In the fourth chapter of Stand Your Ground, Douglas explores the nature of God as freedom revealed in the exodus and manifest in the gospel.
The story of the exodus reveals two faiths:
1) an Exodus of Liberation
2) an Exodus of Conquer
Douglas show that for black Christians, the story of exodus is a story of liberation. But for Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism, the exodus is a blueprint for Manifest Destiny.
The persistence of black faith is bound to its roots in the freedom of God. That God’s nature is freedom and God’s movement in human history reflects that freedom.
In theological terms, this means that God has a transcendent relationship to humanity. So God is free of human definition and particularity. It is also related to the ancestral African belief in the Great High God in which God is not dependent on human action, but encouraging of it.
Because God’s nature is freedom, therefore black bodies are created to be free.
So for black faith, connecting to the liberation in Exodus is consistent with God’s preference toward freedom. While imperfect, it provides a more honest hermeneutic. For the natural connection to the story is to a people in need of liberation, rather than to blood lineage of favoritism.
In contrast, Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism is built on a belief of chosenness of culture and blood. This theology is really quite inconsistent with the exodus story. Anglo-Saxons weren’t in the exodus story. So there is no theological or blood connection to the chosen people in the story.
What the exodus story does reveal, however, is how “God chooses to be in the world” which is to give preference toward freedom, not justification for desire.
Lastly, the limitations of basing our faith on exodus are obvious. The last word should not be the genocide in Joshua or the letters of Paul, but should be found in the redeeming and liberating character of Jesus.
Reflection:
Torah’s Non-Ending
A few weeks ago, our lectionary gave us a piece of Deuteronomy. It begins with instructions:
“When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.”
They are to take the first fruits to the priest for sacrifice and then proclaim God’s freeing power. Then:
“You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.”
And it continues in verses not included in the lectionary, making a regular offering
“giving it to the Levites, the aliens, the orphans, and the widows, so that they may eat their fill within your towns,”
Listening to this passage after reading the first chapter of Stand Your Ground drew me to the non-ending of Torah. The conquering and slaughter comes in Joshua. The Books of Moses, the heart of the inherited faith, ends with the promised land in sight.
It ends with instructions on how to be a community in this new land for them to possess.
Instructions which assumes that there will be people for them to share with.
The very language of Deuteronomy seems to have, at best, a complicated relationship to the conquer theology of Manifest Destiny. One reason is that it presumes the liberated people would have neighbors in the land from outside the tribe they’d feast and eat dinner with.o
The Exodus Today
Douglas describes the place of black bodies in a culture of Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism in light of the exodus: a story of liberation and promise.
She names the paradox of the liberating nature of God in the unliberated black bodies of our culture. The presence of the unliberated groaning to be freed reveals the spirit of God in the midst of struggle and the ungodly character of servitude.
From black leadership during reconstruction and civil rights to those leaders of modern movements including Black Lives Matter, the connection of African Americans to liberation in the exodus is pretty direct.
I would think then, that the call for liberation today would mirror the challenge of the liberated Israelites; just as the hardened hearts of many whites to maintain an exceptional worldview mirror the challenge of the Egyptian.
As a product of whiteness, what ways have I let my heart harden to the plight of others? And when have I let the lies of Pharaoh enflame my fear of the other?
In the first half of the book, we explored the stand-your-ground culture. In the second half of the book, we’ll explore the hope that comes from God.
Next: Chapter 5 – the Justice of God.