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Hosted by best-selling author and scholar Dr. Theron D. Williams
What if everything you thought you knew about the Bible was missing a vital piece of the story? This podcast unapologetically centers the Black presence in biblical scripture, challenging mainstream narratives and reclaiming the history that colonialism tried to erase.
In each episode, Dr. Williams unpacks powerful truths about race, faith, and identity through deep dives, guest conversations, and bold reflections that bridge theology and historical scholarship. From dismantling the myth that Christianity was introduced through slavery, to tracing the African roots of biblical figures, this show is a spiritual and intellectual awakening for the Black diaspora.
Whether you're a seminarian, theologian, or spiritually curious, you'll leave each episode more rooted, more empowered, and more connected to the truth.
Welcome to The Bible is Black History Institute's inaugural podcast episode. We're glad you're here. Thank you for tuning in. I am your host, doctor Theron Day Williams. I'm the founder and president of the Bible is Black History Institute and Online Academy, where we educate our constituents on the biblical black presence and its implication in biblical hermeneutics, black theology, the black church, and the broader black community.
Speaker 1:Our exploration in this subject matter also ties to black history, which I refer you to a groundbreaking study conducted by Colette Chapman Hilliard called The Meaning of Development and Validation of the Scale of Black History Consciousness. She refers to this scale by the acronym SBHC, And her findings shows that the study of black history among African Americans support mental health and may actively challenge anti black racism. So this is important work. To say a little bit about myself, I was raised in Detroit, Michigan in the 1970s during the Black Power movement, which has strong presence not only in Northern California, but also in places like New York, Chicago, and Detroit. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was I was it had a profound effect upon me while my friends were listening to rap music as it emerged out of Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 1:I was listening to the last poets, Curtis Mayfield, reading the works of Donald Goins. Not to say that rap wasn't speaking to black life in America. It certainly was. But it just wasn't my cup of tea. I left Detroit, Michigan to attend Virginia Union University, and HBCU liberal arts school in Richmond, Virginia, where I earned a bachelor's of arts in psychology and went to seminary there and earned a master of divinity.
Speaker 1:And, I was elected pastor of the great Mount Carmel Church of Indianapolis, Indiana. And while there, I completed a doctor of ministry degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary. And currently, I am a candidate for a second doctorate, this time a PhD from a Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California. I have written 15 books, three of which were Amazon number one new releases, including one Amazon bestseller, The Bible is Black History, and another garnering critical acclaim entitled black church, white theology, how white evangelicalism controls the black church, which is used in colleges and seminaries across the nation. I founded The Bible is Black History in 2019 when my book became wildly popular.
Speaker 1:After I had done a few lectures on my book, I sensed a hunger among black people for this kind of information. So I founded the institute dedicating it to advancing the study of biblical black presence. Flowing from that came our online academy, which comprises of eight college level courses, typically taken seven to nine months to complete. We used noted biblical scholars such as Walter McCray, Cain Ho Felder. We use noted historians such as Tudor Parfait, Thomas Olden, and Arthur Kossler.
Speaker 1:We use black theologians, liberation theologians like Dolores Williams, Emshaun Copeland, John Kenny, and James Cohn, our institute also offers continuing education units from the School of Theology at Virginia Union University and a certification from the Bible is Black History Institute. Today, I am thrilled to have as our special guest for our inaugural podcast episode, the biblical scholar, gospelizer, doctor Walter McCray. And he has written a few books, including the black presence in the bible and the black presence in the bible, the table of nations. Although we've always had African American intellectuals who claim the black presence in the Bible, doctor Walter McCray and Cain Hope Felder were the first two to approach it from a scholarly perspective. Good morning, doctor McCray.
Speaker 2:Good morning, doctor, Williams.
Speaker 1:How are you today, man?
Speaker 2:I I'm well, and I'm honored to be your guest this day.
Speaker 1:Well, man, I'm so thrilled to to have you, man. You you're one of my heroes. You're one of the guys that I looked up to back in the day. We've studied your book in our church back in the nineties, man. We were studying Walter McCray.
Speaker 1:You along with Kane Ho Felder. Now your work came out in 1990. Yes. Kane Ho Felder's Troubling Biblical Waters came out in 'eighty nine. Did you know of his work while you were doing yours while you were doing your writing?
Speaker 2:No. I did not know of his, work. I came out of a different stream. Okay. And, was, not academic per se, in an academic setting as Doctor.
Speaker 2:Felder was. But I've been into this study since about 1971 or '2. Okay. Yeah, go way, way back. Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what inspired you to write? If you were gonna say something, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yes, was gonna say something, Doctor. Williams. There's an important name, Doctor. Charles B. Cofer.
Speaker 2:Okay. Charles B. Cofer. We published his book, Black Biblical Studies. Okay.
Speaker 2:Doctor Charles B. Cofer, eminent Old Testament scholar from ITC Interdenominational Theological Center, a tremendous scholar. And as I was doing my studies in the nineties and began to do seminars, I came across his name in Rashidi's volume, or Ivan Vinsertima's volume, now Valley Civilizations. And we called doctor Koffer, old testament, old elder, and invited him to Chicago to do in-depth seminars with myself. So God hooked up the old with the young.
Speaker 2:And Doctor. Cofer was a predecessor. He was before let me see, foundation. Even Doctor. Felder.
Speaker 2:All right? And he, at the time, knew more about black folk in the Bible, we could say with our limited knowledge than anyone in the nation. And he academically was expositing the subject, identifying black folk and persons and nations, hundreds of them in the scripture. We did seminars here in Chicago in the eighties, doing seminars in the eighties. And for a number of years, went to visit him in Atlanta.
Speaker 2:Tremendous library of black theological and biblical studies, which we are in possession of these days and time. And so there's a portion of that history that you were mentioning. Okay. And we juxtaposed with Doctor. Cofer and introduced to Cain Hope Felder there in his writings there, Stoney, The Road Retrod and some others there.
Speaker 2:So just off the cuff, just want to put that whole history, and I haven't told it all, in perspective with scholars, in some ways, in terms of academia, I stand on the shoulders of Doctor. Cofer. Charles B. Cofer, say Black Life Fellowship, published his only one book that was published by him before he passed. And we published it under Black Light Fellowship.
Speaker 2:And God hooked up the old intergenerationally. Let me say it. You're right. Was He old, I was young. He was in academia, I was in the church and in the streets.
Speaker 2:And God hooked this thing up together. All right. We have valuable information like you were suggesting previously, valuable information that's not even exposed and out here that came from the very lips and the recordings of doctor Charles B. Cofer. Right?
Speaker 2:Some ways I stand on his shoulder, but I came out of a different string. I came out of a black evangelical string. All right? The roots of this study of the black presence in the Bible was when we were in college in the early seventies, and we did an expanded chapel, and I was teaching an expanded chapel, and I chose a topic. This was a white evangelical college with a handful of black students.
Speaker 2:And I chose the topic scriptural attitudes toward cultural differences. That is the roots of this study as far as I am concerned. One of the first texts I was introduced to was Bishop Dunston, The Black Man in the Old Testament and Its World. All right. From there, we kept studying.
Speaker 2:From there, we did in-depth seminars, as you know, four to six hours, etcetera. And then the Lord said, write it. We were sourcing brothers and sisters in prison with our information, our initial manuals. We were sourcing them for free. And then we wrote our volumes, took time away, did extra research, and wrote the two volumes on the black presence in the bible and the black presence and the table of nations there.
Speaker 2:That's some of the history. I guess I prophesied during the that it was gonna catch on like wildfire. And and it caught on about the wildfire. Yeah. In the nights, and I was all over the nation and parts in the world.
Speaker 2:We did even a tour in England back in the day. Yeah. There, and introducing it to mainly black evangelical sessions, but also at Progressive National Baptist Convention, etcetera. Okay. That's a little bit of the history there.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah. I mean, one of the things about my critique of Felder's work is that though he was, of course, you know, profound in what he did, his contribution is profound and groundbreaking. I don't think Cain Hofelder went far enough in his analysis.
Speaker 2:Yes. Cain
Speaker 1:Hofelder traced biblical black presence from the perspective of the Hamites. Yes. And he talked a lot about ham and, you know, he pushed back against the notion that the Hamites were more of Arab descent than African descent. He blew that out of the water. Yes.
Speaker 1:But I don't think he went far enough. And then I started reading you. Yeah. And you took it to another level. You started talking about not only the descendants of Ham, but the descendants of Shem.
Speaker 2:Yes. Who
Speaker 1:would have also been considered black by modern racial standards. Yes. Can you say a word about that? And is my assessment of Kane Hoefelder fair? Or what do you say about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think that as accurate, let's say, if you put it on a continuum, I think that that's pretty accurate. Felder was, wow. He was deep in academia and he knew the languages and stuff. And so academia has a way of disciplining one or pulling the coattails of one.
Speaker 2:And so he was there so he could only go so far. I wanna say this before I talk about the table of nations. Doctor. Felder hooked up to the Hebrew Israelites, the Hebrews, black Hebrews in The US. So he coalesced with them.
Speaker 2:All right. And some academia settings, that was not good for him. Fact of the arguing Right? For the black presence during the biblical period, and I think we have to clarify that for folk today because black Hebrews, they think American blacks.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So during the biblical period, the Hebrew Israelites, Judahite Jews were black. And we can demonstrate that from Abraham on down to Jesus in the New Testament. One thing we say that not all African Americans should be classified as Hebrew Israelites. Agreed.
Speaker 2:We came from four religious strings during the slave trade, during the Ma'afa. We came from Hebrews. We came from Christians. Some of us Some enslaved persons were Islamic, but probably most were into indigenous African religions. Right.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we can say safely that some African Americans would be Hebrew, Israelites, but we cannot say that all African Americans in terms of our words were Hebrew, Israelites. Okay. That's that point. The other piece in terms of I did a restudy, here's the book, on the black presence and the table of nations.
Speaker 2:The table of nations, of course, is Genesis ten:one-thirty two. And ancient historiographic literary document right there in the scripture that and when you search, they said that this historical catalogs of ancient peoples referencing nations, they will find nothing on par with what we have in the scriptures as Genesis ten:one-thirty two, the table of nations. But it is called the table of nations, not the table of racial groups.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because during the biblical period, they knew nothing of racial groupings as we know it today in these last four or five hundred years.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So when we do not assume to that presupposition that the three broad branches of humanity represented racial groups when we do not subscribe to that, then that leaves the door open because of there being ethno cultural entities, the concept of nation in the scripture, then we are capable of finding black people in black presence in any of the genealogical lines. Shem, Ham, or even Japheth, they're dark skinned folk, in Japheth's genealogy. All right? And so that's the position I took in volume number two. And some think that that's the better of the volumes.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you know, that's somebody's opinion. Man, you blew it out the water with volume one. I was done. Yes. I mean, man, I bought that copy years ago, and I marked it up so much.
Speaker 1:Highlighted, wrote in it, you know, underlined it. I messed it up so bad. I had to buy another copy so I can read it clearly. So and I I read both pieces, but and they're both outstanding. Yeah.
Speaker 1:My favorite is volume one. I mean, it's it's outstanding. Doctor Kano Felder was at Princeton. Okay. And he had some major issues at Princeton when he was Because he said that he wanted to teach a class.
Speaker 1:This is before he wrote his book. He didn't want to teach a class on black presence in the Bible at Princeton. Okay. And they laughed at him, his colleagues. Yes.
Speaker 1:And they asked, where are your resources? Who has written about this? No. Where's how are you gonna document it? Yes.
Speaker 1:And he was so frustrated by it that he went on and did the class anyway. And he said, of all of the students who used to come to his classes, only black students were attending that particular class. Yes. And he asked some of his white students who had attended several of his classes, how come you didn't attend and enrolled in this course? And they told him the administration told them that his class was only for the Black students.
Speaker 1:Okay. And that broke his heart. So he was having some issues with the administration, which is why he left to finish out his academic career at Howard University. So he went through some stuff, trying to and then after my critique of his work is that he didn't go far enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I thought he should have gone as far as you, but you said academia has a way of curtailing you and holding you back. But he came back twenty years later and edited the African Heritage Study Bible.
Speaker 2:That's correct.
Speaker 1:And in that Bible, all depictions from Adam all the way to Jesus and everybody in between were black.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So when I pick up that bible and read it
Speaker 2:and see
Speaker 1:the depictions, I wonder, how come this is not reflected in your analysis, your academic analysis? So something happened. And even people who study can't go further deeply like I did, I still can't figure out what the disconnect was. What happened?
Speaker 2:You know more of the history than I do. Okay. Again, I'm coming from the underside, from the church and community side, not from an academic setting per se. But I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna generally answer that, and that is this. Those who have been dealing with the black and African presence in the Bible have not been connected, have not been connected sufficiently.
Speaker 2:And as you know, as I know, we need to be united and collaborative because racism and white supremacy is a many splendored thing. And no one scholar can sufficiently deal with it properly here in America. It takes scholarly minds. If Doctor. Felder had hooked up with Doctor.
Speaker 2:Cofer, it'd have been a different story. It would have been a different story, right? And Doctor. Felder knew all the languages. All right.
Speaker 2:And approach it from that way. Doctor. Koffer Let me tell you a little story about Doctor. Koffer. During the sixties, the black students challenged him down there in Atlanta.
Speaker 2:And they said, what you're teaching in your classes is not relevant to the black power movement that is taking place. That's what they told doctor
Speaker 1:What what was he teaching at that point?
Speaker 2:Black presence in the bible? No. He was teaching primarily theology, old testament, tremendous Old Testament scholar, criticism, etcetera there. What he did, and this is a personal story, he related to me, what he did, is that he went out and tore up his syllabus. And he got, I think it was over a 100 black titles.
Speaker 2:And he read them all and reformed his syllabus for those Black students to say, I'm relevant now. You understand what I'm saying? Yeah. Tremendous scholar. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So much a tremendous scholar, Doctor. Williams, that he could tell you the position that white authors took in three different editions of their book. He would say to me, and they took this position. This author took this position in the first edition. In the second edition, when the book came out, he took this position.
Speaker 2:And the third edition that came out, they didn't take any position. Mhmm. That's how much he knew on this information. Old school scholars. That's what I
Speaker 1:you know, following that, that's still relevant today. In our HBCUs, we still have scholars there teaching white evangelical theology. Yes. You know, they won't and there is no institution, doc, that's teaching black presence in the bible. They run from it.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I don't understand why they do. You have white scholars like Thomas c. Olden. Yes. Did a piece on the African memory of Mark.
Speaker 1:Mark. Phenomenal piece he did. Then you've got Tudor Parfitt. He is a historian from Great Britain. Yes.
Speaker 1:From Britain. And he studied the Limba Jews. Yes. And did some major work with the Limba Jews. And these are white scholars.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sometimes in our own HBCUs, we don't deal with it. We're stuck in white evangelicalism. Yeah. That's not an olden volume.
Speaker 1:There it is.
Speaker 2:Of Mark in the Libyan connection.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Ancient Libyan connection.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's fascinating how he does the mother of John Mark. Yeah. Central role she played in the late in the late ministry of Jesus in the early church, man.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 2:I think it's an identity problem. I think it is one of my great mentors is Doctor. William Hiram Bentley. He was the father of the National Black Evangelical Association, of which I'm currently president. Doctor.
Speaker 2:William Hiram Bentley, he had a library of over 6,000 volumes, black studies, theological studies, etcetera. He deals with the identity issues. You were mentioning something about history. He wrote the meaning of history for black Americans. All right?
Speaker 2:It's an identity issue that many of our scholars say, and Bentley talked about not just dealing with history from the outsider's viewpoint, but dealing with history from the insider's viewpoint. Yes. All right. From the perspective of being in the ditch. All right.
Speaker 2:Lord And have mercy. White sugar is not sweeter than brown sugar. Brown sugar is original sugar. All right. And some of our scholars and many of our people think that white is right.
Speaker 2:Brown, stick around. Black, get back. We're in some ways trying to satisfy white scholarship and credentialized white institutions and systems rather than stepping back and say, what have our people learned like J. A. Rogers?
Speaker 2:Right. And a number of others who dealt with this subject or aspects of this subject, scholars that many don't know, rather than dealing with them and developing theology, black theology, We are trying to please white institutions or Eurocentric institutions and scholarship. And it doesn't work. All right. It's an identity issue.
Speaker 2:Do we really know who we are? Alright. As it's a people, as scholars. Hallelujah. Harold Cruz wrote the crisis of the Negro intellectual.
Speaker 2:The crisis of the Negro intellectual.
Speaker 1:Cruz wrote it.
Speaker 2:And what are black intellectuals doing and what should they be doing in terms of arguing the case of African descended people? Alright? And they need the scholars need to be to be challenged and deal with the the consequences of being challenged. Well, you know, Carter G tried to warn us
Speaker 1:of that back in 1933 with his piece, The Miseducation of the Negro. Yes. And, he dealt with that piece. And I tell you who else who wrote The Black Bourgeoisie. Who was that?
Speaker 1:E Franklin was that Frazier?
Speaker 2:I think
Speaker 1:it was E Franklin Frazier who wrote The Black Bourgeoisie. Yes. And his notions are similar to yours about how we've been educated away from our people and educated against our own people.
Speaker 2:Yes. And who validates How do we validate the Black presence in the Bible? Originally, as I started back in the seventies, my motivation was to mitigate white racism against black students in particular and black people in general. That was my motivation of that chapel session, scriptural attitudes toward cultural differences. Over the years, my motivation has changed.
Speaker 2:I am not so much about convincing white people what God said about black folk, but convincing black people what God said about black folks so that we can rise up for the cause of the liberation of ourselves and the redemption of the world through Jesus Christ. And so we have to say to our scholars, listen. Tell the whole truth to our people to set our people free that we might rise up and liberate ourselves if it means creating new institutions such as you're doing. Praise the Lord. Follow it where it leads.
Speaker 1:Let me say this, kinda circle back on your piece, particularly your first volume. Yes. Your starting point yes, sir. Your starting point is different from other scholars who have tried to deal with black presence in the bible. One of the things I noticed about you as compared to other, other scholars, other scholars start with the idea challenging that the people of the bible were not white.
Speaker 1:That's their starting point. And I know that that was Cain Hoe fell the starting point. I'm gonna prove to you that these folk were not white. So that means the starting point was that the assumption that they were. Yes.
Speaker 1:Your starting point is different. You say they were black. Now you prove to me they weren't. We have enough scholars out there trying to prove that they were not white. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're saying to the white community, you proved they weren't black. So your starting point is that these people were black, which I appreciate that with you.
Speaker 2:Yes. My daddy used to say, my old daddy, he's home with the Lord. Matter of fact, I give him his kudos. Sydney McCray senior, born in 1891. My granddaddy.
Speaker 2:My daddy was born in 1891.
Speaker 1:So your granddaddy experienced slavery.
Speaker 2:My daddy was a sharecropper from the Delta Of Mississippi. Mhmm. And I'm blessed to be here because I was born when he was 61 years old. My, my. All right.
Speaker 2:So I'm blessed to have made it into this world. And thank God I'm going to heaven in his name. But he used to say, Don't leave a stone unturned. Don't leave a stone unturned. When we first began to study, as many did during Black History Month, etcetera, we were trying to identify a character here or there in the Bible who was black, like the queen of Sheba, like Simon of Cyrene, all right, and Simeon Niger or Ham, etcetera.
Speaker 2:We kept studying and turning over stones and following the research, etcetera. And we revised our thesis. Bible is not full of white people. Bible is full of black folk. Quantifying the whites in the Bible is more easily done than gaining the pervasive scope of black people in the Bible.
Speaker 2:Pervasive and predominant scope throughout. Someone question, are there whites in the Bible? Certainly there are. People who we were called white. And they can be identified, but the Black presence is just pervasive and predominant.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Genesis through during the biblical history there. And so we come from that presumption. But also, as a black evangelical, I do believe in the authority of god's word. Mhmm. Alright.
Speaker 2:Well, let me put it this way. As a black explicit evangelical, as a black implicit evangelical in the Black church. There are more Black evangelicals in the Black church by definition than there are intentional Black evangelicals. All right. We believe in the authority of scripture.
Speaker 2:That is the word of God. All right. And we accepted as such. It did not come out of theme of redactionism and or that scripture contains the word of God. Alright.
Speaker 2:But scripture is God's word. That's the stream I come from. Therefore, I do take the Bible seriously. I take its its its books seriously. I take its words seriously.
Speaker 2:I take its concepts seriously. There's some that are difficult to interpret or understand, but I don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, all right, etcetera. And so coming from that type of a basis, then the black presence in the Bible has a lot to do with words and meanings and concepts. All right? We take it seriously and we go forth from there.
Speaker 2:And that's a position that I've had. Mhmm. In contrast to those from other theological persuasions.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm doing a study right now. Yes, I am working on a PhD, and it is challenging. Yeah. But before I started that journey, I was doing research, doc, on the Gentiles. Yes.
Speaker 1:And looking at the definition that we have inherited for Gentiles, which is any nationality that's not Jewish is Gentile. But that's not supported in the Bible. Not at all nowhere. In the Bible, the Hebrew word for Gentile is Goy, G O Y, which simply means nation or a people. Okay.
Speaker 1:And it's only mentioned four times in the Old Testament. Mhmm. And one of the times Goy is mentioned is when Israel calls itself a Goy or a Gentile people. It just means nation. But as history progressed, biblical history, the name Gentile became less And it became more focused on one group of people who we know today as Greeks and Europeans.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So by the time you get to the New Testament, the term Gentile has become exclusively attached European people. Okay. So it's not Jew, and then Gentile is everybody who is not a Jew according to the New Testament. Because when you read the Bible, when they start talking about other nations, it names them by name.
Speaker 1:It talks about the Egyptians, the Israelites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians. But when you start talking about European, they are not identified like that except the Greeks.
Speaker 2:Yes. And
Speaker 1:the Greeks is synonymous with Gentiles. So I I was doing the study on that. And if we look at the New Testament and you want to know what the biblical Israelites, how they felt about Caucasian people, I told some student, just switch out Gentile and put in Caucasian. When you read the Bible, switch those two out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You will see what the New Testament Israelites, how they felt about European Caucasian people. So I'm I was doing the study on that, but I had to put that on the back burner as I pursue this other terminal degree. So, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Very interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe give you a tip there. You could parallel that to the issue of who is a Jew. Who is a Jew? Yeah. And it depends on who's talking and who's defining.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. Because of the ethnocultural intermixture and the racial intermixture. Yeah. That term Jew covers a whole bunch of stuff.
Speaker 2:And according to the historical background, all right, if one is a Jew, one, they have Canaanite streams running through their blood and Yes. Some other Okay.
Speaker 1:So we get into some Let me ask you this, doc. What is your thoughts? You know, because we're gonna we're gonna wrap it up in the next few minutes. What are your thoughts on the future of black biblical studies, particularly in light of the rise of the influence of white evangelicalism, what we're seeing with Trumpism and how the white evangelical church has stood behind Donald Trump for the last ten years, man, in supporting them and all of that. And how do you think what what is the future for black biblical studies?
Speaker 2:I think it's a great future for black biblical studies. Backside open door is the fact that quote unquote white evangelicals have become heretical in their embracing of extreme Trumpism. And I write about that in this title. I try to
Speaker 1:Yeah. You sent that piece to me. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I have that.
Speaker 2:That's been a case for pause of black churches and scholars in stepping back and say, okay, these white evangelicals, by embracing extreme Trumpism and its anti blackness and white supremacy motif, they are showing and have shown that they are not true to the biblical faith of Jesus. He that sayeth I know him ought to walk or live as Jesus walked and lived. And Jesus just doesn't talk truth. Jesus say, I am true. Yes.
Speaker 2:I am the way, the truth, and the life. And so it's a blessing if black church preachers, teachers, pastors, scholars step back and say, we need to reevaluate and critique on a very deep level what white evangelical has been purporting as biblically centered beliefs. I do some of that. I did some of that in this volume. I don't know if you have that.
Speaker 2:Called pro black, pro Christ, pro cross, African descended evangelical identity.
Speaker 1:Okay. I don't have that one.
Speaker 2:And I deal with the, biblical and theological underpinnings of white evangelicalism, as well as contrast to that with what is authentic black evangelicalism. Mhmm. What's a pro black and pro Christ, pro cross of redemption stands. Alright? This subject is important, black presence in the Bible, of transforming the theology, even the black theology of our churches.
Speaker 2:It is crucial in transforming. We must everything that's been said to be theology has not been orthodox theology. And from the second from the biblical period, the New Testament, and from the second century as olden so well has demonstrated, etcetera. Before there were church councils in Europe, black folk in Africa had worked out theological issues. Yep.
Speaker 2:And were sending forth for black churchmen and scholars to come to Europe and say, help us to work through cultural issues and the faith. All right. We have to go back to that orthodoxy and then bring it up to today. All right? We use the same biblical content.
Speaker 2:I use the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament. That's the canon that'll go by, even though there are black Christians who have other books in their canon than other places. But those I do the 66 books there. So we may come from the same content that evangelicals some white evangelicals have, but we interpret that content and perceive that content and discern that content in different ways as informed by the black world of the Bible and the black presence in that world of the Bible. And so when we theologically go back there and deal with data, which precedes theological formations, scriptural data, then we come out with something that looks different theologically With biblical understanding.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:All right. And I think that we're in a kairotic moment, a kairos moment, with what's taking place in The United States Of America in terms of anti democracy, anti freedom, anti Black folk that is taking place, that we can use that as a motivation to say, let's go back to our real roots, theologically and biblically. And we are in a position to set the foundation in a new way from which the black scholars and pastors and teachers can come from in explaining the scripture and relating a liberation motif, a freedom motif, because we serve a God of freedom, holistic freedom, social, spiritual, physical freedom. We serve a god of freedom. And he said, you'll know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
Speaker 2:You know, we have On the streets.
Speaker 1:We have a thing. I mean, Michael Low Emerson wrote a book entitled and and he he deals with it from a sociological lens entitled the religion of whiteness. He talked about the white evangelicals use the bible to support their true religion, which is not Christianity. It is the celebration and the worship of whiteness. Whiteness.
Speaker 1:And that has integrated most of white evangelicalism.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know? So he does a fascinating job. If you've not looked at Emerson's book, The Religion of Whiteness, man, it's it's it's fascinating. Yeah. Well, thank you so much to doctor McCrae for spending this time with us.
Speaker 1:We do appreciate what you're doing. We appreciate your scholarship and what you have contributed to the study of black presence in the bible. What are you doing nowadays?
Speaker 2:Too much. Okay. I, got my hands in the number. I'm pastoring a historic but small congregation here in Chicago on the West Side. I am writing.
Speaker 2:Okay. Continually. I'm I'm try I'm trying to write a piece that will more potently address the political demise that we're in. Mhmm. To that.
Speaker 2:And and, of course, some some of my other writings, I've written about 22 books and have a few more in the hopper Okay. There. And so that's what I wanna do. I'm doing things such as this. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And let me say on the record, you know, whatever I can do to be a blessing to you and the institute, etcetera, and the furtherance of God's kingdom through you. I'm game.
Speaker 1:Man, we appreciate that, man. And you, ladies and gentlemen, you've heard it on record. Doctor McCray has said that whatever he can do for the bible is a black history institute to advance the message of biblical black presence, he will make himself available if possible. So we thank you so much, doc. We do appreciate you
Speaker 2:and applaud you. I applaud you as well. I'm so happy. And I'm just saying take it and just run with it.
Speaker 1:We do the best we can, man. And so but, anyway, man, thank you so much, doc. We appreciate you coming, and let's speak and talk soon. Okay. Alrighty.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, the Gospelizer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that means a good news messenger of Jesus Christ. A good news messenger of That's right. Jesus Ewan Galizo, Hallelujah. Glad to be a and you're a gospelizer. Yes, I
Speaker 1:am. I like to thank that.
Speaker 2:Yes. Good news messenger.
Speaker 1:All right, man. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Take care. Amen. Peace.