would also lift that monograph up as well now there's a recent book you know the books by esau mccully and dennis edwards those two books i would also encourage people to buy as well the the thing about the books that i've named emerson powery's book alan callahan they are great resources for understanding african-american biblical interpretation more broadly and so i think that's those are great resources my book is the first book to trace paul just to focus specifically on paul from the 1700s to the mid-20th century so i think when you read all of these books together you really get a great um sense of how african americans were in brad braxton's word seizing hermeneutical control of scripture and using it for for justice and um and um to argue against oppression well thank you so much uh for joining us it's been a joy uh to have you remember to get dr bowen's book um and thank you for watching another episode of the g3 project we're so excited that you chose to take the time to do so remember you could get all of our curriculum and see other podcasts and take online courses at g3project.org also remember you can become a monthly supporter of the g3 project by going to g3project.org backslash donate and remember here at the g3 project we're helping you to know what you believe and why you believe it god bless you

Channel: Jude 3 Project

Views: 1,082

Rating: 4.9333334 out of 5

Keywords: Paul, Interpretations of Paul, Pauline epistles, New Testament, bible and slavery, slave masters and the bible, Princeton Theological Seminary, Lisa Bowens, white man's religion

Id: kqSdygV6bC0

Length: 36min 5sec (2165 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020