This conversation was the first of the six-part series Religion and the Legacies of Slavery: A Series of Public Online Conversations. The featured speaker was Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at HDS.
Although the U.S. is a multireligious society in which an increasing number of people check "none" to the question of religious affiliation, historically the Bible has exerted an enormous influence in many domains of American life, and arguably it continues to do so. It is important, therefore, to ask what it means that Christianity was formed, and its sacred scriptures were written, in the ancient Mediterranean world where enslavement was ubiquitous.
The presence of enslaved persons and ideologies of enslavement permeate Christian stories and teachings, which themselves express a wide variety of attitudes, aims, and assumptions involving complex relations with different groups in different ways. Examining these may sharpen our capacity to take account of religion in addressing and redressing the legacy of enslavement at Harvard and beyond.
Hosted by Dr. Diane L. Moore, Faculty Director, Religion and Public Life, and Dr. Melissa Wood Bartholomew, Associate Dean of the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. Opening remarks provided by Sara Bleich, PhD '07, Vice Provost for Special Projects.
Full Transcript:
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SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.
SPEAKER 2: Religion and the Legacies of Slavery, A Series of Public Online Conversations, Enslavement in the Formation of Earliest Christianity, January 30, 2023.
DR. DIANE L. MOORE: Good evening, on behalf of our beloved Dean Hempton, welcome to our first in a series of six webinars on religion and the legacies of slavery, co-sponsored by Harvard Divinity School, the Harvard Legacy of Slavery Initiative, and Harvard X.
My name is Diane Moore. And I am the Faculty Director of Religion and Public Life here at Harvard Divinity School. And it is my distinct pleasure and privilege to co-host this series with my friend and colleague Melissa Wood Bartholomew, Associate Dean for our Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. On behalf of us both and our many staff and faculty colleagues who have helped bring this series into being, I want to welcome the over 2,000 participants who are joining us for this presentation this evening, representing over 100 countries worldwide. We're grateful for your presence.
Tonight is the first of a series of six critical conversations building upon and beyond the work of the 2022 Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery report. In this series, we explore through the head and the heart, what the academic study of religion teaches us about the tangled histories and legacies of slavery and racism here in the United States and beyond. These tragic legacies are alive and present in many forms, including the recent brutal murder of photographer Tyree Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, at the hands of Memphis police officers. We hope that gaining a deeper understanding of the complex roles of religion will enhance our commitments to reparative action and racial justice and healing in our own time and in our own contexts. Ultimately, these conversations are in service of advancing our vision of a just world at peace healed of racism and oppression.
DR. MELISSA WOOD BARTHOLOMEW: Before we proceed, we pause. We pause out of reference. We pause to acknowledge and honor those who came before us, who were Indigenous to this land, and the African and Indigenous people who were enslaved in this country, including the more than 70 people of African and Indigenous descent who were enslaved right here at Harvard University, as detailed in the Harvard and Legacy of Slavery report.
As a descendant of Africans who were enslaved in this country, I am aware of the potential impact of hearing this tragic history. We want to remind everyone that as we proceed through these difficult conversations and listen to the exchanges, it is important to be aware of what might be stirring up in us and happening in our bodies, particularly as we navigate our emotions regarding the current manifestations of the legacy of slavery, as reflected in police violence against Black people in this country. Remember to breathe and take care of yourself during and after each session. We invite you now to breathe with intention and to focus on your breath as we lift up the Harvard University Native American program's acknowledgment of the land and people.
We acknowledge that Harvard University is located on the traditional and ancestral land for the Massachusetts, the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge. We pay respect to the people of the Massachusett tribe, past and present, and honor the land itself, which remains sacred to the Massachusett people. We know that but for the stolen land and the stolen labor, this country and this university would not be. Our acknowledgment of the land and people extends beyond words. It is expressed through our action and is connected to what we are doing through these conversations.
This series is a part of the broader work stemming from our school's commitment to reading the Harvard and Legacy of Slavery report as our community read here at HDS this year. As we engage in this report together, we are discerning our institutional actions for redress and ways to support the university in implementing its recommendations and even expanding upon them. And we aim to further our vision of a restorative anti-racist and anti-possessive Harvard Divinity School. This is sacred work.
Harvard Divinity School is honored to be supported in this work by the Harvard Legacy of Slavery Initiative and by Harvard X. This evening we are honored to have with us Sara Bleich, the Harvard University's Inaugural Vise Provost for Special Projects, who is now leading the ongoing work related to the recommendations from the presidential committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery. It is now my privilege to welcome Sara, who will share brief comments. Welcome, Sara.
SARA BLEICH: Thank you, Dean Bartholomew, for that lovely introduction. It is great to be here with all of you. I actually started one week ago. And this is my very first public event in the role as the inaugural vise provost for special projects. I am tasked with leading the Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Initiative. And I will admit that it is a challenge which both excites and frightens me.
One piece that I really enjoy is the opportunity to hear about all the various ways that schools and units around the university are leaning in to the Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Initiative. So it's a real honor to co-sponsor the first Religion and Legacies of Slavery webinar. We don't have a guidebook for exactly how we need to reckon with Harvard's Legacies of Slavery. But what is clear is that the work of repair begins with having the difficult but necessary conversations, like the ones that will happen through this innovative webinar series.
I cannot emphasize enough how much I appreciate initiatives like this. And I have been so impressed by how much work has already begun around Harvard. Bringing in the expertise and experiences of faculty, staff, and students will be key to the university's efforts to reckon and repair.
For Harvard Divinity School, this means sharing how the academic study of religion sheds fresh light on this painful history and its contemporary manifestations. This series will tackle issues that can be painful to discuss, such as the roles religion and ethics did or did not play in our nation's history of enslavement. It will also aim to develop a deeper understanding of how religion can enhance our commitment to reparative action in these contemporary times.
This webinar series is one of a host of events taking place at the Harvard Divinity School. As Dean Bartholomew mentioned, you are already immersed in the year-long common read of the Legacy of Slavery at Harvard report. And that is thanks to Dean Bartholomew and Dean Hempton's leadership.
This common read is designed to help members of the Harvard community and beyond engage with what they learn in their report and also inspire self-reflection and action. So I'm very excited by the work underway here at the Divinity School and across Harvard's campus and look forward to what we'll do together. So thank you again for welcoming me for all that you are doing. And now I'll turn the mic back over to Diane and Karen.
DR. DIANE L. MOORE: Thank you, Sara. Well, it is now my great joy to introduce my beloved friend Karen King. Karen is an historian of religion working in the field of early Christianity. She's the first woman appointed as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University. And the Hollis Professor of Divinity is the oldest endowed chair in the United States.
Her particular research interests relate to how orthodoxy and heresy are defined in differing social historical context and also in gender studies and issues of religion and violence. Her publications are far too numerous to outline with our time constraints. But suffice it to say that her impact on the field of early Christianity cannot be overstated.
She is a beloved colleague and teacher. And we're honored for her to be our first speaker in this series on religion and the legacies of slavery. Her presentation is entitled Enslavement in the Formation of Earliest Christianity. And, Karen, I'll turn it over to you. And, again, we're so grateful for you beginning our work together in this series.
KAREN L. KING: Thank you, Diane. This was extremely generous and-- a very generous introduction. And I really appreciate very much what you have to say in my welcome.
Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining this discussion of enslavement in the formation of early Christianity. The topic of our conversation is to explore what it means for us that Christianity was formed in a society where enslavement was ubiquitous.
Although the US is a multireligious society in which an increasing number of people check none to the question of religious affiliation, historically, the Bible has exerted an enormous influence in many domains of American life. And, arguably, it continues to do so. It is consequent, therefore, to ask what it means that Christianity was formed and its sacred scriptures were written in the ancient Mediterranean world where slavery was ubiquitous. The presence of enslaved people in ideologies, discourses, and practices [INAUDIBLE] of enslavement permeate Christian stories and teachings, which themselves express a wide variety of attitudes, aims, and assumptions involving complex relations with different groups in different ways. So examining these may sharpen our capacity to take account of religion in addressing and redressing the legacies of enslavement at Harvard and beyond.
The report on Harvard and the Legacies of Slavery sought to explore the university's historical ties to slavery-- direct, financial, and intellectual. The report documents that quote, "Harvard's leaders, faculty, staff, and benefactors enslaved people. Some of whom labored at the university accrued wealth to the slave trade and slave labor and defended the institution of slavery," unquote. It shows that the Divinity School, where I teach, was variously implicated in all of these and, thus, bears the responsibilities of repair and reparation because one of these areas in which we participated in slavery is intellectual. And because we are foremost an educational institution that teaches the study of religion, it seems important to me that we consider carefully how our teaching and research currently impact these goals of repair and reparation toward racial justice and healing.
My own field is the history of early Christianity, which includes the texts contained in the New Testament portion of the Bible. All of the New Testament texts were composed in the first two centuries of the Common Era, a time when a Mediterranean world was under the rule of the Roman Empire. Its geographical span encompassed a diversity of social groups with varying languages, economies, and religious practices.
Groups of Christian followers were, likewise, diverse in many respects. And they didn't agree on many issues. But in all the areas where Christianity took shape, again, enslavement was ubiquitous.
So evidence of enslavement pervades New Testament literature in at least four areas-- the presence of enslaved persons and enslavers; the use of enslavement to think with, for example, in Jesus' parables; discussions of the roles of enslaved and enslavers in Christian households; and assumptions underlying views of ethics, theology, the self and the shape of community; and, indeed, social-political life generally.
Among those, presence of enslaved persons and enslavers are not only Romans-- for example, the Roman Centurion and his slave in Matthew and Luke-- but also Christian enslavers and their enslaved-- for example, Philemon an Onesimus, Mary and Rhoda in Acts. So it is pervasive. These materials do not convey a single point of view. We can't say that a New Testament is pro or anti-slavery as such.
But what we can say is that nowhere is the institution of enslavement unequivocally condemned as such. Throughout the following centuries, Christians in many times and places were enslaved and were slave owners. And in US history, readers have appealed to the Bible to support both positions.
One way to make this point visible might be looking at the so-called Slave Bible or the Negro Bible. You see a photo here. The truncated version of the Bible was published in 1807 by the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves in England. Its purpose was to aid in missionizing in British control [INAUDIBLE]
But as the introduction in the recent edition published by Johnson Lumpkin in 2019, a facsimile reproduction states that this project was complicated by enslavers and feared the Bible might [INAUDIBLE] such as it occurred successfully already in Haiti.
So even though this Bible was produced by abolitionists in order to secure the support of enslavers, they agreed to publish a select version that emphasized the duties of enslaved persons to their masters. And they left out much that might encourage the thoughts of resistance, escape, or freedom. For example, they left out Galatians 3:28, which says, there is neither slave nor free, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. But they included Ephesians 6:5-6, which talked about servants being obedient and to those that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, and so on and so forth.
So the point is that the very existence of this Bible is evidence of the use of the Bible in "converting the "heathen"-- I put that in scare marks, "converting the heathen"-- and in justifying enslavement. A lot of the Bible could be conceived and was read as consistent with those goals. But also, a lot was left out.
90% of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and 50% of the New Testament was simply left out. Presumably much of that was considered dangerous to the practices of enslavement. So the Slave Bible, therefore, is a material object that provides evidence of both the pro-slavery use and the abolitionist possibilities in reading the Bible.
But another approach that I'm suggesting is approach that is called scripturalizing a word, I take from the work of Vincent Wimbush. Scripturalizing is an approach that is a term that is a dynamic verb and not a fixed noun. It's intended to signal an interest not only in what scriptures mean but also in what work they do and in what people do with them.
Practices of scripturalizing includes a lot of things I have listed here-- making a candle, [INAUDIBLE] doing theology, practicing rituals, missionizing, sermonizing, dancing and singing, making art and architecture, advertising, storytelling, historicizing, close reading, commentating, and much, much more. Moreover, scripturalizing suggests questions that we might not be used to taking to the New Testament, questions like, what is this evidence evidence of? What gets to count as evidence? What work is it doing, for whom, to what ends, with what effects?
What's at stake and for whom? Why? Whose question counts? Why are some methods authorized but not others? Why are some views, some passages discussed but not others or at least not often? Who says? Who gets to say?
So where does the New Testament enslavement, its logics, its images, and its stories show up? How can we see its presence, analyze its working, address its effects? Practices of scripturalizing operate in many domains of which biblical interpretation as it's practiced by professionals in seminaries and universities is just one location.
Churches are another place that many people look. But when I ask students to hit the hard streets or the virtual pathways and find the Bible-- go out there, find the Bible-- they come back with advertisements, pictures of inscriptions on public buildings, excerpts from novels, television scripts, conversations from far and wide, and much more. This is a useful exercise, one you might wish to engage in yourself, in training one's eyes to see where the Bible might be operating in unexpected places.
This approach is intentionally critical and constructive. Now, the term critical often resonates solely as condemning and derogatory. But the term also, and for me mainly means, analytic, serious, and essential. Its combination with constructive is intended to indicate a kind of thinking that is practical and beneficial.
And scripturalizing assumes the diversity of Christianity, that Christianity is not one thing. As those of you who are participating with us globally know, Christianity is a global religion from many places, many languages, many peoples, many customs, and so forth. There are a multiplicity of interpretations and practices. And, interestingly enough, we find that multiplicity both within the New Testament and by its readers.
Now, before we turn to the New Testament itself, I want to just take a moment and talk about enslavement in the ancient world. What did the discourse and practices of ancient enslavement sound and look like? That is, how was enslavement talked about? And what did people actually do beyond talking?
There are a lot of excellent recent studies that complexify and fill out our understanding. So I'm going to give you a very, very generalized overview. But, hopefully, it will be important for us in our conversation.
The surviving evidence largely displays that respective enslavers and their ends. It served their ends. Those were largely economic, and enslaved persons were also used in regards [INAUDIBLE] and to satisfy sexual desires among other things.
Basic [INAUDIBLE] were practices aimed at instilling fear and hope through the threat of punishment and [INAUDIBLE]. Punishments involved the purposeful and often capricious infliction of pain and suffering, whether it's through deprivations, hard labor, humiliation, sexual use, whipping, or other bodily harm. Rewards proffered the possibility of increased food or other comforts, marriage and children or manumission.
Any and all of these rewards could be withdrawn at any moment. Both punishments and rewards were designated were designed to effect the absolute subjection and abjection of the enslaved person physically, psychologically, and socially. That was their aim. We can't say how effective resistance to that was. But we do know there was resistance.
The stated purpose of these corporeal practices, however, was moralized. The discourse, the way people talked about slavery, the way enslavers talked about enslavement, characterized enslaved persons as morally and intellectually inferior, either by nature or by station, lacking necessary qualities to make correct decisions and cultivate virtue, incapable of proper moral choice and solid convictions, supposedly. They were said to be driven by fear or cowardice and lusting after the rewards of food, comfort, and sexual partnership.
Enslavers readily described such persons as naturally criminal, in need of moral instruction, swayed only by corporal punishment and reward. The point I want to make here is that it was part of this discourse that it was the duty of the enslaver, they said, to inculcate the virtues of loyalty and obedience, quote, "for the slave's own good." Enslavement, therefore, was deemed just. And the enslaver who acted properly was deemed righteous.
Such portrayals were, of course, not accurate descriptions. But they functioned to justify slavers' own avarice and cruelty under the guise of being just, enacting acting for the good of their enslaved. These kinds of rhetorical claims were widespread.
Let's turn now to the first of the earliest literature contained in the New Testament, the letters of Paul. Paul was a Jewish follower of Christ. One of his letters was written to a set of churches that he had founded in North Central Anatolia, contemporary Turkey.
For Paul, the death and Resurrection of Jesus-- let me get my screen up here for you. Whoops. Yes, here we go.
For Paul, the death and Resurrection of Jesus extended God's promise of salvation to all people. All could gain salvation. In this context, he makes one of the most frequently quoted statements in the New Testament.
"As many of you as are baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free. There is no longer male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise." This is usually thought by scholars to be a very early baptismal formula.
But what's really interesting here is that is erases three of the most basic social distinctions of antiquity-- ethnicity, slave-free status, and sex gender. Many have noted that of these three divisions, the only one he really tries to pursue systematically is Jew and Gentile. Gentiles, by the way, is just a way of talking about non-Jews. It's everybody else.
If we read on, however, it becomes apparent that Paul is writing to address a very specific problem. His problem with the Galatians is that some Christ's followers have come from Jerusalem. These are other Christ's followers. And they have been telling the Galatians that in order for them as Gentile converts to gain salvation, they need to follow the Jewish law more specifically than men need to be circumcised.
Paul disagrees. And, historically, his view wins the day. And his occasional letter eventually becomes included in the authoritative canon of the New Testament.
For our topic of enslavement, however, the issue lies in one of the arguments that he's using to make his point. And here we find a retelling of the Genesis story of Hagar. This is from the book of Genesis.
And in the process, Paul is doing what I call using Genesis to think with-- excuse me, using slavery to think with. So here we can see that he says, formerly, when you did not know God-- he's talking to these persons who were non-Jews, who were Gentiles. When you did not know God, you were enslaved to being that we're by nature not gods, that is to say to idols. You were practicing idolatry.
But now you have come to be known by God. And he's wondering, how then? How then can you listen to these Christ followers from Jerusalem and want to be circumcised and return yourselves to the position that you were formerly in?
In coming to Christ, however, these persons have come to respect Jewish scriptures. And, indeed, for early Christians, the Jewish scriptures were the Christian scriptures. And so Paul goes on to think that he can convert them to his position. That is to say, he can persuade them that he's right in this disagreement among Christians by appealing to Genesis.
And he says, OK, it's written. Abraham had two sons, one by an enslaved woman and the other by a free woman. One, the child of the enslaved woman, was born according to the flesh. The other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise.
He goes on. And he says, now, you, my brothers and sisters, you're children of the promise, like Isaac. But what does scripture say? Drive out the enslaved woman and her child, for the child of the enslaved woman will not share the inheritance with the child of the free woman. So then, brothers and sisters, we are children not of the enslaved woman but of the free woman.
Now, Paul's argument is making some associations. He's associating Hagar and her son Ishmael with flesh, with slavery, and with excluded others. And these he's associating with anybody who follows those who are coming from the Jerusalem church, those who are Paul's opponents in this intra-Christian argument. He's also associating Isaac and his mother Sarai-- Sarai is interestingly not named in this passage, I don't know why, anyway-- but Isaac and Sarai with promise, freedom, and salvation of believers. They belong to the heavenly Jerusalem. And they are the ones who follow Paul's theology.
The upshot of this passage, despite all of its many complications, is to argue that the enslaved are to be cast out, while those who follow Paul's theologies are considered free persons and heirs to the promise given to Abraham. So there's a lot of complexity here. But the point I want to raise up for us is that his retelling of the Genesis story at the very least complicates his statement that in Christ, there is neither slave nor free, a point that he has made only a few verses prior to telling the Hagar story.
Now, if we want to complicate this even more, let's look at Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 6. Here he's arguing that everyone is enslaved to whoever they obey, either sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to righteousness. He says you-- you are believers-- have been set free from sin. But you become enslaved to righteousness.
Notice how everybody is a slave of somebody. Even to be free from sin doesn't make one free. It means one is now enslaved to righteousness.
Slaves are those to evil are presented to impurity and lawlessness. The slaves to righteousness lead to sanctification. Note here, all are enslaved. The question is only, to whom is one enslaved, to sin or to righteousness?
And later on Paul also talks about being enslaved either to God or to the devil. Slaves are always obedient to their enslaver. Idolatry, hedonism is associated with sin, impurity, and criminality. This is everybody who is not a believer.
Righteousness, holiness, heartfelt obedience are associated with those who follow the teaching in Christ. The point here is that the slave resembles the one who was obeyed. God's will and requirement is to shape one toward the nature of God.
Micah, for example, the prophet, says, what God requires, what Gods will is is to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with God. So to be enslaved to God is to become someone who does justice, who loves kindness, who walks humbly with God. To follow God is to be formed in the divine likeness toward love. Faith, hope, and love abide, Paul says. But the greatest of these is love.
Now, the New Testament contains a variety of virtuous and vices that further guide the ethics of those enslaved to righteousness and those to sin. Or as Bob Dylan puts it-- OK, I'm not going to sing here for you. You should be hugely relieved at that.
Bob Dylan says in his song, you might be rich or poor. You might be blind or lame. You might be living in another country under another name. But you're going to have to serve somebody. Yes, indeed, you're going to have to serve somebody, maybe the devil, maybe the Lord. But you're going to have to serve somebody. And in his song, he talks about people in all kinds of different conditions and says this exact point, which clearly comes from the teaching of Paul.
So if we were to summarize, what are Paul's positions? There's neither slave nor free in Christ. The categories simply don't apply. But Christ's followers are heirs, not slaves.
They're not enslaved persons, like Hagar and Ishmael. Slaves are to be cast out. But also, all persons are slaved, either to sin, to Satan, or to righteousness, to God.
So now what? Now if we turn to the Genesis account of Hagar and actually read the story in Genesis, that story can be read differently from the way Paul has read it. Here we see that God promises Abraham that his descendants will be innumerable. But his wife Sarai is barren.
So Sarai offers her slave woman Hagar to Abraham as a surrogate. Hagar becomes pregnant. And Sarai's response, however, is then to deal harshly with Hagar. She subjects her to severe bodily corporal punishment. So Hagar runs away.
In the wilderness, Hagar encounters God, who promises her offspring that her offspring will be innumerable. And, remarkably, for Hebrew Bible narratives, Hagar sees God and survives. Even more, she gives God a name, El Roi. This is absolutely remarkable.
A couple of chapters later, we see that Hagar has returned to Sarai. And she's given birth to a son, Ishmael. But now Sarai herself becomes pregnant and bears a son, Isaac. Seeing the two boys play, Sarai realizes that the son of Hagar is the elder. And he's going to inherit.
So she asks Abraham to cast Hagar and Ishmael out. God agrees, while yet promising Abraham that he will make a great nation of both his sons. Both Ishmael and Isaac will be the father of great nations.
So Abraham then goes ahead and he casts out Sarai-- excuse me, he casts out Hagar and Ishmael with only a bottle of water. And facing death in the wilderness, Hager despairs. But as you'll see, in reading this passage, God rescues her and Ishmael. And they prosper and go on.
Now, what do we see? In the Genesis story of Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac are both sons of Abraham by the flesh. Both are circumcised. And God promises that both will be made in innumerable people.
God did not abandon Hagar. The enslaved woman Hagar saw the Lord and remained alive and even gave God a name. She stands out as one of the most distinguished women in the Bible.
Paul's allegorical reading in Galatians offered a different story. There Hagar is identified as an outsider, an idolatrous heathen, a paradigm of someone enslaved to sin. One dominant legacy of Paul's story is to read it as anti-Jewish and anti-heathen, that is to consider enslaved persons as others and to associate them in the same clump with idolaters and heathens, immoral persons enslaved to sin and Satan.
And by the second century, this allegory will be read in terms of Christian superseding or replacing Jews as God's chosen people. Here is a legacy of enormous violence. The point that I want to make is that the stories of Hagar and Paul's argument with other Christ's followers can be told differently, can be told in more than one way. We do not have to read it in the ways that have scripted a legacy of enslavement, anti-Judaism, racism, and colonialism.
If we turn now to Paul's apparently multiple positions, how does enslavement work when Paul talks about persons within Christ communities who are actually enslaved? He has a policy, he says, that everybody should stay in the life that they were assigned. He says, this is my rule in all the churches. Circumcised stay circumcised. Not circumcised don't get circumcised.
And then when it comes to slaves, he said, were you a slave when called? Don't Be concerned about it. But if you gain your freedom, make the most of it.
That could mean make use of the opportunity. Or it could mean make use of your present condition. The grammar here is really tricky. Anyway, he makes it clear, he goes on, that whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person, belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was freed when called is a slave belonging to Christ. You were bought with the price. You were bought with a price, he says. Do not become slaves of humans.
So this advice has been seen as unclear. Does he want slaves to free themselves or not? And some scholars think that maybe because Paul thinks the time is near the end that people should just stay where they are and get on with the mission.
But he does indicate that all believers are enslaved of God. And he writes this very clearly. All have been bought with the price. That price is the death of Jesus Christ. And their master, their Lord is Christ. What we see here is that salvation is presented as an economic transaction, a transaction of institutional slavery. Salvation is presented as an economic transaction of institutional slavery.
Now, at other points, Paul seems deaf and blind to the realities of enslavement. Or, rather, he sees and speaks from the perspective of free persons and the enslaver. One of those is 1 Corinthians chapter 6, where he tells his believers to shun sexual immorality and that the one who hires a prostitute sins against the body itself.
The problem is that [INAUDIBLE] enslaved person's body is subject to all of their enslavers' desire, including sexual use. And most prostitutes in antiquity were enslaved. And yet, Paul writes here that Christ believers should not engage with prostitutes.
Now, what does this teaching imply for actually enslaved persons who could have no choice in the matter? The passages we've seen assumed that enslaved persons belong to [INAUDIBLE]. What is the message that's being given to them?
This passage might be a good example. Let me stop screen share here for a minute. This passage might be a good example of the problem of seeing from only one perspective that of the enslaver.
To think about this problem from the perspective of the enslaved sheds an entirely different light on the situation. Enslavement is not compatible with Paul's demands. So the assumptions of many modern readers is that this kind of sexual vulnerability was eliminated by Christian enslavers.
But that's not at all the case, historically, either in antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in Europe, in other parts of the globe, and certainly not in US enslavement. My point here is that if we look at this perspective from the issue of not just enslavers but from the enslaved, it becomes clear that the issue is not a matter or not only a matter of an individual's behavior. But the problem needs to be addressed in terms of institutional structures. Here the social, political, and economic structures of enslavement are the ones that have to be addressed, overcome, and abolished in order for the kind of teaching that Paul is advocating to be possible.
Now, the New Testament offers several passages that deal explicitly with the structure of power relations, especially regarding the household. They contain the so-called household codes, a form that normalizes certain power relations in the ancient household and is applied to the church. In this case, if we look at the Ephesians, the church is subject to Christ. Wives are subject to husbands, children to parents, enslaved to enslavers. And all are enslaved to God.
Now, much could be said about this kind of teaching. But I want to take up only one point here. Let me share screen again so you can see the Ephesians passage. Oh, 1 Corinthians. Here we go, Ephesians.
So you can see how there are instructions here for wives to be subject to husbands. Just as Christ is the head of the church, husbands are to love their wives, children obey their parents. Slaves, as we see, are to obey their earthly matters with fear and trembling.
And we notice in the end, however, that masters and lords are to do the same, just as slaves are going to receive from the Lord, whether they're enslaved or not. So masters and lords are also having the same Lord. You have the same Lord in heaven. And in Him, in God, there is no partiality.
So the point here that I want to focus on is this figure of the male head of household. He's associated here with Christ, with the husband, the father, and the enslaver. But he's also himself enslaved to God, enslaved to Christ. He is what we call an enslaved enslaver.
In the ancient handbooks, we hear much about this kind of figure. He's a slave chosen by the master, who serves in a wide variety of capacities and contexts, from agricultural estates to governing bureaucracies. He can be entrusted as a steward of the master's property, including to be the overseer of fellow enslaved persons. He can also serve as the proxy, the agent, or surrogate of the master in the master's absence.
So the household code that we see in the Ephesians puts the Christian male head of the household in the same position as this enslaved manager but now in relation to God as his owner or enslaver. So the household manager, the Christian here, is the slave of God. He's also the manager of God's enslaved. He's God's proxy, acting in God's place [INAUDIBLE] of God's property which, of course, is creation itself.
He's charged with doing the will of God, which is always good and righteous. He will himself be punished and rewarded accordingly. We can see here the operations of discourse [INAUDIBLE] about enslavement.
That is-- and I want to quote Chris de Wet here-- a discourse of enslavement, a way of thinking about enslavement in which "knowledge and behaviors are produced, reproduced, structured, and distributed in a way as to establish subjects in positions of authority and subjugation, agency and compulsion, ownership and worth, honor and humiliation, discipline and reward punishment, and captivity and freedom."
Now, there's a lot here in this one sentence. But the point that I want to make with it and from it is that the Ephesian household code has left a powerful legacy of thinking with enslavement. It's one where Christians have at certain times and places claim to act as God's agents, enacting God's will, all the while seeing and presenting themselves as the humble servants of God. So the enslaved enslaver has been one way of conceptualizing the slaveholder, the martyr, the bishop, the missionary, the colonizer, the industrialist, and much more. Indeed, it can be racialized as white men's burden and so on and so forth.
So I want to conclude now with a final example of how the Bible can be and has been read in ways that call for a critique of enslavement and enslavers. It's one direction to explore the teaching. So in other words, I want to suggest that there are multiple ways in which the text of the Bible can be read otherwise. I've been focusing in particular on those passages that have been focused on harm. But I think you can see in them also the potential for a different kind of legacy.
And here I want to emphasize that one direction is to explore the teaching that God is not just an enslaver but the God God's self as enslaved; that God has experienced suffering and the torments of corporal punishment, humiliation, and even death; that God stands with those who suffer and who are treated unjustly; and that the presence of God exposes the cruel and unjust to be on the side of evil, on the side of those who crucified Christ. One of the places in which this appears most clearly in the New Testament that God is enslaved is in the hymn in Philippians in chapter 2, where it talks about having the same mind as one has in Christ Jesus, who existed in the form of God but didn't regard equality with God as something to be grasped, to be held on to but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness, and being found in human appearance.
And he humbled himself and became obedient under the point of death, even death on the cross. And so God exalted him more highly. This view of God as enslaved becomes a very powerful one and one that gets used by many, many Christians over the history of the next 2,000 years. It too has a long legacy.
I want to point to one place and one story, focusing first on the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John portrays Jesus as a son of man who has descended from above in order to make God known. He brings the judgment of the world, not that He judges himself but that His presence-- His very presence in the world, the presence of God in the world, brings light. It illuminates. It makes clear who are truly the children of God. And that is based on whether they accept Jesus or not, whether they know who He is understand, who He is whether they accept or reject Him.
And what we see in reading the Gospel of John is that many who encounter him say they believe. But they don't really get it. Then they turn away. They go home.
Some of them even reach for stones to kill Him. Some follow Him. Some seek His death. It's only in His exaltation on the cross as Jesus returns above that He is fully known according to the Gospel of John.
This Johannine story, I want to argue, is retold by one of the most prominent activists and writers in US history. The Harvard trained PhD and sociologist, WEB Du Bois. In 1920, he published a short story, almost a parable really, entitled "Jesus Christ in Texas." It's set in Waco, where on May 15th, 1916, a 17-year-old young Black man named Jesse Washington was charged with murder of his employer's wife to which was added a false accusation of rape.
He was brutally lynched by a mob after only 4 minutes of jury deliberation. Du Bois' story tells of a Black man under reconstruction-- it's actually under Jim Crow, excuse me, after reconstruction-- a Black man who was sentenced to a chain gang. The chain gang's function, of course, was to profit white police and landowners.
The Black man escapes. And we follow him up to his recapture and lynching. Readers also follow the landowner and his family and friends who were invited to a party. And we follow them up to their involvement in the violent ending.
I want you to know that Du Bois doesn't give names to anyone in the story. And that increases, I think, its parabolic character, its sense of it's a story that extends beyond its time and place. Throughout this story, a stranger appears and disappears.
Du Bois chronicles all of the reactions of the characters to this stranger. Some recognize who he is. Some don't. And as in the Gospel of John, that makes all the difference.
The stranger asks piercing questions and offers compassion. But he does not judge. His presence, however, exposes who is blind and who can see. It illuminates the character of each person that is encountered by the stranger or who encounters the stranger.
He brings out a kind of truth telling in everyone or something like it. The landowner, for example, feels the need to justify his actions in the stranger's eyes, implying somehow that the stranger sees through him, sees his true motives and his guilt. A white child talks easily with him. A minister thinks he might recognize a stranger. But the stranger assures him that he does not know him.
White people in this story can't figure out who the stranger is. Is he white or mulatto, cultured person, a foreigner, a servant? His presence brings a chill, a vision of bright, white wings, nervousness, a desire for him to go, a child's welcome. The Black characters in the story do recognize the stranger. And they react strongly.
When the convict meets the eyes of Jesus, the hammer falls from his hands. The old butler drops to his knees and whispers, my Lord and my God. The nurse fled down the staircase, catches his cloak, trembled, hesitates, and then kneels in the dust. Jesus tells her to go and say no more. And she runs north, no doubt a reference by Du Bois to the Great Migration.
But if we now return to the criminalized man, after he's escaped the chain gang, he encounters the stranger. The stranger's presence makes the bloodhounds who are following him simply don't go away. They quit pursuing him.
Then the stranger removes the shackles from his feet, bathes his head, and gives him water to drink. This is very reminiscent for those of you who the gospel story of Jesus' actions, not least in the Last Supper in the Gospel of John, where he washes his disciples' feet. Anyway, a stranger tells the Black men not to steal anymore. And he promises he will not do so again.
But when he leaves the stranger, he sees this gold watch on the table. He's tempted. And he takes it. But later, when he walks out, he sees Jesus in the distance. He realizes. He comes back to himself. He replaces it. And he rushes back toward the stranger. His arms spread wide open.
Meanwhile, the landowner's wife has sat down beside the stranger on the steps to the house. And he's begun to ask her questions like, you love all your neighbors as yourself? Well, not all of them, she says, surely. She says, he doesn't mean the Blacks.
Here-- let me pick up the story again. She has this impulse when he says you love all your neighbors. With sudden impulse, she rises up. And she lights the lamp. And now she can see better who he is.
She can see his dark face and curly hair. And she's terrified. She rushes down the path. So what we see is that she's fleeing down away from Jesus in angry terror, while the Black man is rushing up with his arms wide open toward Jesus.
They collide. And the woman falls to the earth heavily, laying white and still. And as this happens, the husband rounds the corner and this sets in motion the mechanisms of lynching. He attacked my wife, the man says.
He gasps. The mob snarled. And they start to work silently. And the woman, she tells nothing. She stays silent and says nothing as this brutal murder takes place and as he's murdered.
We pick up now, the voice tells us that she lay still, listening to the departure of the mob. But she comes to the window as she gazes out. And the truth of the situation becomes clear. She recognizes the stranger, who he is at last, as she sees a great crimson cross burning above the Black man.
Suddenly whirling, this crimson cross shoots up to the top of the sky, above the world. And behind the swaying form, below the quivering, burning man is a great cross. She knew, the voice tells us. And she recognizes him in the language of the man of sorrows, despised and rejected of men.
This is a quote from Isaiah 53, which reads, "He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him not," end quote.
The Du Bois repeats the line, she knew. And she's filled with horror. But the stranger, we're told, does not hear her. He didn't see her.
His calm eyes and sorrow are fastened on the brutalized Black man. And he says to him, out of the winds of the night, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise. These are the words of Jesus on the cross in the Gospel of Luke, where two criminals are said-- said to be criminals are being crucified [INAUDIBLE].
One of these turn [INAUDIBLE] when you come into your hands. And Jesus replies, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. Du Bois ends his story [INAUDIBLE]
--will be remembered when Jesus comes into his Kingdom.
The stories of Jesus have been told over and over. In the New Testament, alone there are four narratives of Jesus, four Gospels, not just one. And there are more references and retellings, theologizing, ritualizing in baptism, in meal practices, sermonizing.
Within scripture itself are many different scripturalizing practices. Du Bois' story gives us another example of scripturalizing. And it reminds one-- it reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's teaching on the danger of a single story.
She writes, stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and malign. But stories can be also used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of people. The stores can also mend that which is broken.
The Bible has many stories that can be told. But its multiple points and perspectives are often harmonized into a narrow or a single storyline. With enslavement, the view is often to minimize its presence or to consider enslaved persons as others and associate them in the same clump with idolaters and heathens, immoral persons enslaved to sin and Satan.
But biblical literature has much more complex and complicated portraits of enslavement. It tells many stories. And many stories are told with it and about it.
So some legacies of enslavement in the New Testament that we've seen-- to justify enslavement racism and colonialism. The elision of enslaved persons with outsiders can be turned to idolaters, to heathen. That has been racialized in white supremacy, deployed in colonialism with regard to non-Christians and non-Westerners, and used to justify Christian enslavers as righteous and enslavement as divinely sanctioned.
But another legacy is to develop a theology of God who shares in pain and suffering and who requires justice; to promote resistance to enslavement as an unjust institution; to tell other stories, complex stories, true stories; and for us to ask more about religion and the legacies of enslavement. Thank you.
DR. DIANE L. MOORE: Karen, thank you so much. What an incredibly rich and fulsome presentation. Thank you for sharing the kind of breadth of understanding of not only these texts but their historical and contemporary power.
We've got a lot of questions here in the Q&A. There's a few themes that are essentially related to questions about interpretation. And I think that Rockefeller Harissa has kind of captured this for us through several questions here.
And Rockefeller says, we know that the Bible is notoriously filled with counter narratives, complexities, and conflicted perspectives. And then the question is, how does Religion, capital R, square Paul's teachings to the Galatians compared to the Corinthians? And I think the question, as I'm hearing it-- and would love your perspective or share your perspective-- is, essentially, what does it mean for people of faith to realize these multiple stories in these texts? And how do you understand it?
Because other questions here are also saying, is this metaphorical? Is it representing a metaphor? But I'm wondering if you want to tackle the question kind of more broadly around interpretation and the complexities of interpretation.
KAREN L. KING: First of all, thank you, Rockefeller. It's perfect the way that you've stated this. There are those complexities. And part of what systematic theologians do is it's their task to work within the tradition and to try to understand systematically how to put all these pieces together and to do justice to all of the different pieces.
So I'm not a systematic theologian. And my experience is that on the ground, people, persons in the Pew, so to speak, people on the street, really go to text, go to scripture looking for instruction and for guidance, those who find the text authoritative, but of course, not everybody does. And a lot of people don't try to square things. They're really looking for insight and for guidance.
I wanted to use this, as I can, as an occasion to point people toward a really excellent resource. I think this is going to-- if I hold it up, I think it's going to show up backwards, the title, because of the way that this is structured. But it's called The Talking Book, by Allen Dwight Callahan.
It's a book I recommend to you, African-Americans and the Bible, and he talks about the way in which African-Americans, through tradition, have really talked about the Bible. He has chapters called The Poison Book, The Good Book, and then he takes up a set of themes. I think that, for those of you who are looking to understand in a comprehensive really, both scholarly and theologically and wonderfully informed way, that Callahan's book is-- Professor Callahan's book is really readable and really wonderful.
The question of metaphor, that's a different story. Isn't it? Because one of the ways that people try to make this move is to move from reality to metaphor, but I think it's really incredibly important for us to remember that, even when texts are, quote, unquote, "Metaphors," they are still based in understanding and made intelligible by real practices of actual enslavement. And that the ubiquity of enslavement means that people would have been informed by those experiences and by reality, when they hear this language.
DR. MELISSA WOOD BARTHOLOMEW: [INAUDIBLE] so rich. There's so many wonderful questions that have been offered, and I want to share one from-- I guess by the name of Brian Anderson. And Brian's question is, broadly, how did Christianity come to the enslaved? Were the enslaved likely already familiar with Christianity, before leaving the continent? Did enslavers and slave owners encourage or demand compliance with Christianity and provide ready access to evangelizers?
KAREN L. KING: So I wish I knew the answer to that question. So we could look at the evidence we have, Brian, and where does it point to? It points precisely to people like Paul and others who went out missionizing, and from what we can tell, they would go to and work through networks that were established kinds of networks. They would go to places where they knew people. They would follow trade routes and so forth.
Sometimes, they would enter households, and households, as I think you've seen already included, a multi generations, and they often included enslaved persons. And oftentimes, households would convert as a group. Was that forced or not? We don't know. What we always lack, what we always miss, so deeply, is precisely the voices of the enslaved and what they were doing and what they were thinking.
But what we find, again and again, is that Paul greets persons who are enslaved. We see persons who are enslaved in the letters and in other texts, outside the New Testament, early Christian literature, who are leaders and who are active and who are working. Sadly, we see enslaved persons arrested by the Romans and put to death for being Christ's followers.
We see them being tortured for their witness and testimony. So every place we look, we find enslaved persons involved in the earliest Christian life and churches. More than that, I wish we could say.
DR. DIANE L. MOORE: There are a couple other questions along those lines, but I think that's a wonderful approach to that rich uncertainty, really. Leonardo Augusto de Vries has a question. When translating biblical texts from Hebrew or Greek, is the term "Slave," quote, unquote, used as a synonym for submission or, as in Roman law, service with the meaning of property? At the same time, when it is said that Bob Dylan demonstrated that human beings are subject to inclinations, does our culture take advantage of this human duality, or do we actually force the imposition that someone is an object?
KAREN L. KING: Yeah. Thank you for that. There's two questions embedded there, one about translation. And it's the case that my Hebrew is much less strong than my Greek, so I'm going to flip to my Greek foot.
But there's a set of terms that would have been recognized in antiquity as belonging to enslavement and enslaved persons, and you find words like "doulos," which means an enslaved person. That's the masculine, "doule," female, and so forth. But there's also a verb "douleuo," to serve, and so often what happens in biblical translations is that these terms get translated as servant or to serve, but it's understood in antiquity that anybody who is doing "douleuo" is performing the activities of an enslaved person.
But we find other vocabulary as well that applies to a young enslaved child and so on and so forth, to various kinds of service, depending on what kind of work they're doing. Rhoda, for example, in Acts, who is identified as a door keeper, well, she would have been the slave who had been watching the door to see if someone would come or not. And she's the one who hears when Peter knocks on the door, and she's the one who announces that he's come, and so on and so forth.
The issue about force is really important, because to be enslaved in antiquity is something that belongs to violent force. It is not something that is chosen. It may be that persons, out of utter acts of desperation, might sell themselves into enslavement as a way to survive. I cannot speak to that, but it is a matter of force.
When Paul is talking about everyone being enslaved, either to God or the devil, this is something we could have a very long conversation about. It's the subject of my research right now, when I'm talking about why it is that martyrs, early Christian martyrs, call of themselves enslaved of God. And it has something to do with the way in which their understanding their subject to it, their subjectivity is being shaped toward God. And they're using the language of enslavement as a way to emphasize their total commitment to God, their total obedience and faithfulness, even unto death, to God.
But what those texts emphasize, repeatedly, is precisely choice. That it is the person who is-- that God is not forcing that choice, that the person is doing this willingly of their will and so forth. So for Christians who are writing about enslavement to God not being forced but having the exercise of one's will is absolutely crucial to this understanding of calling oneself a slave of God. So I thank you for that point.
DR. MELISSA WOOD BARTHOLOMEW: So there are so many more. We have a few more we want to offer, and there's one from Karen, and let me just bring it up. So Karen asks this question, Karen Loeb.
Might the transactional nature of God's salvation through Jesus's sacrifice, related through the narrative of slavery by Paul, be presented this way by him, because that's the context that they would understand at the time and would make sense to them? This idea of freedom through salvation by following Christ and the Father in heaven, perhaps, was more easily understood if described in terms of what the idea of freedom meant at the time. It could also be metaphorical-- freedom versus being enslaved by sin or others or the world or power or money, et cetera. So that's from Karen Loeb.
KAREN L. KING: Thank you so much, Karen. Yes. We have to assume, on the one hand, that this language, the idiom of slavery, of enslavement, of freedom, and so forth, were used because of their intelligibility. But they were referenced to and their intelligibility was derived from the realities of actual enslavement and actually enslaved persons.
Were they used as metaphors? Again, yes, and so one of the ways Paul-- when Paul talks about salvation, he uses a wide variety of ways to talk about it. He talks about being ransomed, that you've been captured by the enemy, and you got ransomed back. He talks about being saved. Like you've been thrown overboard, and someone jumps into rescue you and bring you back to shore.
He uses a whole set of ways of trying to understand what salvation is, and one of them is this kind of economic transaction, to be bought and paid for. The question I'm asking-- and I'm wondering what others think-- is what are the implications of that? What kind of legacy does that leave for later people who want to think about enslavement? It's also the case that being bought and sold to a God, that this happened at temples as well, and so it isn't always just metaphor. I hope that was somewhat intelligible itself.
DR. DIANE L. MOORE: Yes, it was, and this is a great follow up to it. This is from Hunter Limbaugh. Even accepting that the writers of the New Testament were creatures of their times and cultures, is it still not difficult to ignore the implications of their failure to simply say that the enslavement of people was contrary to the will of God and therefore sinful?
In both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, there's no hesitancy to clearly proscribe certain human conduct but not enslavement, and this is according to your very clear assertion, Karen. How do we reconcile that failure with the supposed nature of God and with the New Testament being at least the inspired word of God? I think maybe the key would be why not why not absolutely challenge enslavement relevant to the other prescribed activities, of which there are many.
KAREN L. KING: Yeah. A lot of people, abolitionists in particular, have asked that question. The one thing I think that we shouldn't do is exactly what you suggested at the beginning, which is we should not excuse it because it was a matter of their time. It's been a matter of everybody's time ever since, precisely because-- and so I think we should not.
We should ask this question. We should pursue it. We should pursue it heavily, but we should also not assume that, just because this language was used and just because there was not an absolute condemnation of slavery, that that means that slavery was justified and OK. Because it doesn't do that strong statement either, and that's where those who read and live out of this text bear a deep responsibility and accountability for how we live out of this text, for what stories we tell, what we do with it. Because it's clear that one does not have to walk away from this text with a pro-slavery position, and there is much too much in this text against these kinds of cruelties.
I had to skip one of the examples that I wanted to use, where you have an enslaved enslaver who is beating unjustly servants. Or in 1 Peter where it talks about the slave who is beaten unjustly is like Christ, and it's a condemnation of his Christian slaver, of the Christian who is enslaving him. There are places like that in the text. Those can be pulled out and listened to as well.
But you're right, this question about why no absolute condemnation, that will always I think hang in the air, precisely because of these legacies. But it doesn't mean one has to think that and act that. We have that responsibility nonetheless about how we teach about that text as well. I guess I feel pretty passionately about that. Thank you for the question.
DR. MELISSA WOOD BARTHOLOMEW: [INAUDIBLE]
We have a question from Dan MacKinnon who asks, when Paul talks about the Christian as enslaved by God, do we think he is speaking metaphorically, the same way Jesus is when he says, quote, "I am the vine, and you are the branches?" Or does Paul understand enslavement as a fundamental cosmological principle, so that Christians' enslavement to God is more literally real than the enslavement of someone to a human master.
KAREN L. KING: See I think both those things might be true. First of all, I would never in my life say what Paul really thinks. I hope I showed you enough of how difficult it is to read Paul to say what Paul really thinks. Having said that, there are all kinds of ways of talking about Jesus, for example, that there's a lot of he is the Son of God, he's a son of man, but he's also the sheep, the vine, all the things that you just mentioned, Dan, which you know as well as I and so do many of the people who are on this webinar.
But the question then about when Christians then call themselves enslaved of God, I then ask my question, what are the effects? What difference does it make in people's real lives to use that language about themselves? I'd love to know more. For Paul, it seems to be something about his whole life being toward missionizing the gospel at risk of dying and at risk of death.
For the martyrs, I'm understanding, it means their willingness to say no to the Roman Empire, to refuse to sacrifice, and to face the consequences, which are going to be brutal and are probably going to end in their deaths. Chris Dewitt, who I quoted, talks about ascetics in the later centuries, third and fourth centuries onward, who talk about themselves as slaves of God, and so their whole lifestyle of asceticism is understood in terms of enslavement toward God. So they're living something out.
Polycarp, the Bishop, sees himself as an enslaved enslaver and understands his position that way. So that understanding of position has effects, and those we can start looking to investigating, and they may not be cosmological. Much as I love to look at cosmology and so forth, I think I'm not going to go there tonight. Thank you.
DR. DIANE L. MOORE: There's a few other-- there are several other questions that I think, again, relate to this larger issue of interpretation. And I just wanted to maybe invite you, Karen, to reflect on the power of how you ended this remarkable talk with quoting Adichie's danger of single story. How do we-- what does it mean to recognize these contradictory messages? And I'm going to key into your passionate response to the earlier comment about the responsibility, particularly in this conversation, relevant to Christianity about what does it mean to recognize these diverse representations, and how does it play out, in your mind, relevant to contemporary times around how the Bible, directly and indirectly, gets used relevant to contemporary legacies of this devastating institution?
KAREN L. KING: I so love what a Adichie says about not having a single story, about how it locks you in. It blocks out thinking and the capacity for what I'm calling critical constructive engagement. I wanted to emphasize-- I hope I did throughout the whole thing-- that the Bible has a lot of stories, and it has ways of telling stories. It teaches us not just what it says, but it teaches us how to think.
There are four gospel stories. It's telling the story of Jesus over and over. So it's, I think, a kind of invitation to tell those stories over and over. I think it's incredibly important to ask, from whose perspective are we reading? Who are we trying to hear in the story, as well as who is telling the story?
That's, again, one of the reasons why it was worth taking so much time for Du Bois, but Du Bois is always worth lots of time. OK? Read Du Bois. Read Du Bois.
But I'm also thinking about, for me, the parable of the prodigal son, for example, is a story about-- that a lot of Christians know-- is a story about a father who has two sons, and one of them asks for his inheritance. And he goes off, and he's-- in advance, before his father dies-- and he goes off, and he just spends it in profligate living, until he's just spend it all. And then he said, oh, poor me, and he comes back, hoping that he'll be able-- his dad will take him back in. There's all kinds of things we can think about a father like this.
And there's the other son who's been there, and he says, I worked for you like a slave. He says, I worked for you like a slave, and you've never thrown me a party. But what I've never noticed in the story are all the slaves. When the young man returns, the father calls the slaves.
He says, go slaughter the fatted calf. Get him a robe. Put on his slippers. So here are these people who are welcoming this guy back, whatever we think of the prodigal son. They're stooping down and putting shoes on his feet. I want to hear their story.
When the elder son is coming back in from the field, he doesn't know what's going on. He's going, what's happening? And he stops one of the slaves, and the slave tells him, oh, there's a party going on for your brother. He came back. I want to know what he thought. It's the story of Rhoda, telling story about her and from her perspective.
So once we start telling the stories and paying attention to the fact that there are lots of people in these stories, and then we start listening to who's been telling what stories from the Bible, for what purposes, to what ends. That's why I pointed you toward the Callahan book. There are many, many more people, novels, and stories and preachers and teachings that are out there that bear listening to, to show us that the text doesn't tell a single story.
I know people like the stability of truth. I think truth is pretty there, but I think for us, as human beings, getting to it is pretty hard. And that critical constructive engagement is a way to, hopefully, help us do that, respecting all the other kinds of voices and opinions and points of view, taking them in, listening, listening, listening. Thank you.
DR. DIANE L. MOORE: And we just had the incredible joy of listening, listening, listening to you and giving us these really rich tools to engage this important literature and this powerful literature. And so we think of the multiple stories that are told in the Bible, which you've highlighted so well, you also have highlighted our curiosity to say, what about the voices that are not being heard? What are their stories and their perspectives, and you've left us with incredible rich possibilities for further exploration.
Thank you so much, Karen. We owe you a great debt of gratitude for this remarkable session and a wonderful way for us to begin this series, as we explore religion and the legacy of slavery and what it means to have more complex tools about religion, to help us see what we think we know in some fresh ways. So thank you so much.
And thank all of you here in the room who joined us from, again, around the world. We're so honored to have you with us. I want to just say that these topics are challenging. The power of them still lives with us. So please, please, talk to people close to you, in your communities, relevant to the responses you have to this presentation.
Keep these questions alive. Take them seriously, not just as history but as living legacies that have import and power. And please, do join us for the next session.
We will be meeting here again at 7:00, Eastern time, next week, on February 6, with professors David Holland and Kathryn Gin Lum. They're going to be in a conversation about religion, race, and the double helix of White supremacy. So please, return to join us again. Thank you all for being with us, and thank you, again, Karen King, for this remarkable presentation.
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