Race and Rhyme: Rereading the New Testament

by Love Lazarus Sechrest

Overview

A leading womanist biblical scholar reads passages from the New Testament in dialogue with modern-day issues of racial justice. 

The narratives and letters of the New Testament emerged from a particular set of historical contexts that differ from today’s, but they resonate with us because of how the issues they raise “rhyme” with subjects of contemporary relevance. Listening for these echoes of the present in the past, Love Sechrest utilizes her cultural experience and her perspective as a Black woman scholar to reassess passages in the New Testament that deal with intergroup conflict, ethnoracial tension, and power dynamics between dominant and minoritized groups. 

After providing an overview of womanist biblical interpretation and related terminology, Sechrest utilizes an approach she calls “associative hermeneutics” to place select New Testament texts in dialogue with modern-day issues of racial justice. Topics include:

• antiracist allyship and Jesus’s interaction with marginalized individuals in the Gospel of Matthew
• cultural assimilation and Jesus’s teachings about family and acceptance in the Gospel of Luke
• gendered stereotypes and the story of the Samaritan woman in the Gospel of John
• the experience of Black women and girls in the American criminal justice system and the woman accused of adultery in the Gospel of John
• group identity and the incorporation of Gentiles into the early Jesus movement in Acts
• privilege and Paul’s claims to apostolic authority in 2 Corinthians
• coalition-building between diverse groups and the discussion of unity in Ephesians
• government’s role in providing social welfare and early Christians’ relationship to the Roman Empire in Romans and Revelation

Through these creative and illuminating connections, Sechrest offers a rich bounty of new insights from Scripture—drawing out matters of justice and human dignity that spoke to early Christians and can speak still to Christians willing to listen today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802867131
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	08/23/2022
Pages:	414
Sales rank:	525,939
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Love Lazarus Sechrest is associate provost for program development and innovation and professor of theology at Mount St. Mary's University. Her scholarship is centered on womanist and African American biblical interpretation and New Testament ethics; she co- chaired the Society of Biblical Literature's African American Biblical Hermeneutics Section from 2012 to 2017 and gives presentations on race, ethnicity, and Christian thought in a variety of academic, church, and business contexts. She is the author of A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race and Can "White" People Be Saved? Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission. A second-career scholar, she previously worked as a senior manager in the aerospace industry at General Electric.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Race and Associative Reasoning
2. Neighbors, Allies, Frenemies, and Foes in the Gospel of Matthew
3. Assimilation and the Family of God in the Gospel of Luke
4. Sex, Crime, and Stereotypes in the Gospel of John
5. Negotiating Culture in the Family of God in the Book of Acts
6. Privilege, Identity, and Status in 2 Corinthians
7. Ligamental Leadership for the Household of God in Ephesians
8. Waking Up on the Wrong Side of Empire in Romans and Revelation
Appendix: Sample Moral Analogy Assignment
Bibliography
Indexes

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/11/2022

This urgent exegesis by Columbia Theological Seminary professor Sechrest (Can White People Be Saved?) looks at what the Bible can teach contemporary Christians about addressing racial injustice. She examines “situations in contemporary life that ‘rhyme’ with the situations addressed in the Bible” and challenges readers to adopt “a biblically shaped imagination for use in moral reasoning about race relations.” Sechrest draws wisdom on allyship from Jesus’s engagement with gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew, noting that some entreaties to establish cross-racial solidarity will be met with hostility similar to that shown by the Gadarenes toward Jesus, while others will be more receptive, as the centurion and Canaanite woman were when asking Jesus to heal their children. The author likens the judges’ entrapment and false accusation of adultery against Susanna in the Book of Daniel to “the plight of Black women caught in the prison industrial complex or the school-to-prison pipeline,” and urges Christians to advocate for a more merciful judicial system. Striking a balance between critical analysis and compassionate reflection, Sechrest’s incisive and rigorous interpretations brilliantly elucidate parallels between the biblical era and the present and convincingly lay out the moral implications of the gospels. This stirring hermeneutic makes for a meticulously argued call for Christians to fight against racial oppression. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

With Race and Rhyme, Love Sechrest has addressed a huge problem—how to help people who take their faith seriously to also take seriously how to think about race and Scripture. This is simply the best introduction to biblical hermeneutics that is also an introduction to thinking about racial justice.”
— Willie James Jennings
Yale Divinity School

“In the age of #BlackLivesMatter, the Covid-19 pandemic, and continued economic disparities in the world, this timely work is a must-read for those teaching biblical texts in theological environments. Sechrest calls for resistance so we can all become partners in justice. I highly recommend her work.”
— Angela N. Parker
McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University

“Love Sechrest navigates the complexity of interpretation for the contemporary age like few others. Utilizing associative hermeneutics and womanist values as framing techniques, Sechrest is a wise hermeneutical guide for socially, politically, and ethnoracially attentive interpreters who desire to negotiate the ancient biblical stories from the side of and for the sake of the most marginalized readers in order to attend to a justice orientation in the present moment.”
— Emerson B. Powery
Messiah University

“Love Sechrest’s book offers a new response to the question that many readers are asking: How do we talk about race while interpreting biblical texts? This book guides readers on a hermeneutical journey through the Gospels, Acts, Pauline texts, and the Apocalypse with the aid of a roadmap by which readers can courageously, critically, and analogously engage race while interpreting sacred texts.”
— Mitzi J. Smith
Columbia Theological Seminary

“Sechrest fuses her expertise in race and ethnic studies with her exegetical acumen to demonstrate (with a clarity and precision that delighted my engineering-trained mind) what she calls ‘associative hermeneutics’—a practice that might prove to be a game-changer in biblical interpretation. Immerse yourself in the experience of Race and Rhyme and consider anew how contemporary readers engage the ancient Christian text we call the New Testament.”
— Dennis R. Edwards
North Park Theological Seminary

“Dr. Love Sechrest combines rigorous scholarship, biblical insight, and prophetic precision to bring new meaning to the ethical, social, and spiritual implications of being the household of God. This book centers the Black experience in a way that invites others into a conversation that can move us toward building a coalition of justice that embodies the beloved community that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of. I highly recommend it!”
— Brenda Salter McNeil
author of Becoming Brave and Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0

“In this eagerly awaited volume, shaped by many years of teaching in this mode, Love Sechrest shows how what she labels ‘associative hermeneutics’ works as an approach to New Testament interpretation. As a distinctive model for doing the work of engaged interpretation, this book deserves to be widely used and warmly welcomed—not least as a challenge to the definitions and boundaries of the (contested) field of New Testament studies.”
— David G. Horrell
University of Exeter

“By seeking a ‘liberative hermeneutics of suspicion’ Sechrest poetically engages what she calls the ugly details in some biblical narratives so that contemporary realities about race relations, the pernicious impact of white supremacy, and other social challenges are uncovered through a method of moral reasoning. This book shows how critical biblical interpretation leads to responsible acts of leadership and justice.”
— Gay L. Byron
Howard University School of Divinity

“In Race and Rhyme, Love Lazarus Sechrest issues a womanist challenge to readers of the New Testament and models how to rise to that challenge. Pull up a chair, listen, and learn from a master interpreter as she shows not just that the New Testament can be a resource for the fight against racism today, but how it can be."
— Chris Keith
St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London

From the Publisher

08/01/2022

Using an interpretive process called associative hermeneutics, biblical scholar Sechrest (Columbia Theological Seminary; A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race), whose academic focus deploys womanist and African American biblical interpretation, examines passages from the Christian New Testament and applies them to contemporary situations. She argues that the Bible's timeless and transcendent principles must be separated out from the culturally influenced teachings. To do that, she surveys contemporary situations that "rhyme" with a biblical passage, meaning that it echoes with the text's meaning, its situation, and the past. Sechrest offers a highly detailed explanation of the text in its original context and embarks on a well-thought-out interpretation of what the passage can teach about current issues. She utilizes her experiences as a Black woman to explain teachings about marginalized populations in New Testament times, and what they can tell us about the treatment of marginalized people today. VERDICT Exhibiting a keen knowledge of the Bible and related scholarship, Sechrest's work may be a tough read at times for those unversed in biblical scholarship, but it will appeal to those seeking fresh insights from the New Testament.—Augustine J. Curley

Library Journal