Critical Solidarity – Memoirs by Esau McCaulley and Khalad Hussain. # 161. 28/05/2024.
Out of many, One People.
Welcome to two, not widely known, books arising out of very different contexts but both marked by a hard-won faith worked out in dialogue with the communities that nurtured them. Both are well worth looking out for. Let us know what you think.
Critical Solidarity – Memoirs by Esau McCaulley and Khalad Hussain.
‘Critical solidarity’ was a phrase that was used by Christians under Communist rule in Eastern Europe to indicate a stance of both loyalty to their nation yet also assessing its realities critically. Both these books are by Christians whose experience has enabled them to see the flaws of the cultures they grew up in, and yet who also have a love and affection for the culture that has nurtured them. Though neither have standard British publishers both are available on Amazon.
Esau McCaulley – How Far to the Promised Land (2023).
McCaulley’s book ‘Reading While Black – African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope’ (2020) was widely acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic. This book, subtitled ‘One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South’ was named by Amazon as one of the top five non-fiction books of 2023, but has not been published in Britain, perhaps because the author’s study of the history and experiences of his family was thought to be too locally based and specific to connect over here, plus it would need a several page glossary of American football terminology for British readers. But this is a great loss. Those who have heard his interview in the Re-enchanting’ podcasts with Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall (o7/12/2023) will have been struck by his wisdom and depth of spiritual discernment. He is being interviewed by Bp Graham Tomlin at St Mellitus College on Monday, 3rd June at 7pm. He has edited ‘The New Testament in Color: A Multi-Ethnic Bible Commentary’ which is being published by IVF/USA this August.
The book’s starting point is McCaulley having to speak at his father’s funeral. His father was a truck driver whose life had become increasingly tattered through drug addiction. He had offered his son the great adventure of taking him on one of his truck journeys, went down to the shops just before they were about to leave, and . . . just never came back. It is one of several tragic stories in the book by an author seeking to compassionately understand both his father and also the wider community where that instability and tragedy was widespread.
The book then, as he writes in the Introduction, is ‘A story not about me but about us’. Through many dangers, toils and snares McCaulley ended up getting a Ph D in New Testament studies and becoming a widely respected academic, but the book is not about his heroic emergence from an inauspicious background but a warm-hearted exploration of his family and community, and what shaped them. So he sets about discovering all he can about the worlds of his parents and grandparents. His accounts are neither sentimental nor judgemental. The book is fronted with the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18, and refers to it subsequently as he seeks a merciful understanding of his forebears. His grandfather was a pastor, and yet his grandmother’s addiction turned their house into a gambling den. From the outside this could be judged as hypocrisy, naïve double-mindedness, a primitive lack of understanding of what true Christianity is all about. But as he talks to his grandfather McCaulley discovers the complexity and compromises of both wanting to serve God and yet being loyal to his wife through the weakness that marred her life.
The book’s great strength is that behind the theological orthodoxy is a rich and loving spirituality that feels with people, that seeks to understand and that discerns all the signs of grace in lives that were constrained by exclusion, contempt and discrimination. A world whose challenges evoked in equal measure closely intertwined responses of godliness and profanity, and where the author repeatedly returns to the graciousness of God as his key category, as well as it being the fount of generosity of spirit that marks the book. It is to his credit, I think, that McCaulley never once mentions George Floyd though the tragic lives of several of his relatives and friends bear a strong similarity to Floyd’s life of deprivation, set-backs and poor choices, but McCaulley’s intimate understanding of his people by-passes the too-easy ‘progressive’ portrait of Floyd as a saintly victimised innocent.
Several features emerge particularly clearly from this mix. First is the central role played by his mother, Laurie, to whom this book is dedicated, and whose hard work, devotion to her children, physical suffering and commitment to her community form a backbone to the story. (Note the parallel tribute in Tony Sewell’s memoir, ‘Black Success’).
For a British reader, the extent of ghettoization in McCaulley’s experience is remarkable in that until he goes to university, meets his future wife (and her parents who reject outright a mixed marriage) social interactions at school or elsewhere with white people are conspicuous by their absence.
Despite McCaulley’s love for and commitment to understanding the people and context in which he grew up, he is realistic about the constraints and limitations of that environment. He recognised that he needed to get away from the South, first to a racially mixed university where he meets his wife, and then studying and teaching in northern seminaries, plus a doctorate in the far north at St Andrews. His deflating experience of discovering that his own personal, more restrained preaching style met with a muted and rather disappointed response in his home churches will resonate with many of us who have preached in black churches.
This book came out in the USA last September. That it has received so little attention in this country is sad since it offers so much to readers worldwide. It is a close, honest, respectful, loving account of a society that has suffered gross injustice, and yet has demonstrated both humanity and faith, and been emblematic and influential world-wide – references abound to the author’s love of rap. But more than that it springs from a spirituality filled with gracious understanding, honest but merciful perception and a robust commitment to follow Jesus. So if lines such as ‘Our QB would drop back and release a perfect spiral as the star receiver glided up the sideline’ make no sense to you, just read on.
Khalad Husain – Against the Grain (2012)
Whilst McCaulley grew up in a strongly Christian community in Alabama, Hussain grew up in a strongly Muslim community in Mirpur, Pakistan – the rural area that was the home of the bulk of working-class Pakistani immigrants in Britain. But unusually his father sent him to live with relatives in Britain when he was twelve. However hopes that education in Britain would mean he could earn good money to send back to Pakistan and eventually return home were frustrated. Just as his admired father had often gone ‘against the grain’, so did he.
He quickly acculturated to the English, one indication being that (like his fellow British Pakistani Sarfraz Manzour in ‘Greetings from Bury Park’) he became a Bruce Springsteen devotee. More deeply he enjoyed the freedom in England and was repelled by the narrowness and behaviour of the Pakistani community, often writing quite caustically about it. Only much later did his ‘critical solidarity’ lead him to value aspects of his family culture. Meanwhile he worked hard and studied hard, bought his own house in his teens, responded to racism on his own terms, went to college where he met, fell in love with and went on to marry a white Christian, and develop his own career, eventually as a researcher and lecturer.
Slowly the friendly welcome of his wife’s church and then suddenly someone speaking a ‘word of knowledge’ led him to put his faith in Jesus, and as his understanding and experience grew he became a leader in his church. After his conversion his personal story also takes on an evangelistic shape as sections begin to spell out the Christian faith for readers of other backgrounds. Meanwhile his sense of loyalty to Pakistan and his commitment to pray for it grows.
I only came across this book, published over twelve years ago at the recent Anglican Network for Intercultural Mission conference. It is produced by the self-publishers Xlibris. That it has signs of not having a senior editor does not detract from its readability. It provides an honest and critical though warm-hearted accounts of rural Mirpuri society in Pakistan and its recreation in Britain that is invaluable. It also gives an impressive and profound account of how ordinary Christians in an ordinary (independent) church can have such a powerful missional impact.