Illinois Authors

Convergent Children's 2024

From the bestselling author of Reading While Black comes a sweet and inspiring picture book that weaves together history and faith to help families talk about how everyone—including children—can be a voice for justice. Andy Johnson loves fighting battles. Especially when he has his favorite sword, the Destroyer, by his side. So when Dad announces that the Johnson family is heading to the city to join a march, Andy’s ready to don his battle gear and be the best soldier! Except this isn’t a march to war . . . it’s a march for justice. Join Andy and the rest of the Johnson kids as they learn how we can answer God’s call for justice and how marching is one way people can fight for a world that reflects God’s love and compassion—from the civil rights era up to today. Building on the first Johnson family book, Josey Johnson’s Hair and the Holy Spirit, and inspired by a conversation with his own children after taking them to a protest march, Esau McCaulley provides an accessible resource for parents and educators looking to engage kids on the topics of racism, discrimination, and social justice through a biblical and historical perspective.

Convergent Books 2023

From the New York Times contributing opinion writer and award-winning author of Reading While Black, a riveting intergenerational account of his family’s search for home and hope For much of his life, Esau McCaulley was taught to see himself as an exception: someone who, through hard work, faith, and determination, overcame childhood poverty, anti-Black racism, and an absent father to earn a job as a university professor and a life in the middle class. But that narrative was called into question one night, when McCaulley answered the phone and learned that his father—whose absence defined his upbringing—died in a car crash. McCaulley was being asked to deliver his father’s eulogy, to make sense of his complicated legacy in a country that only accepts Black men on the condition that they are exceptional, hardworking, perfect. The resulting effort sent McCaulley back through his family history, seeking to understand the community that shaped him. In these pages, we meet his great-grandmother Sophia, a tenant farmer born with the gift of prophecy who scraped together a life in Jim Crow Alabama; his mother, Laurie, who raised four kids alone in an era when single Black mothers were demonized as “welfare queens”; and a cast of family, friends, and neighbors who won small victories in a world built to swallow Black lives. With profound honesty and compassion, he raises questions that implicate us all: What does each person’s struggle to build a life teach us about what we owe each other? About what it means to be human? How Far to the Promised Land is a thrilling and tender epic about being Black in America. It’s a book that questions our too-simple narratives about poverty and upward mobility; a book in which the people normally written out of the American Dream are given voice.

IVP Kids 2022

When Josey wonders why people are so different, Dad helps her understand that our differences aren't a mistake. In fact, we have many differences because God is creative! Josey is spending the day with Dad―getting her hair braided at Monique's Beauty Shop, and picking out a new red dress for Sunday. Because Sunday is Pentecost! In the process, she learns to celebrate the differences she sees all around her as part of God's plan for his creation. Children and the adults who read with them are invited to join Josey as she learns of God's wonderfully diverse design. Also included is a note from the author to encourage further conversation about the content. Discover IVP Kids and share with children the things that matter to God!

IVP 2022

"Lent is inescapably about repenting." Every year, the church invites us into a season of repentance and fasting in preparation for Holy Week. It's an invitation to turn away from our sins and toward the mercy and grace of Christ. Often, though, we experience the Lenten fast as either a mindless ritual or self-improvement program. In this short volume, priest and scholar Esau McCaulley introduces the season of Lent, showing us how its prayers and rituals point us not just to our own sinfulness but also beyond it to our merciful Savior. Each volume in the Fullness of Time series invites readers to engage with the riches of the church year, exploring the traditions, prayers, Scriptures, and rituals of the seasons of the church calendar.

IVP Academic 2020

Biblical Interpretation from the Black Church Tradition Growing up in the American South, Esau McCaulley knew firsthand the ongoing struggle between despair and hope that marks the lives of some in the African American context. A key element in the fight for hope, he discovered, has long been the practice of Bible reading and interpretation that comes out of traditional Black churches. This ecclesial tradition is often disregarded or viewed with suspicion by much of the wider church and academy, but it has something vital to say. Reading While Black is a personal and scholarly testament to the power and hope of Black biblical interpretation. At a time in which some within the African American community are questioning the place of the Christian faith in the struggle for justice, New Testament scholar McCaulley argues that reading Scripture from the perspective of Black church tradition is invaluable for connecting with a rich faith history and addressing the urgent issues of our times. In Reading While Black, Esau McCaulley: Advocates for a model of interpretation that involves an ongoing conversation between the collective Black experience and the Bible, Gives pride of place to the particular questions coming out of Black communities, Gives the Bible space to respond by affirming, challenging, and at times, reshaping Black concerns, and Demonstrates this model with studies on how Scripture speaks to topics often overlooked by white interpreters, such as ethnicity, political protest, policing, and slavery. Ultimately McCaulley calls the church to a dynamic theological engagement with Scripture, in which Christians of diverse backgrounds dialogue with their own social location as well as the cultures of others. Reading While Black moves the conversation forward.

T&T Clark 2021

This book explores the link between Paul’s belief that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah, and his interpretation of the Abrahamic Land Promise in Galatians. Countering claims that Paul replaces the Promised Land with the gift of the Spirit or salvation, Esau McCaulley argues that Paul expands this inheritance to include the whole earth; believing that, as the seed of Abraham and David, Jesus is entitled to the entire world as his inheritance and kingdom. McCaulley argues that scholars have neglected Paul’s expanded interpretation of the inheritance of the earth, rarely appreciate the role that messianism plays in Galatians, and fail to acknowledge that Second Temple authors often portrayed royal and messianic figures as God’s means of fulfilling the promises made to Abraham and Israel, via the establishment of kingdoms. Through a comparison of texts from the Pseudepigrapha, apocrypha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls with Galatians 3:1–4:7, 5:21, McCaulley argues Paul’s interpretation of Jesus’s death is a manifestation of Second Temple messianism because it ends the covenant curses outlined in Deuteronomy and begins the restoration of the inheritance to Abraham’s offspring through the establishment of Jesus’s worldwide kingdom; he concludes that Paul’s interpretation of the Abrahamic inheritance is inseparable from his belief that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah.

IVP Academic 2024

In a first-of-its-kind volume, The New Testament in Color offers biblical commentary that is: Multiethnic Diverse Contextual Informative Reflective Prophetic Inspiring “I wish someone had handed The New Testament in Color to me twenty-five years ago, and I hope many will read it now.” ―Nijay Gupta, bestselling author of Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church. Historically, Bible commentaries have focused on the particular concerns of a limited segment of the church, all too often missing fresh questions and perspectives that are fruitful for biblical interpretation. Listening to scholars from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities offers us an opportunity to explore the Bible from a wider angle, a better vantage point. The New Testament in Color is a one-volume commentary on the New Testament written by a multiethnic team of scholars holding orthodox Christian beliefs. Each scholar brings exegetical expertise coupled with a unique interpretive lens to illuminate the ways social location and biblical interpretation work together. Theologically orthodox and multiethnically contextual, The New Testament in Color fills a gap in biblical understanding for both the academy and the church. Who we are and where God placed us―it's all useful for better understanding his Word.