Audiobooks Narrated by Esau Mccaulley

How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South

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 "A riveting book that invites you into the personal journey of one of the finest writers alive today."-Beth Moore, New York Times bestselling author of All My Knotted-Up Life 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.

Esau Mccaulley (Author), Esau Mccaulley (Narrator)

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Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal

'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 audiences to engage with the riches of the church year, exploring the traditions, prayers, Scriptures, and rituals of the seasons of the church calendar.

Esau Mccaulley (Author), Esau Mccaulley (Narrator)

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Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

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. 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. He advocates for a model of interpretation that involves an ongoing conversation between the collective Black experience and the Bible, in which the particular questions coming out of Black communities are given pride of place and the Bible is given space to respond by affirming, challenging, and, at times, reshaping Black concerns. McCaulley demonstrates this model with studies on how Scripture speaks to topics often overlooked by white interpreters, such as ethnicity, political protest, policing, and slavery.

Esau Mccaulley (Author), Esau Mccaulley (Narrator)

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