First Pure, Then Peaceable : Frederick Douglass Reads James [1 ed.] 9780567002396, 9780567033079

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Library of New Testament Studies

379 formerly the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement series

Editor Mark Goodacre Editorial Board John M. G. Barclay, Craig Blomberg, Kathleen E. Corley, R. Alan Culpepper, James D. G. Dunn, Craig A. Evans, Stephen Fowl, Robert Fowler, Simon J. Gathercole, John S. Kloppenborg, Michael Labahn, Robert Wall, Steve Walton, Robert L. Webb, Catrin H. Williams

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First Pure, Then Peaceable Frederick Douglass, Darkness and the Epistle of James

Margaret P. Aymer

Copyright © Margaret P. Aymer, 2007 Published by T&T Clark International A Continuum imprint The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Extracts from Blassingame (ed.), The Frederick Douglass Papers, Vol. 1 (1979) used by permission Yale University Press. Margaret P. Aymer has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work First published 2008 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-10: 0-567-03307-4 (hardback) ISBN-13: 978-0-567-03307-9 (hardback) Typeset by CA Typesetting Ltd, www.shefeldtypesetting.com Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk

For My Students Permission to read freely

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The fugitive takes up his solitary journey for freedom, not by the light of the rising day, but in the darkness of midnight. Frederick Douglass, “We Are in the Midst of a Moral Revolution,” 1854

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Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations

ix xi

Chapter 1 Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader Biblical Studies: An On-going Critique African Americans in the Guild of Biblical Studies Cultural Interpretation: A Review and Critique Moving from Silence to Darkness Reading “Darkness”: A Theoretical Model of Marronage To Read “Darkness”: Frederick Douglass as Exemplum

1 2 5 7 10 11 16

Chapter 2 Frederick Douglass, “Darkness Reader” A Very Brief Biography Is Douglass “Dark” Enough? The Language of Religion “First Pure, then Peaceable: The choice of Jas 3:17 Formation or Home-Building and the Bible

19 20 21 23 25 27

Chapter 3 Redefining “Religion”: Douglass’s Abolitionist Speeches and James 3:17 Oratory and Orientation The Dimensions of Home: Frederick Douglass and Jas 3:17 “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland” Structural, Textual, and Ideational Aspects Rhetoric and Signification Other Formative Uses of Jas 3:17 in Douglass’s Abolitionist Speeches “The Fourth of July” and Jas 3:17 “John Brown” and Jas 3:17 The Language of Formation: Further Considerations

30 30 34 35 35 38 43 47 50 52

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Chapter 4 “Friendship with the  is Enmity with God”: “Darkness Reading” and the Epistle of James Reading “Darkness,” Reading James A Brief Overview of the Epistle James as Re-form[ul]ation Intertextuality and “Scripturalizing” in James Signification and Other Rhetorical Moves in James “Darkness Reading” and Jas 3:17 The Contours of the Pericope: Formal and Structural Considerations Re-form[ul]ation and Jas 3:13-18 Intertextuality in Jas 3:13-18 Signification, Rhetoric and Jas 3:13-18 James and Darkness: Preliminary Conclusions

53 53 54 54 59 62 68 68 70 71 72 73

Chapter 5 Taking an “Ell”: Reading, Darkness, and Resistance A “Reading” Lesson “Reading” as Resistance “Scriptures”: The Norms of “America” Evangelical Christianity and the Myth of America “Taking an Ell”: “Reading” and “Darkness” Why did Douglass “Read” James?

74 74 76 78 81 83 86

Chapter 6 “Reading Darkness” and “Biblical Studies” “Reading Darkness” as “Changing the ‘Subject’ ”

92 93

Appendix Notes Bibliography Index of Ancient Sources Index of Authors/Subjects

99 106 134 143 146

Acknowledgments “Marronage.” The word conjures up the statue of the maroon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a larger-than-life statue of a black man, down on one knee, with a conch shell pressed to his lips. Vague remembrances of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica come back to me, along with early lessons in tropical classrooms about “the maroons.” I come from maroons – Black Caribs – through my paternal grandmother. And I come from, and live and work among, a variety of people in psychosocial marronage, some self-imposed, some the result of colonialism, racism, and other -isms and -phobias. Even now, the voices of people from four continents, my ancestors, bid me to read the “darkness” of the world. I choose to do so through the multifaceted lenses of the New Testament. The call to this particular marronage journey came first from Vincent L. Wimbush. Following that call continues to be no small privilege. I am deeply indebted to him, both for his advising, and even more for his daring. For had he never dared to take his own path, to propose a change of subject for biblical studies in the first place, this project would not be. In our long journey together, I have come to know him as professor, as mentor, and increasingly as conversation partner and colleague. I am more grateful than I can say for his guidance and leadership, for the way he has shaped me into a scholar and a teacher. My gratitude extends also to other early readers of this project: Emilie Townes, Hal Taussig, and Sterling Stuckey. There have been other guides. The faculty, staff, and students of Union Theological Seminary, NY, have seen me a good way through this journey, and have shaped my thoughts and actions around religion. I pause to remember three who now walk with the ancestors, in gratitude for the ways in which each shaped my journey: James Melvin Washington, Annie Ruth Powell, and Leon Cedric Roberts. The research and writing of this dissertation would have been impossible without the resources of the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, and the John Bulow Campbell Library of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. Particular thanks to Joseph Troutman, the theological librarian of the Robert W. Woodruff Library for his unfailing help in accessing materials for this project. Funding for this project in its incipient stages came from the UNCF/Mellon Foundation, and the Fund for Theological Education. The support of the faculty and staff of the Interdenominational Theological Center has been invaluable. I am grateful for all of my colleagues, most espe-

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cially those who teach Biblical Studies: Randall Bailey, Harold Bennett, Wallace Hartsfield, Temba Mafico, Wayne Merritt, and David Rensberger. I continue to marvel at the multiple ways that I am strengthened, challenged and encouraged by the students of the Interdenominational Theological Center and of the greater Atlanta area. There remains a group of persons without whom I would not have survived the effort: my husband, Laurent Oget, who in his own way understands what it is to read the world as “darkness” and what it is to be in exile; Guy Pujol, my colleague and early writing partner; André J. Evans and Marlene Q. Underwood, recent conversation partners who I hope will take up their own journey of marronage; the women of the Atlanta Womanist/Feminist Biblical Consortium: Nancy DeClaissé-Walford, Elizabeth Johnson, Faith KirkhamHawkins, Carol Newsom, Kathleen O’Connor, Gail O’Day, Tina Pippin and Christine Yoder; the members and affiliates of Central Presbyterian church, who constantly provide respite for me and for many others in our marronage; and my dear Robert L. Miller, Jr., who continually encourages me “just keep writing.” And before them, names echo in the Neo-Gothic halls of my Union memory: C. Ricardo Carson, Darryl Jones, Rosamond Rodman, Marie Case, David Sanchez, and especially Gay Byron who still claims to believe that I can do it. Finally, I must mention a very specific set of travelers who have walked with me from my earliest memories and before: Ann-Marie Aymer, a librarian and musician, and my sister; Valerie Aymer, a landscape architect and potter, and my sister; Shirley Aymer, a biologist and teacher, and my mother; Albert Aymer, a New Testament scholar, minister, administrator, and my father. And behind them, Mabel Williams, my grandmother and the ancestors from India; Charles Morales Lewin and Margaret Mitchell, my grandfather and great-grandmother, and the ancestors from Panama and Jamaica; Millinette Taitt Aymer, my grandmother, and the ancestors from Barbados, and from the Carib nation in Dominica; and John Aymer, my grandfather, and the ancestors from Montserrat. And before them, other exiles tracing other paths, reading other darknesses. The conch shell sounds. It is time to move on with the journey. I pause in gratitude to the God of the exile. Margaret P. Aymer, 2007

Abbreviations AB BCSR BNTC IBC ICC JBL JR JSNTSup JSOTSup LB NCB NICNT NIGTC OTL SBLBAC SBLDS ST SNTSMS TBC TNTC WBC

Anchor Bible Bulletin of the Council on the Study of Religion Black’s New Testament Commentaries Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching International Critical Commentary Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Religion Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement Series Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series Linguistica Biblica New Century Bible Commentary The New International Commentary on the New Testament New International Greek Testament Commentary The Old Testament Library Society of Biblical Literature Bible and Culture Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Studia theologica Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series Torch Bible Commentaries Tyndale New Testament Commentaries Word Biblical Commentary

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Chapter 1 Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader In 1846, after a tour of abolitionist speaking in Belfast, Ireland, Frederick Douglass was presented with a Bible as a token of the esteem in which he was held. He responded to this gift by saying, in part, This [holding the presentation Bible in his hands] – this is an excellent token of your regard. It is just what I want from you. It contains all the Words of Heavenly Wisdom – it is opposed to every thing that is wrong and it is in favor of all that is right. It is filled with that Wisdom from above, which is pure, and peaceable, and full of mercies and good fruits, without prolixity, and without hypocrisy. It knows no one by the color of his skin. It confers no privilege upon one class, which it does not confer upon another. The fundamental principle running through and underlying the whole is this – “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them.”1

Douglass’s strong feelings about the Bible are to be expected. According to historian Gregory Lampe, Douglass “underwent a religious conversion to Christianity” in his youth; and, shortly after his escape from slavery, “he joined New Bedford’s A.M.E. Zion Church, in which he advanced his public speaking skills as an exhorter, class leader, and a licensed lay preacher.”2 It would be expected that such a person would hold the Bible in high esteem, and, by Douglass’s own account, he did. During the two decades of his antebellum speeches (1841–60), Douglass frequently quoted, paraphrased, and alluded to passages throughout the Protestant canon.3 In short, Frederick Douglass read the Bible, read it frequently and carefully, and read it publicly – to great effect – into his abolitionist speeches throughout the antebellum period. Yet among Douglass’s biographers, a relative silence persists regarding the nature and consequences of his interaction with the Bible. In fact, as historian Sterling Stuckey puts it: There has been relatively little attention given to Frederick Douglass’s contributions to our understanding of either African or Christian spiritual values, which are subtly and intricately related in his writings.4

Given Douglass’s international notoriety as an abolitionist, his leadership within the temperance and women’s suffrage movements, his prolific writing as an autobiographer, an orator, and an editor, and his generally acknowledged

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status as one of the most important figures of nineteenth-century America, this silence among US historians surrounding one of Douglass’s seminal sources, the Bible, is remarkable. Yet in this instance it may be understandable. Many today are trained to believe that scholarship around the texts of the Bible is, and by right ought to be, the aegis of the guild of which I am a neophyte member, that of biblical scholarship. However, even within my own guild there is relative silence around Frederick Douglass and Bible readers like him. This chapter, and to some extent this entire book, is a foray into that silence: an attempt to join the few voices that are beginning to inquire what persons like Douglass are doing when they pick up the Bible to read.

Biblical Studies: An On-going Critique As it concerns persons like Douglass, the persistent silence in the field of biblical studies is the natural outgrowth of at least two trends that have dominated the academic study of the Bible over the last century. First, the field of biblical studies has been circumscribed by a nineteenth-century “scientific” method that upholds an unexamined “objectivity,” which in turn codifies biases against all but a particular subset of Bible readers.5 In her 1994 address to the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL), Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza summarizes the nature of the dominant form of inquiry within the academy. The scientist ethos of value-free detached inquiry insists that the biblical critic needs to stand outside the common circumstances of collective life and stresses the alien character of biblical materials. What makes biblical interpretation possible is radical detachment, emotional, intellectual, and political distanciation. Disinterested and dispassionate scholarship enables biblical critics to enter the minds and world of historical people, to step out of their own time and to study history on its own terms, unencumbered by contemporary questions, values, and interests. A-political detachment, objective literalism, and scientific value-neutrality are the rhetorical postures that seem to be dominant in this positivistic paradigm of biblical scholarship.6

Schüssler-Fiorenza goes on to level the critique that biblical scholars’ epistemological interests “covertly advocate an a-political reality without assuming responsibility for their political assumptions and interests.”7 As such, the epistemological pretexts of biblical studies more often than not reflect the interests of the dominant culture. These pretexts include the presumption that the perspective of the guild-trained biblical scholar, who is often a member of the dominant culture, must be normative. And insofar as the dominant culture is proceeding as those in power believe it should, there is, therefore, no need for the guild-based biblical scholar to question the status quo. Thus, the readings of the guild are represented as objective, scientific and above all, a-political. Of late, a swell of voices has begun to call into question the “political [and theological] assumptions and interests” underlying the methods and readings of academic biblical studies, pointing out the pretexts of these readings: the unex-



1.   Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader

3

amined, presumed normative political assumptions and interests of the majority of the guild who are members of the socially dominant gender and ethnic group of the western world, i.e. white, European/American men.8 It is these located methods and readings that have been named “objective” and “scientific,” and that have become the rule by which all other methods and readings are to be evaluated. Indeed, the guild continues to institute, as a requirement of entrance, that “legitimate” Bible readers must first accept both the aforementioned pretexts and their resultant methods and conclusions. The power of this encoding is made pointedly clear by womanist biblical scholar Renita Weems in her article “Reading Her Way through the Struggle.” Within recent years there has been growing attention to the influence that readers themselves exert in interpreting texts. Meaning is no longer seen, as it has been in formalist circles, as the sole property of the text, […] Rather, meaning in contemporary discussions is viewed as emerging in the interaction between reader and text […] From this perspective, moreover, reading is acknowledged to be a social convention, one that is taught, reinforced, and when “done properly,” rewarded. […] it should be added, the dominant reading conventions of any society in many instances coincide with the dominant class’s interests in that society. In fact, one’s socio-cultural and economic context exerts enormous influence upon not only how one reads, but what one reads, why one reads, and what one reads for. Thus, what one gets out of a text depends in large measure upon what one reads into it.9

Daniel Patte illustrates a specific way in which this takes place. In his Ethics of Biblical Interpretation, he – a white, male, guild-trained Bible reader – critiques the false privileging of “critical” (read guild-based) readings over “ordinary” readings of the Bible.10 Both are based on the reader’s pre-understanding of a text, and are thus located readings; the main point of distinction between them, he argues, is that critical readings “are the outcomes of reading processes that are disciplined and controlled by the use of critical methods, instead of being spontaneous and intuitive.”11 Critical exegetes, however, do not disavow all ordinary readings. Rather, “most critical exegetical practices presuppose from the outset the legitimacy of certain ordinary readings, namely those of the exegetes.”12 If, then, the discipline of biblical studies is so dominated by pretexts of “scientific objectivity” that privilege one set of reading methods and one group of readers, then the silence around Frederick Douglass as Bible reader comes as no surprise. Neither his method nor his reading – and by extension his location, perhaps even his person – have been valid places of inquiry for those within the guild of biblical studies. Second, over the last century, biblical studies has developed a fundamentally historicist bent. So argues Vincent L. Wimbush in his introduction to African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures. Wimbush charges that the biblical field tends to confine biblical studies to the ancient past. Such confinement makes the text an archaic and ultimately “safe” document and limits the “acceptable” interpreters of the text to those with specific training in

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arcane, specialist techniques.13 Krister Stendahl, former SBL president, puts a fine point on the matter. “Could it be,” he asked, that preoccupation with history comes natural when one is part of a culture which feels happy and hopeful about the historical process? Hegel’s pan-historic philosophy belongs, after all, to the ascendancy of western imperialism – it was even said that other parts of the world were lifted “into history” when conquered, colonized, or converted by the West.14

Not only, then, is the reigning epistemology in the biblical field claimed to be apolitical and “objective”; the historicist bent of biblical studies has ensured that even the Bible itself is colonized, “lifted into history” by guild-trained historians, who, eschewing all discussion of the contemporary world, are trained to turn their attention to the study of the “alien” period of ancient history. This historicist bent focuses the biblical scholar on elusive “ideal readers,” readers who might have read or heard the original texts, who might have reacted in “ideal” ways to the writings as they were received. Consequently, the biblical scholar learns to turn a blind eye to later readers, non-ideal readers who read the text not to reclaim a fictive past but to address a present reality that is neither happy nor hopeful. Barbara A. Holdredge, in her response to Wimbush’s article, argues that these two pretexts of biblical studies produce academic readings that are “tempocentric” in perspective and “nonscriptural” in approach.15 “Tempocentric” perspectives “tend to privilege certain time periods, focusing primarily on the ancient past – the biblical period – and/or on the present – the contemporary period.”16 “Non-scriptural” approaches underlie this tempocentrism, for neither the scholar focused solely on the ancient past nor the one focused on the contemporary is looking at the matter of how the Bible has functioned as “scripture.” In the latter of her two critiques, Holdredge echoes the argument of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who defines “scripturalizing” as an activity, or perhaps better, as a relationship between people and (a) text(s). As he puts it, no text is a scripture in itself and as such. People – a given community – make a text into scripture, or keep it scripture: by treating it in a certain way.17

In that relationship, the Bible is more than an historical document; it is a series of texts used within real communities by real people to negotiate real-world issues. It is a lens through which they view, and with which they critique, their society. If the pretexts of academic biblical studies produce a product that is tempocentric and non-scriptural, this is in part because the accepted form of academic biblical inquiry leaves no room for those who read the Bible not as an ancient document but as a living one; not as an historical document but as a scripture through which they “read” their world. The use of tempocentric and non-scriptural interpretative methods reflects these pretexts. Moreover, it allows interpreters to avoid a deeper issue, that of religion as ideology.



1.   Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader

5

In his article “The Ideology of Religious Studies,” Timothy Fitzgerald makes exactly that point. Religion should […] be studied as an aspect of modern western ideology, with a specific location and changing nuance in history. Certainly its modern usage is closely connected to western hegemony, corporate capital, and colonisation. But it is not only that. It is also connected to the growth of democracy and the marginalization of old European hierarchies.18

To take Fitzgerald’s point is to go beyond old paradigms of studying the Bible as an ancient document; and it is to go beyond recent paradigms that engage in creating modern, located readings. It is to admit that the Bible is not, or should not be, at the center of our study. Rather, at the center of our study should be the battling ideologies of various communities that used the Bible (or Qur’an or Torah or Vedic literature for that matter) as one of several tools in their struggles. For, no one group exerts ideological control over the interpretation of the Bible. Just as those who controlled the growth of western society have spun the words of the text to strengthen their political agendas, so also have those who were unwilling participants in that growth. Africans and African Americans, and many others who stood on the margins of power also have used, and continue to use, the Bible as an ideological tool in their struggles against oppression. However, current guild practices and pretexts have served to silence these readers, their methods, their readings and those who might be interested in reading with them. Thus, Frederick Douglass, and Bible readers like him, are left unaddressed by those who specialize in the academic study of the Bible.

African Americans in the Guild of Biblical Studies Interestingly, even when one turns to the growing corpus of biblical scholarship being produced by African Americans in the guild, one does not find much room for a prolonged discussion regarding Douglass as Bible reader. This is in large part due to the history of racism in the US that has, until recently, kept African American voices out of the guild of biblical studies. The scholarship of those who have successfully entered into the guild may be divided into two overarching schools: one, intent on recovering the African presence within these ancient texts; and the other, focused on interpreting the Bible in the interest of contemporary socio-political and theological concerns. In the first of these two schools, the primary argument has been for the presence and importance of Africans and of the continent of Africa itself within the pages of the Bible. As Randall C. Bailey succinctly charges, “the tendency in Old Testament scholarship has been to deny that African nations and individuals either play a role in the text of the Hebrew Canon or had an influence upon it.”19 Bailey, pioneer Charles B. Copher and others of this school, determined to show otherwise, to show, as Copher put it, that

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From slaves to rulers, from court officials to authors who wrote parts of the Old Testament itself, from lawgivers to prophets, black peoples and their lands and individual black persons appear numerous times. In the veins of Hebrew-IsraeliteJudahite-Jewish peoples flowed black blood.20

The scholarship emerging from this school has ranged from close analyses of the lineage lines traced in the Hebrew Bible to studies of the geographic locations mentioned in the Hebrew Bible texts. It has sought to show not only African presence, but at times African primacy in the ancient world of these texts.21 The scholarship of Copher et al. has proven to be an invaluable corrective to the racist denial of the African presence in the Bible typical of much of the (especially early) scholarship within academic biblical studies. At the same time, Copher’s work, and the work of those within his school, falls into tempocentrism, for its interest is still the grand and glorious, and yet alien and unattainable past. Its focus is to “get right,” as it were, the ancient world of the Bible. Such a focus implicitly validates the agenda of the larger guild, an agenda designed to keep discussions of the Bible in the ultimately unknowable ancient past. Additionally, Copher and those who follow his scholarship also unwittingly validate the guild’s tendency to deal with these texts as ancient documents rather than as “scriptures”; for neither he nor his school addresses the matter of the ideological use of the Bible by real, modern and post-modern readers, readers like Frederick Douglass.22 The second overarching school of African American scholarship within the guild of biblical studies is that of theological and theo-ethical readings of the Bible for the express purpose of “liberation.” Sparked by the rhetorics in the 1968 monograph of James H. Cone, but foreshadowed by a number of African American scholars, teachers, and preachers,23 this school of biblical scholarship interprets the Bible so as to reveal “God in Christ as the Liberator of the oppressed from social oppression and to political struggle, wherein the poor recognize that their fight against poverty and injustice is not only consistent with the gospel but is the gospel of Jesus Christ.”24 Some biblical scholars have translated the challenge of James H. Cone to their own work. For example, creating what he calls “guerilla exegesis,” Obery Osayande Hendricks proposes that African American biblical exegetes ought to approach the text in a manner akin to “bricolage,” purposefully, consciously, employing specific biblical exegetical methods for specific liberative aims. As Hendricks put it: For the guerilla exegete, it is not in the constructed identity of “African” that s/he operates, but in the existential identity of “African-American.” Not in the construct, the unreality, but in the “been-stuck,” the tortured reality. The complexity of hybrid, hyphenated identity. Born in America. Forged in America. […] Remade in America. A Jazz-thing. African hyphen American.25



1.   Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader

7

In contrast to the first school, this second poses the question “What does it mean to think theologically and/or theo-ethically in light of the socio-political ‘darkness’ succinctly captured in the phrase ‘African hyphen American’?” The assertion is this: if one were to ask questions about the holy while privileging the lived experiences of at least a segment of African America, a just God would have to be “Black”; and that God would have to privilege the poor and oppressed, who, within the context of the United States of America, are, in terms of members, disproportionately “black” persons. Black theology, then, and the trajectories that emerge from this school function in exactly the manner that Fitzgerald describes above – as an “aspect of modern […] ideology.”26 African American women in the guild have responded to black theology by even more purposefully centering their own experience, current and historical, in their scholarship surrounding the Bible. Womanist theologian Jacqueline Grant argues The Bible must be read and interpreted in the light of Black women’s own oppression and God’s revelation within that context. Womanist theology must, like Sojourner, “compare the teachings of the Bible with the witness” in them. To do womanist theology, then, we must read and hear the Bible and engage it within the context of our own experience. This is the only way that it can make sense to people who are oppressed. Black women of the past did not hesitate in doing this and we must do no less.27

Grant’s assertion is echoed by Renita Weems who notes that, for African American women, reading the Bible within the context of their experience has led to the acknowledgment by many of an ambivalent relationship to the text, a text that, even when problematized on the issue of slavery, was still used as the means of oppression for all women, regardless of race.28 These women continue to call for an even further de-centering of the text, a de-centering akin to that which Wimbush and others have proposed. Black and womanist theologians, and black biblical scholars influenced by them, tend to avoid the tempocentrist privileging of the ancient past found in the African presence school. But they fall into a related trap. As Barbara Holdredge argues, while traditionally trained guild historians tend to focus on the fictive past, ideological critics err on the side of contemporary textual interpretation. This still leaves a gap in the history of the use of the text; she delineates that gap as “what a sacred text has meant to successive generations of readers – and listeners – from the text’s inception to the present day.”29 And it is through this gap that Frederick Douglass, Bible reader, falls once more into relative silence.

Cultural Interpretation: A Review and Critique Perhaps, the African American biblical scholar who tries hardest to bridge the tempocentric and non-scriptural gap is Brian Blount. In Cultural Interpretation:

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Reorienting New Testament Criticism, he analyzes the biblical interpretations of persons marginalized by academic readers of the Bible. Blount’s stated aim, to reclaim the validity of “micro-interpersonal” readings of texts, including readings that emerge from those whom Wimbush calls readers of “darkness,” requires that closer scrutiny be given to his work.30 Blount’s methodology is built on the language theory of M. A. K. Halliday. According to Blount, Halliday posits “three macro-functions” as the “basis of the adult grammatical system”: the “textual,” the “ideational,” and the “interpersonal.”31 The first of these “considers language as it functions grammatically.”32 It is directly related to the linguistic context that Halliday calls “the mode of discourse”: that is, the textual is related to the question “What part is the language playing?”33 The second, the ideational, “considers the conceptual meanings behind the lexical terms and phrases.”34 It occurs in the linguistic context “field of discourse”; therefore, the ideational macro-function answers the question “What is actually taking place?” The third of these macro-functions is the “interpersonal.”35 In this last, language is understood to function interactively […]. The sociocultural environment of the language user functions as a primary variable in the determination of language’s meaning.36

Blount argues that this interpersonal level can be further sub-divided into the “macro-interpersonal” and the “micro-interpersonal.”37 The former describes the “relationship between author and original audience.” The latter corresponds to the context of the more contemporary interpreter of the Bible, whether within or outside of the guild of biblical studies.38 The corresponding linguistic context Halliday calls the “tenor or style of discourse”; it raises the question “who is taking part” in this linguistic event?39 While Blount sees some value in Halliday’s model for the study of biblical exegesis, he correctly argues that the model’s flaw is its positivism: …while sociolinguistics accurately describes what happens in the interpretative process, it often does not go far enough into the analysis of consequences. Even though sociolinguistics recognizes that people of different cultures interpret texts and social events differently, it does not deal with the fact that the dominant culture too often presents only its interpretations as “correct” or “scientific.” When rules are fashioned, or, in our case, when commentaries are made, it is along the lines of the dominant culture’s interpretative perspective. What sociolinguistics typically leaves out, then, is the issue of power, the power of one community’s sociolinguistic perspective to dominate and devalue the sociolinguistic perspectives of other communities […]40

To address this issue of power, Blount turns to the proposals of Enrique Dussel. According to Blount, Dussel outlines a hermeneutic power structure in which only the dominant, centrist context allows itself the privilege of “correct” or meaningful” interpretation. Therefore, in our case of biblical inquiry, meaning that is



1.   Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader

9

derived from beyond the boundaries of the historical-critical/literary arena of inquiry, where the conversation consciously invites interpersonal rather than allegedly exclusive textual and ideological concerns, is considered suspect. The center as Dussel describes it has in this way become an ideology.41

Blount argues that Dussel calls for a “nonideological” approach to interpretation. This approach “will recognize the validity of all points of view, entertaining the totality of the ‘center’ and the ‘other’ on equal theoretical terms…”42 By “nonideological,” Dussel means a viewpoint that considers the views of the margin to be as valid as those of the center, one that does not privilege the position of the center, but instead requires that the center be informed by the insights of the margin. By applying Dussel’s challenge to Halliday’s linguistic methodology, Blount acknowledges, and accounts for, the differing power dynamics at work. It is, as he puts it, a way “to read Scripture not in light of societal totality, as an ideology, but from the perspective of the exterior, to see with the marginal members of society the full revelation of God.”43 Blount concludes his work by reclaiming the legitimacy of biblical readings consciously originating from macro-interpersonal locations. He argues: We have found that black, liberation, and other kinds of micro-interpersonally oriented text interpretations cannot be dismissed, because all research must deal with the fact that micro-interpersonal factors determine how the text is interpreted. Traditional, historical-critical research is determined by the same kinds of internal and external sociolinguistic factors that influence intentional micro-interpersonal interpretations.44

Blount’s work has much to recommend it. Unlike other guild offerings, it honors and acknowledges voices outside of the fictive past, voices that read the biblical texts not as ancient text but as scripture. And inasmuch as he does both of those things he sets a path that might avoid the traps of tempocentric and nonscriptural readings. However, to understand Blount’s aim, one must consider a caveat that he places on the validity of micro-interpersonal readings: For an interpretation not to be considered deficient, each of the three text linguistic features must be fully considered. Every interpretation must engage with the text distinctively in terms of all three functions of language.45

Here, Blount makes clear that, while he has redrawn the margins wider to include minority voices, he is still focusing on valid methods of biblical interpretation, with the imprimatur of validity resting, at least in part, in the hands of the guild of biblical studies. Michael Brown agrees with this assessment; in his review of Blount’s work, he writes: It is not Blount’s purpose…to conduct a requiem for the historical-critical method. No, Blount’s purpose is to expand the meaning potential of the term “critical reading.”46

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While Blount’s method works very well to “reorient” the “traditional method” which is his aim, it reifies a fundamental tenet of the academy: that a text is not properly interpreted unless it is understood within its textual and ideational as well as interpersonal dynamics; that is, consciously or not, Blount reifies the exegesis/“eisegesis” polemic.47 For, since the textual and ideational linguistic functions of a biblical text with its ancient language and context rest in the specialized arcane knowledge of classicists and historians, we are left, once more, with the pretexts of the guild regarding the reading of the Bible. Blount’s expansion of the “meaning potential of the term ‘critical reading,’” never fully shifts ideological power from the centrist, text-based guild to the external, world-based margins, as Dussel would have him do; nor is this his intent.48 As a result, while Blount’s method functions as a helpful tool for the teaching of biblical exegesis in this increasingly diverse world, it still leaves Douglass silenced, except insofar as he informs and expands the work of the guild of biblical studies.

Moving from Silence to Darkness In the face of tempocentric and non-scriptural methods that have, as their focus, biblical interpretation as it has always already been defined, Frederick Douglass and readers like him sit in silence; yet it was readings like his that led abolitionist movements and echoed even across the Atlantic Ocean. To move beyond the silence it is necessary to move away from tempocentric and non-scriptural readings and to take seriously the Bible as it has been used as scripture and as ideology. To do so, first, is to step away from the unchallenged assumption that marginalized persons would choose, despite their experiences within the greater society, to read the Bible and/or to engage with it as scripture. To put it more succinctly, when my colleagues, even my African American colleagues, take no serious notice of Bible readers like Frederick Douglass, they reify the unquestioned “scripturality” of the “white” Bible, both Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and New Testament, for African Americans, slave and free.49 They assume that those who have been stripped of personhood, family, culture, and personal liberty, or their descendants, somehow naturally come to engage the scriptures of the dominant culture and adopt them as their own. That this is, ultimately, what did and what continues to happen among many African Americans does not obviate the fact that such phenomena were and continue to be extraordinary.50 Second, to move away from tempocentric and historicist readings is to take Bible readers seriously, particularly those readers who have been and continued to be silenced; it is to take seriously their reading as a performance, a reclamation of ideological power in the face of a society in which they have been systematically silenced. In her monograph, Performing Blackness, Kimberly Benston addresses this issue of ideological power. African Americans, ren-



1.   Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader

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dered powerless by the systems of slavery, begin to perform, linguistically, as a “response to the historical condition of blackness-as-exile.”51 Benston notes that such a performance acts as a compromise to societal overthrow. Performative activities in this world in which we perforce have our beginning, are at best only approximations of the continuous ideal of lived experience; as deflections of genuine revolutionary feeling, they are still more distanced from the continuous essence of truly free action….52

Still, in taking speech, silenced people reclaim power in what is often the only way they can. And that power is reclaimed to some purpose, a purpose not necessarily aligned to the research interests of the academic world. If, then, we are to move away from silence and guild-based pretexts, we must start with a model that shifts our focus from the arcane, irreclaimable past and from the figuring of biblical writings as foreign, ultimately inaccessible texts, toward a model that takes seriously modern, silenced readers who read the biblical texts scripturally. We need a model that looks at Douglass’s reading less as a means to enhance exegetical method and more as a performance, an ideological move against an oppressive society. Ultimately, we need a model that allows us to ask what Douglass is doing when he picks up the Bible to read and why he is reading at all.

Reading “Darkness”: A Theoretical Model of Marronage Such a model has been suggested by Vincent Wimbush; indeed, it was the driving force for the edited volume African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures, which in turn emerged out of a three-day, interdisciplinary conference convened in 1999 at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. At issue was the rubric: African Americans and the Bible, a rubric that did not presume but rather opened up for investigation the nature of the interaction between a particular group of persons and a particular set of documents. By starting with this primary focus, the conference, and the ensuing volume, fostered and continues to foster conversations across a wide range of academic disciplines, from art history and musicology to psychology and literary criticism. In his introduction to the volume, Wimbush issues a challenge: a call to a specific kind of reading that does not just answer the biases of the guild but one that leads us into a place of “darkness.” This is a reading of world: a reading that first takes into consideration the reader’s experience of the world as a place of “darkness.” Anyone can read darkness. Darkness is here to be equated neither with a simple negative nor with any one people or class. It is a particular orientation, a sensibility, a way of being in and seeing the world. It is viewing and experiencing the world in emergency mode, as through the individual and collective experience of trauma. Such viewing and experience is not the unique experience of any one people in any

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First Pure, Then Peaceable one place or period of history. But all readers should take note: Because the darker peoples of the world are the ones of necessity consistently making a dramatic and compelling argument that to read darkness is to scripturalize and to scripturalize is to read darkness, they ought to be heard on this matter of reading darkness and reading “darkly.”53

To hear “the darker peoples of the world” “on this matter of reading darkness and reading ‘darkly’ ” is to press Fitzgerald’s point to its logical conclusion. Only when one considers how these readers experience and interpret darkness – the “emergency” and “trauma” in their daily lives – can one begin to consider what role religion, and particularly the Bible, might play for these who read both texts and their world. For, in “reading darkness” the Bible functions ideologically. It serves to identify, to classify, and frequently to indemnify experiences of “darkness readers”54; and it can be used as a challenge to the personal and societal perpetrators of the “darkness” that is being read. Reading “darkness,” as Wimbush defines it, synthesizes the challenges that he and Holdrege have leveled. For reading “darkness” means taking the study of the biblical text out of the safety of first-century archaisms, and analyzing it as it functions in the “traumatic” world of later dystopias. Further, reading “darkness” requires that the Bible be read “scripturally,” that is as a text engaged by a person or group that is trying to make sense of the world. Reading “darkness” also addresses Fitzgerald’s critique of religious studies writ large. For such a reading necessarily illuminates the ideological struggle in which darkness readers are engaged when they claim the Bible as “scripture.” Finally, such a reading would require the interpreter to transgress the “objective” constraints of the guild of biblical studies; for it would require the admission and analysis of biblical readings, and readers, that originate outside of the guild, especially those that originate from a place of trauma, of emergency, a place, that is, of “darkness.” Inviting “darkness readings” jeopardizes not only the pretexts of the guild, but the primacy of the Bible. For if “reading darkness” is, as Wimbush puts it, “a particular orientation, a sensibility, a way of being in and seeing the world,”55 then those who read “darkness” are primarily reading not the Bible but their world. They may read the Bible, but only insofar as that secondary source, tool if you will, informs their primary source: “darkness.” The Bible, then, is decentered. It is moved from being a central figure to a tool, and not necessarily the only tool; rather it takes its place alongside all of the tools which “darkness readers” might have.56 Like all tools, “darkness readers” decide how the Bible is to be used; when to ignore it; and whether to discard it as broken. These readers, not the experts of the academy, ultimately take to themselves the power of interpretation. Upon these collected essays and presentations, Wimbush also imposes a paradigm: an organizing principle and a kind of theoretical description. In it, he posits three African American modes of world-orientation that he calls: “cycles



1.   Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader

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of marronage.” This schema, a tripartite model, describes “the world-making dynamics of (1) flight or marronage (de-formation); (2) settlement and building on a site of marronage (formation); and (3) self-making, self-naming, and negotiation with the outside world from the site of marronage (re-form[ul]ation) […].”57 The first of these movements, flight, marronage, or de-formation, Wimbush describes as the longing for “escape from, de-formation of, dominance, whether in forms of old sociopolitical regimes in general, religious tradition, traditional social (class and gender) orientations, arrangements and associations, and certainly enslavement and imprisonment.”58 It reflects the reality that “there are…periods in which the pressing need” of the darkness reader “is to run for one’s life.”59 Flight suggests a removal of the self, physical or otherwise, from the place of danger; a movement of the self away from that “dark” place of trauma. By using the term de-formation in connection with flight, Wimbush seems to be implying an additional type of resistance. In the act of physical flight one normally leaves the oppressive system intact. However, the de-formative act may include a direct challenge to that system. It may mean more than mere removal; it may signify a challenge to, or defiance of, the system. Wimbush’s second movement is that of “settlement or formation.” This movement, “the turn toward settlement and building presumes escape from domination, at least a degree of freedom from danger, and a different and relatively safe site of enunciation and different space.”60 If de-formation represents a de(con)structive resistance – the de(con)struction of relationships and/or of the power of a society to oppress – formation represents its counterpart: resistance by means of (re)construction. Here, as in flight, this movement need not include physical (re)construction of some entity; it is rather a stance, a world-orientation in which the actor rhetorically, psychologically, spiritually, physically or otherwise constructs “an-other” world in which the actor might “live.” The third of Wimbush’s movements, “reform[ul]ation,” represents “heightened collective criticism, sharply cut articulations of identity, and efforts at self-making, self-naming, reformation, re-formulation, and reorientation among African Americans, as well as negotiation with the outside world.”61 Of particular interest to Wimbush, here, is the matter of self-naming, the movement toward an identity of one’s own choosing, and with this the matter of self-criticism, a critical engagement of the community’s current responses to “darkness.” This can only happen within that group of “fugitives” which “has been able to escape immediate and pressing genocidal conditions and has assumed fairly independent sites of world-building, can call itself by names of its own choosing, and so forth.”62 Reform[ul]ation differs from de-formation and formation in its focus. By Wimbush’s definition, de-formation and formation are both primarily directed against, or in relationship to, the other, the outside world.63 By contrast

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reform[ul]ation is, by definition, self-focused.64 Its critiques, and its movements toward identity formation, focus primarily on the community facing “darkness,” in the case of African Americans and the Bible, on “African American culture.”65 The rationale for these movements to identity and self-criticism is that self-same world of “darkness.” However, in response to that “darkness,” reform[ul]ation concerns itself with what the community is struggling to become. The reform[ul]ative move is simultaneously de[con]structive and [re]con­ structive. Forms of community identity may undergo de[con]struction, even as new forms are being [re]constructed. The parallel to de-formation is clear; but while de-formation, in its resistance to “darkness,” seeks to de[con]struct, or at the least flee from, that “darkness,” reform[ul]ation’s response to “darkness” is to critique (de[con]struction) and (re)create (re[con]struction) a community identity over against that “darkness.” None of these moments is ever static or complete; nor is any of them fully separate from any other. Indeed, Wimbush posits these three phases as cyclical, and on-going. I do not intend for any one phase or moment to cancel out the others; I intend only to indicate that each successive moment represents movement, change, diversification, complexity in orientation in African American life.66

It will be helpful to keep in mind the similarities among the phases, particularly the presence of both de(con)structive and (re)constructive impulses in reform[ul]ation. “Darkness readers,” whether engaged in de-formation, formation, or reform[ul]ation, use the Bible as a code, a linguistic tool to help them to describe the “darkness” that they experience in the world.67 Among many African American “darkness readers,” for example, the Exodus narrative, has represented the quintessential de-formative narrative, a story of the presence of the Holy on the side of the fugitive. Thus, theologian James Cone, in his Black Theology, references that narrative as a code for a particular articulation of African American religiosity. The exodus, the call of Israel into being as the people of the covenant, the gift of the Promised Land […] reveal God’s self-giving love to oppressed man.68

Historian of African American religion Albert Raboteau makes the same argument: “No single symbol captures more clearly the distinctiveness of Afro-American Christianity than the symbol of the Exodus.” […] From the perspective of slaves, and of free blacks […], America was Egypt, and as long as she continued to enslave and oppress Black Israel, her destiny was in jeopardy. America stood under the judgment of God, and unless she repented, the death and destruction visited upon Biblical Egypt would be repeated here.69



1.   Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader

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Not all “darkness” readers – not even all African-diaspora “darkness readers” – privilege the Exodus narrative. The Rastafarians of the Caribbean prefer the biblical trope “Babylon” to describe the “darkness” that they encounter.70 “Babylon” serves as a code for an oppressive system, with an emphasis on what Rastafarians believe will be its sure demise. One can hear this latter emphasis in historian George E. Simpson’s description of a Rastafarian meeting: A fourth speaker may ask the Secretary to read a chapter from the Bible, interrupting him at the end of each verse, or of several verses, or even in the middle of a verse, to give his special politico-religious interpretation of the words. […] If the speaker has chosen Revelation 18, great stress will be laid upon the twenty-first verse: “…Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.”71

Here, the biblical text serves to predict the demise of the popular culture, the external injustices of colonialism against which Rastafari stood. Thus, Babylon also has a clearly de-formative (or at least de[con]structive) edge. As Simpson notes: …the use of the term Babylon constitutes a symbolic delegitimation of those values and institutions that historically have exercised control over the masses of the African diaspora. […] the most immediate referent is the gut-wrenching experience of suffering, hardship, and estrangement faced by the underside of Jamaican society. It is not only the pain of economic hardship, but a sense of not belonging, of cultural alienation. It is a feeling of uprootedness and of being “out of whack” with one’s environment.72

In the face of this sense of uprootedness (de-formation), Rastafari proposes an alternative self-identity, at the center of which is “Zion” or “Africa,” the “true” home of Rastafarians and the ultimate symbol of all things positive.73 Here, Rastafari exemplifies a type of re-form[ul]ation – a “sharply cut articulation of identity, and effort at self-making, self-naming, reformation, re-formulation, and reorientation among communities, as well as negotiation with the outside world.”74 That this articulation has now worked its way into the fabric of Jamaican society, and out into the rest of the world, does not take from its re-form[ul]ative roots.75 The use of the Bible as code for formation may be seen in the mid-twentiethcentury rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” for example, King uses biblical language – in this instance an allusion to the end of 1 Corinthians 12 and the beginning of 1 Corinthians 13 – to propose an alternative to the “darknesses” of segregation, complacency, and violence: I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the “do-nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest.76

The difference between this and the rhetoric of Rastafari is not one of critique. Both rhetorics call the dominant (white) culture to task for its injustices.

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However, whereas Rastafari proposes an alternative community outside of “Babylon,” King’s proposal is for a change within the US culture itself. By taking a Pauline phrase and weaving it into his own “pastoral letter,” King is suggesting that, through nonviolent social protest, an alternative formation may be formed within US society, the formation of a nonviolent, antisegregationist movement that can, ultimately, change US society as a whole. No one section of the Bible, no one pericope or verse, is the property of any one of these movements. The texts of the Bible are too polysemic to be so easily classified. Further, the intentions of the original author and the perceptions of the original audience have very little to do with how any one text might be used by any one “darkness reader” or group of “darkness readers.” At issue are not the texts of the Bible per se, but the darknesses in which the readers find themselves. The Bible is only useful insofar as a specific text, rubric, ideology can be molded and shaped to address the darkness surrounding the community. Therefore, to understand “darkness” readers, Wimbush argues, one must understand that “darkness” readers read their Bibles “darkly” because they read their world “darkly.” Thus, Wimbush’s challenge, at its most basic level, is that if one wants to understand how people read the Bible, one must first understand how people read the world, which is by far the more urgent matter. In addition to calling critics to examine a reader’s world orientation, Wimbush’s schema is useful in that while it is an “historical schema,” that focuses on “the history of struggles for social construction,” it does not limit the proposed movements (de-formation, formation, re-form[ul]ation) to specific time periods. For instance, in discussing formation, Wimbush argues: I think it important for the reader to be cautioned against associating this movement with the traditional periodizations of African American history. As is the case with flight, the building-of-home or formation phase is also recurring in the larger cycle of African American life. To limit such a movement to one period in history or even several pointed periods […] is to miss the deeper meanings of the motif.77

Wimbush’s schema allows the critic to take “darkness readers” on their own terms. It allows the analyst to ask the question, “Given the historical context, given the ‘darkness’ in which these readers find themselves, how do they use the Bible? How do they read?” Thus, Wimbush allows for multiple readings of darkness emerging out of any one period of time, while providing a broader framework in which to locate those readings.

To Read “Darkness”: Frederick Douglass as Exemplum I contend that Wimbush’s schema is best suited to respond to the initial problematic of this chapter: the silence surrounding Frederick Douglass and Bible readers like him, “darkness readers.” I propose to take Wimbush seriously: to enter into the space of silence surrounding Frederick Douglass as Bible reader



1.   Frederick Douglass, Bible Reader

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and to analyze his performance as an exemplum of “darkness reading” and “darkness readers.” Thus, the overarching inquiry of this study is why Douglass, whose oratory, I will argue in Chapter 2, marks him as a “darkness reader,” reads the Bible at all. However, this is too large a question to answer definitively in such a short book. Therefore, in Chapter 2, I explain my decision to focus this book on Douglass’s reading of one unusual text: Jas 3:17. The analyses of Douglass’s oratory, that is his “darkness reading” and what I argue is the “darkness reading” of James, are found in Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 focuses on the structure and purpose of the rhetoric of Frederick Douglass’s use of Jas 3:17 in ten speeches that range across the antebellum period. I start with Douglass, because the examination of his reading of James, rather than the epistle itself, is the guiding rubric for this project. Within Douglass’s speeches I identify formative and deformative rhetorical moves that Douglass takes, moves that involve, in various ways, Jas 3:17 as a lens through which Douglass reads US society. Chapter 4 seeks to answer the question: why James? Here, I will document, but not fully engage, several of the ongoing scholarly struggles surrounding James. For, the intention of these chapters is not so much to say something new or different about James as an ancient document. Rather, insofar as James has become an important referent for a “darkness reader,” the question at stake is this: what was Douglass reading in James? To what extent is the author of James an exemplum of one engaged in that selfsame project of “reading darkness” in which Douglass is also engaged? To what extent is the author of James a “darkness reader?” In Chapter 5, I engage the “reading” aspect of the term “reading darkness”: what is “reading” darkness – what might “reading” mean and how does “reading” (an ostensibly objective action) become a site of, and reflection of, struggle? As part of this discussion I will consider, more closely, the importance of the act of “scripturalizing” to this whole matter of “darkness reading.” And I will return to the basic inquiry behind the project: what is Frederick Douglass doing when he reads the Bible, specifically, when he reads Jas 3:17? Stated another way, I consider how and why Douglass uses James’s own pretexts and world-stances as a “language world” for his own interpretation of the trauma of life in the United States.78 In the final chapter, I will consider the implications of “reading darkness,” and, more importantly, of centering analytical attention on “darkness readers” for the work of biblical studies. What might be the impact of de-centering the Bible in “biblical studies,” and focusing instead on “darkness readers”? If we hear them on this matter of “darkness” and regarding how “scriptures” function to help them to “read darkness,” what might have to change about the practice of academic biblical studies? In response to these questions, I suggest some implications of taking seriously this project of “reading darkness,” this project in which Wimbush challenges all of us to, as Elizabeth Castelli puts it, “change the ‘subject’” of biblical studies.79

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It is my hope that this short study will be a welcome addition to those who are calling for an expansion of the definition of biblical studies, one that takes seriously the relationship between “darkness readers” and their “scriptures,” and one that ultimately begins to see these ancient texts themselves as readings of “darkness.”

Chapter 2 Frederick Douglass, “Darkness Reader” To make the case that Frederick Douglass is a “darkness reader” will seem self-evident to some. For, they will argue, the very fact that Douglass’s existential reality can be named by Hendricks’ hyphen, “African hyphen American,” renders him a “darkness reader.”80 But to make that claim is to argue a positivistic ontology of darkness readers and readings: that somehow “darker hued” persons are always already “darkness readers” – and by extension, that others who are less darkly hued cannot be shown to perform in this way. Such a claimant would do well to revisit Wimbush’s caveat: Anyone can read darkness. Darkness is here to be equated neither with a simple negative nor with any one people or class. It is a particular orientation, a sensibility, a way of being in and seeing the world. It is viewing and experiencing the world in emergency mode, as through the individual and collective experience of trauma.81

To be sure, the “collective experience” of many of the “darker peoples of the world” is precisely that of trauma.82 However one cannot, and moreover should not, generalize from collective experience to that of any individual reader. In order, then, to uphold Frederick Douglass as an exemplum, it is first necessary to show that Douglass is in fact a “darkness reader”: one who experiences his “world in emergency mode”; and who “scripturalizes” the Bible, in order that he might respond to that trauma. Only when these two matters are established can one choose which of Douglass’s performances to engage, which “darkness reading” of the world, with reference to the Bible, one will follow. So, this chapter unfolds in five overall movements. In the first, I give a very quick summary of the life of the man, a summary that I hope is helpful to situate this “darkness reader” within perhaps the deepest felt collective trauma of nineteenth-century antebellum America, US chattel slavery. From there, I will turn to two objections that might be raised to the study of Douglass as a “darkness reader” who uses the biblical text: the first, that Douglass’s experience is somehow not one of darkness because of his unusual biography; and the second that Douglass was not religious, and therefore should not be a subject of study within the field of religion. In the fourth movement, I will explain my decision to investigate Douglass’s use of Jas 3:17 in this project. This decision is based largely on Douglass’s use of this text as axiomatic of religion and morality.

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Using Wimbush’s schema, it is clear that such a stance toward the “dark” world betrays a primary world-orientation of “formation” or home-building.83 So, I will end with a brief elucidation of how “darkness readers,” particularly African American darkness readers, can be said to have built a “home” in and among the texts of the Bible.

A Very Brief Biography Frederick Augustus (Bailey) Douglass was born Frederick Bailey, the son of Harriet Bailey, and the grandson of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, all of whom were slaves on a plantation in Talbot county, Maryland in the late 1810s.84 Although no definitive paternity was ever established, it was widely rumored that the father of Harriet Bailey’s son was their master, Captain Anthony.85 Young Frederick Bailey was raised by his grandparents for six years before being delivered to the Lloyd plantation to work, some twelve miles from his home.86 He was there as the property of Thomas Auld, who was the husband of Lucretia Anthony Auld, the son-in-law of Captain Anthony, and the manager of the Lloyd plantation.87 At eight years old, Bailey was sent off the plantation to be the slave companion to the two-year old son of Mr and Mrs Hugh Auld in the city of Baltimore, Maryland.88 It was in Baltimore that Frederick Bailey learned to read. He was first instructed by Mrs Auld.89 When her husband prohibited this activity, Bailey began to teach himself, even saving his small earnings to purchase a copy of the Columbian Orator, “a collection of orations, poems, playlets, and dialogues celebrating patriotism, freedom, courage, democracy, education and temperance.”90 It was also in Maryland that Frederick Bailey received his first exposure to organized religion, becoming an active member of the Dallas Street Methodist Church.91 In 1833, because of a family dispute between Hugh and Thomas Auld, Bailey was returned to plantation work.92 Some of the descriptions of plantation slavery in his speeches come from this period. His accustomed relative independence as a city slave was severely curtailed on the plantation. Considered “impudent,” Bailey was sent to a “nigger-breaker” to learn obedience, a process that was only marginally successful.93 Toward the end of this two-and-a-half year period, Bailey made his first attempt at escape, forging passes for five companions and himself; the passes were never discovered, but after a brief imprisonment, Bailey was returned to Hugh Auld in Baltimore.94 During this second period as a city-based slave, Bailey met Anna Murray, a free black woman, who would become his wife of forty-four years.95 He would eventually contrive to escape, borrowing the papers of a free black and taking the train into New York. During his flight, Bailey traveled under the pseudonym Frederick Stanley.96 He changed Stanley to Johnson in New York, and it was under this name that he married Anna Murray. However, upon arrival in New



2.   Frederick Douglass, “Darkness Reader”

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Bedford, he changed his surname once more, to Douglass. “The reason of this necessity was that there were so many Johnsons in New Bedford, it was already quite difficult to distinguish between them.”97 Frederick Douglass began to receive formal training in public oratory – that is preaching – from the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) church in New Bedford, training that would prepare him for his life’s work as an abolitionist speaker.98 Upon hearing him speak, William Lloyd Garrison, one of Douglass’s heroes, recruited him to the abolitionist cause; and there he proved to have found his life’s work. However, not everyone believed Douglass’s account of slavery. His formal English manner of speech, so different from the stereotypical “slave speech” of his day, led people to question his authenticity as a real slave. In response to these charges, and encouraged by his white abolitionist colleagues, Douglass chose to validate his status as “slave” by offering names, dates, and places in his first autobiography, Narrative of Frederick Douglass, A Slave.99 Narrative served to justify Douglass, but it also put him in danger of capture and re-enslavement, as US law allowed.100 So, the abolitionists arranged for Douglass to tour Great Britain, in part, because, while he was on British soil, Douglass could not be apprehended and returned to chattel slavery.101 By traveling to Great Britain, Douglass helped to publicize his autobiography, a source of income for his family; and the journey allowed one of the abolitionist movement’s most accomplished speakers to visit Great Britain, a nation that had abolished plantation slavery in its colonies between 1834 and 1838. By virtue of the excellence of British journalism, Douglass’s speeches abroad rendered him an international figure – at turns loved and disdained.102 When Douglass returned from England, his emancipation having been procured by his European supporters, he poured himself into a lifetime of writing and speaking against the evils of slavery and on behalf of women’s suffrage and temperance. Over the course of a lifetime, he would travel once more internationally, author two more autobiographies, edit four publications, be named a foreign ambassador, and, post-bellum, would command the ear of US presidents.103 Without exaggeration, Douglass led an unparalleled life for a nineteenth-century man of any race, much less one born a slave on a plantation.

Is Douglass “Dark” Enough? Frederick Douglass as an exemplum may, to some, present a problem. Clearly, Douglass’s biography breaks many of the (stereo)types for nineteenth-century persons of African descent. As a result, those unconvinced that there is no such thing as an ontological or ideal “darkness reader” may balk at Douglass precisely because of the facts surrounding his extraordinary life. One might argue that, compared to many of his contemporaries, his experiences were far less traumatic, his problems far less emergent. He was, indeed, a fugitive slave, but his freedom was bought for him by English patrons, and the majority of his

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career in abolitionism was spent as a free black man in the northern states of the Union. The difficulty, then, is how to understand Douglass as a “darkness reader.” In order to answer this, we must listen to Douglass, for he is quite able to articulate his own sense of “darkness.” As he tells it, during his early career as an abolitionist speaker, he was “generally introduced as a ‘chattel’ – a ‘thing’ – a piece of southern ‘property’ – the chairman assuring the audience it could speak.”104 Douglass’s identity as “slave” was precisely why he was so well known.105 One British newspaper editor commented: He was not up as a speaker – performing. He was an insurgent slave taking hold on the right of speech, and charging on his tyrants the bondage of his race.106

His slavery, if not typical, was his certificate of authenticity as an abolitionist speaker. It was also that which would define his life’s work. Slavery – his and that of others – gave Douglass a voice and a mission. It was the trauma, the “darkness,” through which he interpreted his world; it was the pretext that he brought to the Bible. This assertion is reinforced when one considers how Douglass used the writings of the Bible. Given the variety and scope of his capabilities, his influences, and his impact on others, he could have chosen to read these writings with many different interpretative communities in mind. As Renita Weems instructs: …the average reader belongs, in actuality to a number of different reading communities, communities that sometimes have different and competing conventions for reading and that can make different and competing demands upon the reader. In fact, the interpretative community with which one identifies will have a lot to say about what “reading strategy” one will adopt. For, in the end, it is one’s interpretative community that tends to regulate which reading strategies are authoritative for the reader and what ought to be the reader’s predominant interests.107

For Douglass, this problem of “competing demands” was solved, not solely of his own volition, by those who continually introduced him as a ‘chattel ’ – a ‘thing’; it that could speak.”108 His reading of the Bible was informed by the darkness – the trauma – of his life and of his interpretative community, all those named chattel. His acts of negotiation and (re)construction involved in reading and rereading the Bible for himself, would take place on a site of bitter contestation. For even Douglass himself would have to admit that the very New Testament to which he clung was also a primary source for those who sought to justify chattel slavery.109 And yet, at least in his antebellum speeches, he persists in privileging a reading of darkness that put enslaved persons at the center of the discourse, a reading that consistently informed all of his other readings, including that of the texts of the Bible. Douglass, then, can serve as an exemplum of a “darkness reader” not solely because he survived the trauma of slavery, because he lived the emergency status of the fugitive, and because he labored constantly under the oppression



2.   Frederick Douglass, “Darkness Reader”

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of the second-class citizenship that his mother’s race afforded him in his native land. His status as darkness reader comes primarily from the ways in which he chooses to read darkness, trauma, slavery, in a voice that is urgent and very public. This “reading” of “darkness” naturally affects Douglass’s relationship with the Bible, in particular to this study of the New Testament. Douglass uses these texts to negotiate his relationship to his world, to call for an end to US chattel slavery, and, as I will argue below, to construct an idealized “home.” At the same time, Douglass’s atypical life does afford some benefit to this study. For example, his notoriety during his lifetime is in large measure the reason that we have as much of his extant work as we do. Of particular help is the unusual fact that Douglass could read. His literacy allowed him a facility with the breadth of the Bible – in particular with the epistles of the New Testament – that was unusual among his contemporaries. This meant that he was able to go beyond merely hearing and signifying on the “stories” of the Bible. He could focus on the precise meaning of words. He was able to quote and to paraphrase, to excerpt and to reconfigure texts of which other, less literate persons might not have been aware. Douglass, thus, not only read “darkness,” but also had the rare ability read the Bible for himself, and to talk back to it.

The Language of Religion A second problem attends. A quick perusal of histories and biographies of Frederick Douglass makes it clear that some historians are skeptical of any claim that Douglass might have been involved in the world of religion. At least one such historian asserts that Douglass stepped away from religion as he became an abolitionist.110 …Douglass found that he could not marry the two religions, Christianity and antislavery, though one led to the other […]. Soon after he took to the field for antislavery, he wrote a candid letter to his fellow communicants of the Zion chapel, saying, as James reported, that he had to “cut loose from the church” because he had found the American church, writ large, to be a “bulwark of American slavery.”111

Douglass himself, however, seems to repudiate this historian’s assertion. In a testimony written to Bishop Hood of the AMEZ, he writes: It is impossible for me to tell how far my connection with [several AMEZ preachers] influenced my career. As early as 1839 I obtained a license from the Quarterly Conference as a local preacher, and often occupied the pulpit [of the Zion church in New Bedford] by request of the preacher in charge. No doubt that the exercise of my gifts in this vocation, and my association with the excellent men to whom I have referred, helped to prepare me for the wider sphere of usefulness which I have since occupied. It was from this Zion church that I went forth to the work of delivering my brethren from bondage, and this new vocation, which separated me from New Bedford and finally so enlarged my views of duty, separated me also from the calling of a local preacher.112

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Douglass does distinguish between the vocation of local preacher and that of abolitionist speaker. But, at least during the abolitionist period, there is no oratorical evidence that he either repudiated Christianity or the church from which his vocation emerged. While it is impossible to be sure of Douglass’s true feelings about “religion,” however “religion” is defined, Douglass’s willingness to use the language of the religion at least in his recorded rhetoric, even that rhetoric which he self-published, is a matter of historical record. Perhaps, the truth of the matter is captured in Booker T. Washington’s biography of Douglass. Washington says nothing in particular about Douglass’s use of religious language or his religious affinity. However, he does note that “the Abolition spirit grew” in “an atmosphere, in which religious enthusiasm touched and quickened the sense of responsibility of the people in social and political conditions.”113 Within this “atmosphere” of “religious enthusiasm” the language of the Bible functioned as a sort of “lingua franca” for all issues of morality. This was in large part because of its generally accepted moral authority. In the first half of the nineteenth century […] the divine inspiration of the Bible and its consequent authority over the mind and heart of a man were generally accepted tenets. […] the vast majority … firmly believed that all parts of Scripture were equally channels of truth. To them, “The Bible says,” was synonymous with “God saith.” […] Certainly in the United States the authority of scripture was unquestioned – at least by the respectable portion of the community. … All Christians both north and south agreed that the Scriptures were consistent with themselves and formed a “perfect rule of duty”…114

For a nineteenth-century person, the moral question was never surrounding the authority of the Bible; rather morality was determined by what the Bible said about an issue – particularly, with regards to Frederick Douglass, what the Bible might say regarding slavery. Douglass, like many of his contemporaries, used the language of the Bible to justify his antislavery position, and the position of the abolitionist movement as a whole. Interestingly, Douglass’s use of the language of religion even, at times, includes a declaration of his abiding passion for the Bible. The aforementioned speech is evidence of such a declaration early in the abolitionist struggle. Such declarations on Douglass’s part continue throughout the abolitionist period. Even as the Civil War looms, Douglass defends the sanctity and moral rectitude of this set of texts that, to his mind, cannot condone slavery. In the following quote, he compares the Bible and the United States Constitution, arguing for the careful protection of each. The constitution is pro-slavery, because men have interpreted it to be pro-slavery, and practice upon it as if it were pro-slavery. The very same thing, sir, might be said of the Bible itself; for in the United States men have interpreted the Bible against liberty. They have declared that Paul’s epistle to Philemon is a full proof for the enactment of that hell-black Fugitive Slave Bill which has desolated my people for



2.   Frederick Douglass, “Darkness Reader”

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the last ten years in that country. They have declared that the Bible sanctions slavery. What do we do in such a case? What do you do when you are told by the slaveholders of America that the Bible sanctions slavery? Do you go and throw your Bible into the fire? Do you sing out “No Union with the Bible?” Do you declare that a thing is bad because it has been misused, abused, and made a bad use of? Do you throw it away on that account? No! You press it to your bosom all the more closely; you read it all the more diligently; and prove from its pages that it is on the side of liberty – and not on the side of slavery.115

However, such passionate defenses of the Bible as a whole, although present, are few in Douglass’s rhetoric. The bulk of Douglass’s use of the language of religion consists of his appropriation of biblical quotations, paraphrases and allusions. These texts serve as the foundation upon which he constructs his apologia for his own anti-slavery, abolitionist – “dark” – definition of Christianity.

“First Pure, Then Peaceable”: The Choice of Jas 3:17 Without question, then, Douglass was a “darkness reader” who read the Bible. But, in making that admission and in turning to analyze how Douglass read, one is immediately struck by the problem of scale. Douglass was prolific, both as a speaker and as an author; and as such, in such a short project, some difficult choices have to be made regarding which of his “darkness readings” to follow. After all, the aim of this study is not to do an exhaustive study on Douglass, either as an orator or as a reader of the Bible. Rather, I am focusing on a far more modest question: as an exemplum of a “darkness reader,” what is it that Frederick Douglass is “doing” when he uses the Bible as an interpretive lens for his world? How is he “reading darkness” and in what ways does the Bible figure in that reading? Put another way, the question is this: if the very nature of “scripture” is a relationship between a people and a “text” or series of “texts” through which they evaluate their place in the cosmos, then what are the contours of that relationship for this one “darkness reader”?116 And what might that relationship reveal about the “texts” being used, the “darkness” being read, and ultimately the very nature of “reading darkness” particularly as that reading emerges out of an African American context? In light of the narrowness of the scope of this project, I have made some choices that, I hope, allow for broader conclusions without rendering this study too unwieldy. The first is evident: I have chosen to analyze Douglass’s speeches, the largest extant body of Douglass’s work, and the subset of Douglass’s writings that contains the highest concentration of biblical citations. The potential scale of this project is further delimitated by J. W. Blassingame, the editor of the definitive collections of Douglass’s writings and speeches. According to Blassingame, his four-volume collection of Douglass’s speeches, representing proportionally only between 9 and 12 per cent of the speeches Douglass made, constitutes well over 90 per cent of Douglass’s extant speeches and contains a representative sample of Douglass’s oratory over the course of his lifetime.117

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Blassingame’s work divides Douglass’s speeches into four periods: Douglass’s early career as a Garrisonian, speaking to both US and British audiences (1841–46); Douglass’s years of increasing independence (1847–54); the speeches in and around the Civil War (1855–63); and Douglass’s years as an established statesman (1864–80).118 Since my primary interest is in how Douglass read the “darkness” – the existential and collective trauma – of chattel slavery, it seems best to focus my investigation on the earlier speeches Douglass gave during the antebellum period (1841–60), when his primary raison-d’être was to speak, write and work for the abolition of slavery. In addition to the matter of scale, there is also the matter of scope, a matter dictated by my field of study. This is, after all, a project under the wider rubric of biblical studies: specifically, within the field of New Testament and early Christianity. My response to this is to structure my analysis around some of the ways that Frederick Douglass uses biblical references in his speeches. Specifically, I am considering the ways in which the New Testament is referenced in Douglass’s oratory. A focus on the New Testament not only narrows the scale of the project, but it gives further insight into the world that Douglass inhabited, a world heavily influenced by Protestant Christianity in which the texts of the New Testament were used as primary justification for the enslavement of human beings. Further, such a focus forces a consideration of how and why, in the face of this cultural norm, Douglass chose texts from these very writings as a basis for his abolitionist oratory. Even with this further delimitation, the range is still too wide for this book, for Douglass quotes the New Testament extensively.119 Douglass’s use of New Testament tropes – “manstealers” (1 Tim. 1:10) and the “golden rule” (Matt 7:12) – are certainly frequent enough to warrant individual study in a project such as this one.120 The former of these two, “manstealers,” is part of a larger de-formative stance in which Douglass denounces slaveowners as immoral and in opposition to Christian society by referencing the Bible.121 However, Douglass does not fully employ 1 Timothy in his argument; instead, he uses the word “man-stealers” as a weapon without reference to its context. And while this is a perfectly legitimate example of “reading darkness,” it is not substantial enough for this analysis. The second example, the “golden rule” (Matt 7:12) is rejected because it is frequently used aphoristically in American culture. Although it is technically a biblical reference, the philosophy of individual responsibility for the other and of mutual reciprocity is central to the theoretical underpinnings of the idea of America.122 As a result, in the analysis of Matt 7:12, it would be arguable whether Douglass, in its frequent use, specifically intends to reference the Bible rather than the wider “myth of America.”123 A fair analysis of Douglass’s “darkness reading” requires a pericope that is central to Douglass’s thought. It would have to be easily distinguishable from the overall myth of America, so that an argument could be made that Douglass



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was self-consciously using the Bible. At the same time, Douglass would have to elaborate on it, rather than use it as a catch-phrase as he did 1 Tim 1:10. Such a pericope would provide insight not only into the nature of Douglass’s “darkness reading” but also proof of Douglass’s deliberate intent to use the New Testament in that “darkness reading.” Several texts qualify, among them Douglass’s use of the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke (10:30-37) and of the Matthean section of woes in Matthew 23.124 However, I have chosen one of the more unusual, yet still widely used biblical texts quoted by Frederick Douglass: Jas 3:17. But the wisdom from above is first pure, than peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.125

Although this text is short enough to be aphoristic, it was not common enough to have become part of the general aphorisms of the culture of the United States. And yet, Douglass thought it important enough that he read this text into ten extant speeches spanning the years 1845 to 1860.126 The most compelling reason for the consideration of Jas 3:17, however, has to do with how Douglass uses it. Consider again the quotation which this book opens. This [holding the presentation Bible in his hands] – this is an excellent token of your regard. It is just what I want from you. It contains all the Words of Heavenly Wisdom – it is opposed to every thing that is wrong and it is in favor of all that is right. It is filled with that Wisdom from above, which is pure, and peaceable, and full of mercies and good fruits, without prolixity, and without hypocrisy.127

Or, consider “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland,” a speech that Douglass gave on 22 May 1846, in which he proclaims I love the religion of our blessed Saviour. I love that religion that comes from above, in the “wisdom of God, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”128

I posit that Jas 3:17 is an apt choice, because this text is axiomatic for Douglass, forming, and informing, his understanding of Christianity. Put another way, Douglass, in his “darkness reading,” uses Jas 3:17 in axiomatic – or formative – ways, building a new home, as it were, a home called “the religion from above,” “Heavenly Wisdom” or perhaps “true Christianity.” In short, with respect to his use of Jas 3:17, Douglass’s stance as “darkness reader” can be best classified primarily as a world-orientation of formation.129 Let us examine this claim further.

Formation or Home-Building and the Bible Formation, as Wimbush argues, is that phase that follows flight: a phase of settlement, of “building-of-home.”130 In this phase, fugitives, free from the imme-

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diate danger that caused their flight, create a place where they can live, be at “home,” as it were. In his abolitionist speeches, one use that Frederick Douglass makes of biblical quotations is a sort of “building-of-home,” the formation of an idealized Christianity that both allows him to defend his stance against the established, pro-slavery, white church and validates those characteristics that he holds as central to religious faith. This concept of formation, of home-building, is made more concrete when one considers the realities of physical marronage. For slaves in physical flight from their masters, the creation of a safe place in which to live was a crucial requirement for survival. In Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the United States, Richard Price notes the primary quality that was typical of the “homes” of maroons. “Maroon communities had to be almost inaccessible, and villages were typically located in inhospitable, out-of-the-way areas.”131 Whether in the swamps of the United States, the sulfurous mountains of Jamaica, or the dense jungle of South America, maroons tended to locate themselves in otherwise uninhabited places.132 Yet, marooned slaves used the resources of these often quite desolate places for survival, for concealment and for defense.133 While the Bible was not necessarily an “inaccessible location” for most US residents, as it was transmitted both orally and in written form, it was nevertheless not the expected home of the “dark” reader. For the Bible was the basis for the American myth, the source for the “figures and types” on which the myth of “America” rested, a myth that figured “America” as the Matthean “city that is set on a hill.”134 The verbal paradigm was above all a form of socialization. As New Englanders (and later, Americans) used the phrase, the “city upon a hill” became a ritual summons, a call for order in a community committed to progress, mobility, and free enterprise. […] First, the “city upon a hill” identified personal goals with those of the community; it fused the concepts of spiritual and social fulfillment, private and corporate progress. Second, as a model of identity, [it] worked to erode past allegiances, genealogical and national. […] Third, as a social ideal, [it] displaced the Old World hierarchy of aristocracy and crown with a new model of authority – a company in covenant… Still a problem remained. The American Indians owned the continent, and the inventors, the symbol-makers wanted possession. Their solution here was historical: they simply asserted the rights of a superior culture – Christianity over paganism, the white race over the dark […]135

By the time African slaves and their descendents would be introduced to the Bible, an entire rhetoric had grown up around it that was intended to reinforce the “darkness,” that was the power of “the white race over the dark”: the enslavement of Africans in the Americas. So, one indeed might make a metaphoric comparison between African American engagements of biblical texts and the formation of maroon communities; for African Americans, in well-documented forms of resistance (spirituals,



2.   Frederick Douglass, “Darkness Reader”

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sermons, etc.), consistently read the Bible against the culture in which they found themselves. Thus, just as maroons established physical homes in the land of their captivity, defying their captors, so also African American readers established rhetorical-imaginary “homes” within the “scriptures” of their captors. Both of these types of formations, whether physical or rhetorical, “stood out as an heroic challenge to white authority, and as the living proof of the existence of a slave consciousness that refused to be limited by the whites’ conception or manipulation of it.”136 That African American interpreters were able to use the Bible to build a rhetorical and psycho-social home was made possible by two forces. First, within the pages of the Bible, there was everywhere to be found the rhetoric of an alternative “world,” or of living contrary to the world. Indicative of this rubric in the New Testament are the Pauline notion of alternative citizenship in Philippians, the kingdom of God/heaven language in the Synoptics, and the Johannine metaphor of children “born…of God.”137 Is it any wonder that, as African Americans reflected on these and other texts that envisioned another “world,” “the Bible became a ‘world’ into which African Americans could retreat, a ‘world’ they could identify with, draw strength from, and in fact manipulate for self-affirmation”?138 Historically, this predilection to re-interpret the Bible – to read in its rhetoric a possible home – was supported by the radical, anti-traditional biblical interpretation that was the legacy of the Second Great Awakening. The Awakening was […] a period of antinomianism, when established sources of spiritual authority either crumbled or were revealed to have long since lost their power. Individuals found meaning, guidance, and sometimes prophetic power through this awakening. […] Each believer was ultimately free to create a new theology and a new church.139

Here was cultural, even dominant cultural affirmation that the individual was not beholden to some authority in order to understand scriptures. All readers could read and interpret for themselves. In the face of this cultural freedom, readers, among them African American “darkness readers,” took the stories of the Christian Bible – the hegemonic ideology behind the myth of America – held them up to the “darkness” of their existence, and found in that juxtaposition “the contradictions that permit [such an hegemony] to be criticized in its own terms.”140 Douglass, a “darkness reader,” is using Jas 3:17 “to build a home” – a home which he defines as true religion, true Christianity, or the wisdom from above. To understand how he does this, we turn next to a close analysis of Douglass’s use of Jas 3:17 in his abolitionist speeches. To preface that reading, we begin with a short discursus on oratory as societal resistance, indeed as “reading darkness.” From there, we can, metaphorically, look over Douglass’s shoulder to try to discern the ways in which he is “reading” his “darkness” through the lens of Jas 3:17.

Chapter 3 Redefining “Religion”: Douglass’s Abolitionist Speeches and James 3:17 Douglass’s international fame and prestige came primarily from his speeches, speeches that spanned more than forty years, from the time just after his escape from slavery until his death.141 Through his rhetoric, Douglass negotiated his place in, and often over against, the “outside” world, the world that had not experienced enslavement. As it was primarily in his oratory, rather than in his autobiographies, that Douglass interpreted the New Testament, using it both to de-form systems of slavery and to form new rubrics of social engagement, the genre of oratory warrants consideration before attention is given to individual speeches.

Oratory and Orientation Oratory is, in its essence, the engagement by a speaker of some other. In it the speaker is required to interact with an audience with some purpose in mind. Wimbush’s schema can assist in broadly configuring this purpose. An oration may be understood either as an attempt at de(con)struction (de-formation or reform[ul]ation) or at (re)construction (formation or reform[ul]ation). A third possibility also emerges: oration as encomium, the primary intention of which is to maintain the status quo, to praise and to strengthen what is in place. As one might expect, Douglass’s oratory emerged out of, and reflected, Douglass’s experiences of “darkness.”142 His speeches were full of critique of the slave system into which he was born, and full of challenge for the nation that allowed such a system to exist. Douglass’s oratory was exemplary of the genre of oratory commonly called the jeremiad. David Howard-Pitney describes this genre as …a rhetoric of indignation, expressing deep dissatisfaction and urgently challenging the nation to reform. The term jeremiad, meaning a lamentation or doleful complaint, derives from the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah, who warned of Israel’s fall and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by Babylonia as a punishment for the people’s failure to keep the Mosaic covenant. Although Jeremiah denounced Israel’s wickedness and foresaw tribulation in the near-term, he also looked forward to the nation’s repentance and restoration in a future golden age. A uniquely American version of



3.   Redefining “Religion”

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this rhetorical tradition has been identified by cultural historians as a major convention of American culture.143

In North America, the jeremiad was first heard in the sermons of the Puritans. However, it originated in antiquity. The term jeremiad, derived from the biblical prophet Jeremiah, denotes the traditionally tripartite structure of this style of oratory. A typical American jeremiad cites “the promise [of America]”; critiques the “present declension, or retrogression from the promise”; and resolves its critique by means of “prophecy that society will shortly complete its mission and redeem the promise.”144 Howard-Pitney argues that, among northern free blacks, like Douglass, the jeremiad became a tool of open resistance to the dominant society.145 He relates that Douglass frequently used this form of address in the abolitionist period. During the 1840s and 1850s Douglass spoke bravely, angrily denouncing slavery as an abomination to God and curse to the nation. […]. […] In jeremiah fashion, Douglass denounced the multiplying present evils but drew on the nation’s sacred promise to announce his undying faith in the eventual liberation of Afro-Americans and, through it, the realization of America’s democratic mission.146

This last phrase is crucial to this study. Resistant speakers, like Douglass, would use the jeremiad not only to tear down the society as it was, but also to affirm the promise of the society as it might be. Thus, as argued above, Douglass does not merely engage in de-formation, that is, self-removal and societal excoriation; he also holds hope for formation, a hope for the creation of a “beautiful community,” a vision of an idealized society patterned after a Bible and a Christianity that had, as its core tenet, freedom. For Douglass, oratory was a form of resistance to the master narrative and to the society that it created. And, as a tool of that resistance, Douglass employed one of the pivotal texts of that master narrative, the Bible. That such usage was fairly common among many African Americans is well-documented. In his discussion of the Negro spiritual, Blount notes: The black slaves, then, in an effort to bring meaning to their tortured existence, create a unique language of song whose restricted codes are fully comprehensible only to those who are members of their oppressed community. This language and its context predict how they will interpret Scripture, defiantly. The linguistic transformation is nothing short of miraculous. The biblical conceptual language is forced on the slave as an opiate; the slave sees it instead as a symbolism of freedom.147

Blount notes the defiance in “dark” interpretation, the defiance in the slave using a “white” text, a text designed to uphold the status quo, as a “dark” scripture. Anthropologist James C. Scott documents a similar type of resistance outside of the United States. Scott shows that, like Douglass, the disenfranchised of South Asia resist their oppression by the way that they “read” that

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oppression. And their reading is exemplified by “the refusal to accept the definition of the situation as seen from above and the refusal to condone their own social and ritual marginalization.”148 But not only do Scott’s subjects “read darkness,” these marginalized persons take and use the hegemonic ideology of the dominant class against itself. This is possible, Scott argues, because “a hegemonic ideology must, by definition, represent an idealization which therefore inevitably creates the contradictions that permit it to be criticized in its own terms.”149 He argues further: The penetration of official platitudes by any subordinate class is to be expected both because those platitudes are unlikely to be as cohesive or uniform as is often imagined and because they are subject to different interpretations depending on the social position of the actors. Such divergent understandings are, in turn, rooted in daily experience.150

Douglass, in his “darkness reading” treats the biblical texts in exactly this way. Through his oratory, he penetrates and redefines the hegemonic ideology of his day – the Bible and Christianity – by means of the very texts that were originally intended to uphold that hegemony. Another way in which this resistant interpretation has been described is by the term “signifyin(g).” Henry Louis Gates describes “signifyin(g)” as “complex and inherently polemical,” inclusive of, but not limited to “speaking for a political or social program.”151 “Signifyin(g),” Gates argues, is a “form of critical parody, of repetition and inversion.”152 Jacqueline Bacon agrees. She defines African American signifying as the use of irony, ambiguity, and the language of implication to reverse the traditional hierarchy that gives the oppressor power over the oppressed; the deployment of strategies of indirection that feature language whose surface meaning encodes alternative confrontational messages; and the appropriation of canonical texts of white America in language that parodies and revises this discourse, challenging and undermining conventional interpretations.153

Bacon, in her description of signifying, underlines what Douglass and other “darkness readers” are “doing when they read the Bible”. They are fundamentally challenging, reversing, inverting, and discarding accepted paradigms of being and doing, practices aimed at the very workings of society. The object of signification for the “dark” ones is not a text but a pretext; it is not a specific document, but a dominant ideology. In their signifying, (re)interpreters employ a variety of tools, one of which may be the Bible. But in this interpretation, the intention is not expansion of “meaning potential” but subversion – the subversion of the dominant pretext by any “text” necessary. Gayraud Wilmore tells us Hundreds of extant slave testimonies reveal a ubiquitous hunger to read the Bible. Many taught themselves to read and write by stealing way, at great risk, to pore over the pages of a well-worn Bible, pages in which they met a God of justice and compassion, learned about the heroes and heroines of Israel, and entered a sacred world they fused with the existential world of their bondage.154



3.   Redefining “Religion”

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This fusion is at the heart of the matter. African slaves and their descendents did not read the Bible for the sake of correctly interpreting its words. They read the Bible for the sake of correctly signifying upon their world. As Blount notes, for the slaves “Their key intent is not so much to understand the Bible as it is to understand their historical circumstance. The Bible becomes an interpretative means rather than an interpretative end.”155 Thus, as Vincent Wimbush offers, “many of the biblical stories…functioned sometimes as allegory, as parable, or as veiled social criticism.”156 Signifying is a form of resistance among the “weak.” So Scott notes: Above all, the symbolic resistance of the poor rejects the categories the rich attempt to impose upon them. They know that the large farmers increasingly see them as lazy, unreliable, dishonest, and grasping. They know that, behind their backs, they are blamed as the authors of their own victimization and that, in daily social encounters, they are increasingly treated with little consideration or, worse, ignored. Much of what they have to say among themselves is a decisive rejection of the attempt to relegate them to a permanently inferior economic and ritual status and a decisive assertion of their citizenship rights in this small community.157

A similar phenomenon has been noted among African Americans by historian of religion Charles H. Long: …my community was a community that knew that one of the most important meanings about it was the fact that it was a community signified by another community. This signification constituted a subordinate relationship of power expressed through custom and legal structures. While aware of this fact, the community undercut this legitimated signification with a signification upon this legitimated signifying.158

That communities and individuals, faced with this ideological delegitimization, should turn the tables on the purveyors of this dominant ideology is significant. That they would, to paraphrase Audre Lorde, choose to tear down the master’s house with the master’s tools is remarkable;159 yet this is precisely what they did. Douglass, the orator, was a signifier, a “darkness reader” in that he used rhetoric to define for his audience the evils of slavery and the virtues of abolitionism. He employed the texts of the Bible – particularly Jas 3:17 – to “read” his society as fundamentally evil, to signify upon it as an unscriptural, anti-biblical, un-Christian “darkness,” and he charged that its only hope for transformation was the immediate abolition of slavery. A word should here be said about method. The analysis below will follow the work of David B. Chesebrough fairly closely. Chesebrough’s text on Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery, is one of very few published analyses of Douglass’s oratory and the only one of them that deals with the actual oratorical structure of Douglass’s speeches.160 Chesebrough’s work is part of a larger effort by Bernard K. Duffy and Halford R. Ryan to create a book series about Great American Orators. Duffy and Ryan see these books as a way “to meet the needs of scholars and students of the history and criticism of public

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address.”161 Chesebrough relies on generally Aristotelian rhetorical categories, using them as helpful descriptors for the rhetorical moves that Douglass makes.162 For the sake of consistency, in Chapter 4, when the emphasis shifts to James’s use of rhetoric and of his own “scriptures” to combat the “darkness” that he and his community faced, I will again follow Chesebrough’s Aristotelian-influenced categories in order to analyze the “darkness reading” of the epistle of James.

The Dimensions of Home: Frederick Douglass and Jas 3:17 “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland,” a speech that he gave in London, England on May 22, 1846, is a good starting point for our close reading of Douglass’s oratory.163 Like eight of his ten extant speeches that quote or allude to Jas 3:17, “American Slavery” is given in Great Britain.164 And, like all but the last three of these speeches, “American Slavery” is delivered during Douglass’s first trip to Great Britain during the early period of his association with William Lloyd Garrison. “American Slavery” typifies the speeches that Douglass gave at the beginning of his career, during which period one would expect to find Douglass, the fugitive slave, actively involved in the work of “home-building.” For the sake of this study, “American Slavery” also provides the most complete quotation of Jas 3:17 in these ten speeches. In his tour of the United Kingdom, as noted above, Douglass’s status as a fugitive slave and his oratorical skills made him a popular spectacle, drawing people to hear and see the “chattel,” the “thing,” the “piece of southern property” that “could speak.”165 But it was his ability to speak, his oratorical genius, which drew crowds back, making him much more than a curiosity. Henry Louis Gates notes this phenomenon among ex-slaves overall: …cast into silence by their own loss or absence of voice, Africans could have no history, no meaningful text of blackness itself, since they had no true self-consciousness, no power to present or represent this black and terrible self. […] black exslaves had to demonstrate their language-using capacity before they could become social and historical entities. In short, slaves could inscribe their selves only in language.166

So too, Douglass, through his oratory, “inscribed himself”; and in so doing offered “irrefutable proof of the slave’s humanity, of the black’s equality with whites.”167 “American Slavery” also gives us a fair representation of one of Douglass’s main concerns during his time in the UK. Two months after the publication of his first extant speech, in October 1845, Douglass became involved with a controversy surrounding the relationship of the Free Church of Scotland to US slaveholders. This sect had been founded by the Rev. Dr Thomas Chalmers, who, after arguing that there was too much “civil interference in Church affairs,” led the secession of some 470 clergy in 1843.168 One year later, a depu-



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tation of the Free Church had visited the southern US and returned with £3000 in contributions from slaveholders for the new denomination.169 During the two years that he spent in the British Isles, Douglass strongly and relentlessly criticized this relationship. The Free Church of Scotland became a central theme in many of his speeches. By the time he delivered “American Slavery,” the matter had become a minor cause célèbre identified by the slogan “Send-Back-TheMoney,” and Douglass had become one of its chief spokespersons.170

“American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland” Douglass delivered “American Slavery” at an abolitionist meeting that had drawn between 2500 and 3000 people into Finsbury Chapel in London. As was typical of many of Douglass’s speeches, he addressed the crowd with the purpose of defining and describing US chattel slavery; his aim was not only to illustrate the physical brutality of the system but also to argue for its immorality. As part of his argument, Douglass offered Jas 3:17. It was, at once, the opening definition of religion, for Douglass, and a sort of apologia for his anti-slavery and anti-southern Christianity positions. In his claim to “love the religion from above,” Douglass used the language of the Bible to construct an image of a religion that fundamentally confronted the system of chattel slavery to which he and so many others like him were subject.

Structural, Textual, and Ideational Aspects As can be gleaned from its title, “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland” is comprised of three sections. In the first, Douglass defined the nature of US chattel slavery; in the second, he made the argument for combating slavery and its practitioners with moral suasion; and in the third, he criticized the actions of the Free Church of Scotland. Douglass began with some brief self-deprecating comments about his ill-preparedness to speak before such an audience because of his slave background. But he quickly left those remarks to launch into the first major section of his argument. In this opening section, Douglass described for his audience the ways in which the laws of the US, even in northern so-called “free” states, supported the institution of slavery. This support, he argued, prevented an uprising similar to that of Haiti’s slaves; “the people of the United States are all pledged, bound by their oaths, bound by their citizenship in that country, to bring their whole physical power to bear against the slave.”171 This national, concerted effort to keep slavery in place was the only way that “300,000 men are capable of holding 3,000,000 men in slavery.”172 Douglass then launched into an extensive description of the condition of slavery itself. He spent particular time on the issue of physical brutality, drawing his audience’s attention repeatedly to “starvation, the bloody whip, the

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chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, cat-hauling, the cat-o’-nine-tails, the dungeon, [and] the bloodhound” as the means by which southern slaveholders ensured the docility of their slaves.173 But he also included in his description matters of enforced illiteracy, the sundering of marriages, and “the scenes of pollution which the slave holders continually provide for most of the poor, sinking, wretched young women, whom they call their property.”174 He bolstered his description by quoting portions of the slave codes of the South that showed the extent to which such brutality had been institutionalized. Having laid out a description of slavery, Douglass began his second section with an argument: that US chattel slavery was supported and defended by “the religion of the southern states.”175 This entanglement of the southern pulpit with slavery, he claimed, was the hardest to attack, “because it is identified with religion, and exposes those who denounce it to the charge of infidelity.”176 It was in response to this charge, a charge that he himself was “undermining religion,” that Douglass pronounced his apologia for an alternate, anti-slavery Christianity, an apologia that began with an exposition of Jas 3:17. Table 1: Biblical References in the Apologia of “American Slavery” The Apologia

Biblical References

I love the religion of our blessed Saviour. I love that religion that comes from above, in the “wisdom of God, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”

But… the wisdom that is from above Is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. (Jas 3:17)

I love that religion that sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of him that has fallen among thieves.

…and he went to him and bound up his wounds. […] Which […] was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? (Luke 10:34, 36)

I love that religion that makes it the duty of its disciples to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. (Jas 1:27)

I love that religion that is based upon the glorious principle, of love to God and love to man (cheers); which makes its followers do unto others as they themselves would be done by.

(Probably a reference to Matt 22:34-40/Mark 12:28-31/Luke 10:27). And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Luke 6:31)

3.   Redefining “Religion”



If you demand liberty to yourself, it says, grant it to your neighbours. If you claim a right to think for yourselves, it says, allow your neighbours the same right. If you claim to act for yourselves, it says, allow your neighbours the same right. It is because I love this religion that I hate the slave-holding, the woman-whipping, the mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that exists in the southern states of America. (Immense cheering.) It is because I regard the one as good, and pure, and holy, that I cannot but regard the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. Loving the one I must hate the other, holding to the one I must reject the other, and I, therefore, proclaim myself an infidel to the slave-holding religion of America.177

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And the second is like, namely this, Thy shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (Mark 12:28-31/Matt 22:34-40/Luke 10:27)

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Luke 16:13/Matt 6:24)

177

Having publicly stated this anti-slave-holding credo, Douglass returned to his critique of the southern US church’s support of chattel slavery. He focused his attention on those southern churches that were built with money specifically earned from the sale or exploitation of slaves; and on those churches that stood near auction blocks but whose clergy chose not to decry this inhumanity from their pulpits. Douglass then called his hearers to attack slavery through the power of their moral suasion. He argued that the very religion that slavery sought to corrupt was that which could destroy slavery if it so desired. His branch of abolitionism, he explained, believed “that our energies should be devoted to the purifying of the moral sentiment of the country, by directing its energies to the purification of the church, and the exclusion of slave holders from communion with it.”178 Central to this belief was the conviction that slavery was a sin and that those who were its practitioners were fundamentally sinful and should be excluded from the church until, and unless, they repented.179 Douglass spent a short period addressing several small victories claimed by the Garrisonians, those abolitionists who, like him, followed the moral suasion abolitionist stance of William Lloyd Garrison.180 Among the victories claimed by the Garrisonians were the recent schisms in many US church denominations, schisms that had divided the churches into northern and southern factions over the issue of southern chattel slavery.181 The weapon in each of these, Douglass argued, was moral suasion. And moral suasion was the reason for his presence in the UK. The purpose of his tour of the British Isles was to elicit moral support for those who had no power. He was determined that the force of moral disapproval from the people of Great Britain would have a profound impact on the US. He concluded this part of his speech on such notes:

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If you have whispered truth, whisper no longer: speak as the tempest does – stronger and stronger. Let your voices be heard through the press, through the pulpit, in all directions. Let the atmosphere of Britain be such that a slave holder may not be able to breathe it. Let him feel his lungs oppressed the moment he steps on British soil.182

After this climactic moment, the third section of Douglass’s speech seemed almost an addendum. Yet it is a fixture in so many of Douglass’s British speeches that its presence is hardly surprising. Douglass chose to make a statement on the Free Church of Scotland controversy. He launched into an attack of the Free Church for accepting monies from slaveholding US southern Christians. He leveled several charges, including fraternizing and taking money from “menstealers,” money that was “the produce of human blood.”183 He elaborated upon the charges: …going into a country where they saw three millions of people deprived of every right, stripped of every privilege, driven like brutes from time into eter­nity in the dark, robbed of all that makes life dear, the marriage institu­tion destroyed, men herded together like beasts, deprived of the privi­lege of learning to read the name of the God who made them; and yet that deputation did not utter a word of denunciation against the man-stealer, or a word of sympathy, for these poor, outraged, long neglected people.184

He called upon those assembled to send a message to the Free Church that they had done wrong and that the only way to redress that wrong was to “send back the money.” Douglass left the stage to three rousing cheers of “send back the money” and “reiterated rounds of applause.”185

Rhetoric and Signification Note that Douglass’s apologia is situated very nearly at the center of his speech, near the turning point between his argument about the support of the southern pulpit for slavery and his call for British Christians to discontinue all contact with southern religion. The apologia comes in response to the question whether in fact he was not harming religion by his attacks on the church. Looking at the apologia in “American Slavery” through the lens of David Chesebrough’s categories of rhetoric, Douglass’s use of ethos, pathos, and parallelism is quite clear. “Ethos” Chesebrough describes as that rhetorical tactic “whereby the speaker establishes credibility with the audience.”186 One way that Douglass established his credibility was with his facility with the Christian scriptures. A quick perusal of Douglass’s apologia reveals six distinct biblical quotations or allusions within the eleven sentences of his argument: Jas 3:17; Luke 10:31-35; Jas 1:27; Mark 12:28-31/Matt 22:34-40/Luke 10:27; Matt 7:12/ Luke 6:31; and Matt 6:24/Luke 16:13.187 This breadth is significant, because it shows Douglass to be well read in the Bible. Douglass described the problem:



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I have found it difficult to speak on this matter [i.e., against American slaveholding religion] without persons coming forward and saying, “Douglass, are you not afraid of injuring the cause of Christ? You do not desire to do so, we know; but are you not undermining religion?” This has been said to me again and again even since I came to this country…188

Douglass’s Christian orthodoxy and his loyalty to his faith were in question because of his critique of slaveholding Christianity in the United States. In his wide-ranging use of the biblical text, as well as in his passionate apologia using Jas 3:17, Douglass showed himself to be impressively well-read within the Christian scriptures. This made it far more difficult to dismiss him as a heretic; for he was at least as familiar with the scriptures as those whom he was critiquing, if one’s Christianity were to be measured by biblical knowledge.189 In addition to “ethos,” Douglass uses oral parallelism to strengthen his argument with his audience. According to Chesebrough, this tactic includes the use of anaphora, rhetorical questions and antitheses.190 Although there are no rhetorical questions in this apologia, the use of anaphora and antitheses may be easily shown. Table 2: Oral Parallelism in the Apologia of “American Slavery” 1. I love the religion of our blessed Saviour. 2. I love that religion that comes from above, in the “wisdom of God, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” 3. I love that religion that sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of him that has fallen among thieves. 4. I love that religion that makes it the duty of its disciples to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction. 5. I love that religion that is based upon the glorious principle, of love to God and love to man (cheers); which makes its followers do unto others as they themselves would be done by. 6. If you demand liberty to yourself, it says, grant it to your neighbours. 7. If you claim a right to think for yourselves, it says, allow your neighbours the same right. 8. If you claim to act for yourselves, it says, allow your neighbours the same right. 9. It is because I love this religion that I hate the slave-holding, the woman-whipping, the mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that exists in the southern states of America. […] 10. It is because I regard the one as good, and pure, and holy, that I cannot but regard the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. 11. Loving the one I must hate the other, holding to the one I must reject the other, and I, therefore, proclaim myself an infidel to the slave-holding religion of America.191

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Douglass provides us with three examples of anaphora. The first is the cadence built upon the phrase “I love the/that religion.”192 This cadence can be seen as the beginning phrase of each sentence in the first half of the apology, including that phrase in which Jas 3:17 is located. It is reprised later in the apologia when Douglass begins to compare the “religion” that “he loves” with the “religion” that he “hates.”193 This very intentional shift in the cadence, between a description of the religion “he loves” based mainly in biblical texts and a description of the religion “he hates” based heavily in the physical brutality of slavery, serves to drive his point home. And his point is definitional: there is a difference between true “Christianity,” as he reads it in his Bible, and what he calls “the slave-holding, the woman-whipping, the mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that exists in the southern states of America.”194 The second and third examples of anaphora comprise the latter half of the apologia. One of these begins at the sixth sentence. There Douglass shifts to a cadence marked by “If you demand/claim…grant/allow…your neighbours.”195 Three times Douglass repeats this anaphora, in sentences designed to illustrate the last biblical verse to which he alludes, the so-called “Golden Rule.”196 This he follows with the cadence: “It is because…that…”197 In this last anaphora, Douglass combines cadence with antithesis. Thus the anaphora reads “It is because I love […] that I hate […]” and “It is because I regard […] that I cannot but regard […].”198 His last sentence is patterned after this antithetical anaphora; but in it he modifies the earlier argument. “Loving the one I must hate the other, holding to the one I must reject the other,” he says; and so he proclaims his conclusion: “and I, therefore, proclaim myself an infidel to the slave-holding religion of America.”199 Jas 3:17 figures importantly in Douglass’s use of parallelism. It is only the second sentence and the first biblical quote. If one sees Douglass’s opening cadence, “I love the/that religion…” as definitional, then it is of no small import that the first text Douglass chooses to describe “the religion of our blessed Saviour,” is Jas 3:17. If Luke 6:31/Matt 7:12 provides its summary, Jas 3:17 provides its description. In his use of ethos and parallelism, Douglass is quite effective. But arguably his speeches were most effective because of his use of pathos, those tactics through which Douglass “invested his rhetoric with great emotion.”200 Included among those tactics are Douglass’s uses of description, emotionally laden words, and personification, three rhetorical moves readily evident in the apologia.201 Douglass’s purpose in the first of these – description – is to illustrate in vivid detail the horrors of US chattel slavery. Indeed, the bulk of his first two arguments, those regarding American slavery and American religion, use detailed descriptions of whippings and other brutalities of slavery, including the rending apart of families. Douglass enforces these descriptions by reading directly from texts in front of his audience – texts such as the Grimké sisters’ Slavery as It Is: 191



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Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses and James Birney Gillespie’s The American Churches: The Bulwarks of American Slavery. By an American.202 In the apologia, then, Douglass does not feel the need to proffer evidence to support his claims regarding slavery or the religion that supports it. Rather, he resorts to shorthand, shorthand that definitively connects southern US slavery with a type of Christian ideology and practice. “I hate,” he says, “the slaveholding, the woman-whipping, the mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that exists in the southern states of America.”203 By contrast, he describes “the religion of our blessed Saviour,” as that which embodies all of the virtues listed in the six biblical texts which he cites.204 These characteristics, he claims, are acted out in practices of impartiality toward all persons. This is the religion that is “good, and pure, and holy.”205 Among these descriptions, Douglass intersperses terms of deep emotion. This is best exemplified by his repetition of the word “love.” This word (and its cognates) appears nine times in these eleven sentences, emphasizing Douglass’s deep emotion surrounding religion.206 This deep sentiment is contrasted with the equally emotional word “hate,” which occurs twice toward the end of his speech, with reference to the religion of the south. Part of Douglass’s deep sentiment surrounding religion may stem from the fact that his religion does not exist in the abstract. Rather, it is a personified entity, a being that can “come,” “send,” compel its adherents to action, and, indeed, can speak.207 As such, it has the power of mastery over its disciples, and can use them for good or for ill. Southern religion, as he configures it, is also personified. It actually does the acts of brutality typical of southern slavery by its complicity. Southern religion, thus, holds slaves, whips women, darkens minds, and destroys souls. Douglass’s personification is heightened in the climactic rejection of southern religion, in which he intentionally appropriates biblical language for his statement of fealty to the “religion of our blessed Saviour.” “Loving the one I must hate the other, holding to the one I must reject the other, and I, therefore, proclaim myself an infidel to the slave-holding religion of America.”208 The two religions he sets forth, then, are two masters: one that compels to good and the other to evil. Note, again, how Jas 3:17 figures in Douglass’s use of pathos. It is this text that is the first statement of Douglass’s “true love,” as it were. It is this text that first describes the essence of Douglass’s personified “religion.” From this “religion” emerges the sending out of its disciples to do good deeds, the command to care for those who are without, the compulsion to follow the “golden rule.” Jas 3:17 is the first, and most extensive, definition of Douglass’s own religion, his master, that to which he can give his loyalty. Douglass is also signifying on slavery using Jas 3:17, by which I am referring specifically to Douglass’s use of irony, his play with strategies of indirection, and his appropriation of the canonical texts of white America.209 In the apologia, Douglass employs all three of these tactics.

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While the apologia does not contain the irony typical to many other parts of Douglass’s speeches, it does illustrate well Douglass’s use of “the language of implication to reverse the traditional hierarchy.”210 In this hierarchy, those schooled in the matters of religion – clergy ordained and appointed to positions of authority, for example – should be the experts on “the religion of our blessed Saviour.”211 But instead: What have we in America? Why we have slavery made part of the religion of the land. Yes, the pulpit there stands up as the great defender of this cursed institution, as it is called. Ministers of religion come forward and torture the hallowed pages of inspired wisdom to sanction the bloody deed.212

Douglass made it clear that he too loved “religion.” But the religion that he loved was that of “our blessed Saviour” that, “comes from above […] which is first pure, then peaceable…” Douglass’s definition of religion implied that there was another religion: one that was not from above and that represented the antithesis of Douglass’s ideal, the religion described above as “the religion of the land.”213 Whereas the former religion was defined by the leaders of the church, “ministers of religion,” Douglass reversed the hierarchy by daring to raise a counter-definition, one that came not from the minister behind the pulpit but from him, a fugitive slave. By taking voice and choosing to define religion, Douglass implied that the power to define religion lay outside of the reach of the pulpit. In the face of the dominance of the religion as practiced on earth, Douglass argued for the presence of a superseding power of religion “that comes from above.”214 Such a religion represents a power over which southern religion, as Douglass constructed it, had no control. By swearing allegiance to this religion, Douglass, the fugitive slave, used “the language of implication” to “reverse the hierarchy” of religious authority, effectively breaking, at least for him, the power of slave-holding religion as the dominant religious voice.215 The first half of the apologia also contains “language whose surface meaning encodes alternative confrontational messages.”216 By implication, if Douglass can claim to love “the religion of our blessed Saviour,” there must be some other religion that emerges from some other source. If Douglass can claim to love “that religion that comes from above, in the ‘wisdom of God, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy,’” he implies the existence of another religion that is antithetical to the religion he loves.217 The confrontation, here, is only thinly veiled (and at the end of the apologia the veil is lifted). In his depiction of the ideal, Douglass is, by implication, confronting southern religion. It is not the picture of “religion” found in James. It does not follow the “Great Commandment” or the “Golden Rule.” It cares nothing for the widow and the orphan. It does nothing to ensure that the rights of its devotees are shared with the neighbors (i.e. the slaves) of the same. The underlying challenge, encoded in Douglass’s rhetoric, must be this – how can you who do these things question my claim to be Christian?



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Douglass issues his challenge with the texts of the masters’ own religion. In the apologia, the six biblical quotations and allusions figure importantly as the building blocks of Douglass’s definition of “religion,” the formation of his defense, his apologia. But the irony is this: this formation is built on the Bible, the very text sacred to the slaveholders. Douglass does construct arguments based on books written by fellow abolitionists;218 these books slaveholders may dispute. But at the core of his argument is a collection of texts which, by the admission of the slaveholders, must be authoritative, for they are from the Bible, that collection of texts so central to nineteenth-century American society.219 As Douglass charges: Why we have slavery made part of the religion of the land. Yes, the pulpit there stands up as the great defender of this cursed institution, as it is called. Ministers of religion come forward, and torture the hallowed pages of inspired wisdom to sanction the bloody deed.220

By choosing to employ texts from these “hallowed pages” that he claims are “tortured” by the defenders of slavery, Douglass signifies not only upon the texts but even more upon the “religion” of those who use them to uphold slavery. Jas 3:17 beautifully illustrates the extent to which Douglass signifies upon the “white” Bible. From its pages, he draws out this ideal vision of “religion,” a “home” in which persons are treated fairly and widows and orphans cared for. A home that is “pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”221

Other Formative Uses of Jas 3:17 in Douglass’s Abolitionist Speeches Of the remaining nine speeches in which Douglass used Jas 3:17, seven of them follow a pattern of usage similar to that in “American Slavery.” Four of these are truncated quotes. In “Irish Christians and Non-Fellowship with ManStealers,” for instance, Douglass stated “I love religion – I love the religion of Jesus, which is pure and peaceable, and easy to be entreated.”222 Similarly, in “I am Here to Spread Light on American Slavery,” Douglass characterized the religion that he loves as “that religion which is from above, without par­tiality or hypocrisy.”223 In the “Free Church Alliance with Slavery,” Douglass charged that the deputation from the Free Church of Scotland did not preach “the gospel” to the slave, “that gospel which came from above – that gospel which is peaceable and pure, and easy to be entreated.”224 And, in “Slavery Exists Under the Eaves of the American Church,” defending Garrison, Douglass argued that Garrison could not have supported slaveholding religion. “To advocate such a religion as this,” he argued, “was to war with that religion which is first pure then peaceable.”225 Of the remaining five of these ten texts, two contain apologetic interests very similar to that in “American Slavery.” The one in “England Should Lead the Cause of Emancipation” is most closely parallel. It reads:

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I love the religion of our blessed Saviour, I love that religion that comes from above, in the “wisdom of God, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy”. And it is because I love the pure and hallowed Christian religion that I hate this slaveholding, this woman-whipping, this mind-darkening, this soul-destroying religion that exists in the Southern States of America.226

Although a briefer apologia, one can see evidence here of some of the same characteristics as in “American Slavery”: the repetition of “I love” and “I hate,” both as parallelism and as pathos; and the description and personification of southern religion as “slave-holding,” “woman-whipping,” “mind-darkening,” and “soul-destroying.” And as in “American Slavery,” so also here, Douglass uses Jas 3:17 to signify upon the religion of the south through implication, indirection, and the mastery of the master’s own texts. Delivered in Syracuse, New York in 1847, “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country” is the only one of the ten aforementioned speeches in which Douglass makes his apology to an American audience.227 The apologia in “Love of God” is, by comparison to the other speeches, quite extensive: Table 3: Biblical References in the Apologia of “Love Of God”228 The Apologia I dwell mostly upon the religious aspects, because I believe it is the religious people who are to be relied on in this Anti-Slavery movment. Do not misunderstand my railing – do not class me with those who despise religion – do not identify me with the infidel. I love the religion of Christianity – which cometh from above – which is pure, peacable, gen­tle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy. I love that religion which sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of those who have fallen among thieves. By all the love I bear to such a Christianity as this, I hate that of the Priest and Levite, that with long-faced Phariseeism goes up to Jerusalem and worship[s], and leaves the bruised and wounded to die. I despise that religion that can carry Bibles to the heathen on the other side of the globe and withhold them from heathen on this side – which can talk about human rights yonder and traffic in human flesh here. I love that

Biblical References

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. (Jas 3:17) Which now of these three was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? (Luke 10:36) And by chance there came down a certain priest that way. […] And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. (Luke 10:31-32)



3.   Redefining “Religion” which makes its votaries do to others as they would that others should do to them.[…] There is another religion. It is that which takes off fetters instead of binding them on – that breaks every yoke – that lifts up the bowed down. The Anti-Slavery platform is based on this kind of religion. It spreads its table to the lame, the halt, and the blind. It goes down after a long neglected race. It passes, link by link till it finds the lowest link in humanity’s chain – humanity’s most degraded form in the most abject condition. It reaches down its arm and tells them to stand up. This is Anti-Slavery – this is Christianity. It is reviving gloriously among the various denominations. It is threatening to supersede those old forms of religion having all of the love of God and none of man in it.

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And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Luke 6:31) Is this not the fast that I have chosen […] that ye break every yoke? (Isa 58:6) …Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither, the poor and the maimed, and the halt and the blind. (Luke 14:13, 21)

He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27/Mark 12:28-31/Matt 22:34-40)

This apologia also mirrors the rhetorical patterns seen in “American Slavery.” As in “American Slavery,” it contains a plethora of Biblical quotations. In addition to the primary quote of Jas 3:17, one can easily identify quotes and allusions to the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:31-35) and the “Golden Rule” (Matt 7:12; Luke 6:31), as well as to Isa 58:6 and Luke 14:21; and the last sentence may well be a referent to the “Greatest Commandment” (Mark 12:28-31/Matt 22:34-40/Luke 10:27). Also, as in “American Slavery,” Douglass displays his command of anaphora to make a point, repeating phrases such as “Do not…,” “I love…,” “I hate/despise…,” and “It…” In addition, this apologia resounds with pathos. The descriptive language of the bruised and the wounded and the trafficking in human flesh are paired with words of deep emotion, such as love and hate. And, in the cadence marked by the repetition of “It…,” Douglass depicts a personified religion that responds to the pathos in ways that recognize and alleviate pain. Douglass is signifying here, just as he signified in “American Slavery.” He uses biblical quotations to imply a religion in direct opposition to slaveholding religion, biblical quotations that encode a confrontation with the religion of the south. And, as seen above, these biblical quotations are derived directly from the pages of the masters’ own scriptures, the bulwark of the masters’ own religion. Even in this much longer apologia, the role of Jas 3:17 is pivotal. As in the others, it serves as Douglass’s definition of religion, that definition from which all other definitions emerge, and on which all actions are based. In “Love of God,” Douglass is even more plainspoken about that definition than he is in “American Slavery.” Note that in two places where he might have used the word religion in “American Slavery,” in “Love of God,” Douglass substitutes

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the more specific “Christianity.” In Jas 3:17, Douglass is saying, is the very definition of Christianity. A third speech should be noted here, “The Bible Opposes Oppression, Fraud, and Wrong,” which contains the quotation that opens this book. This third speech is not, technically an apologia, for Douglass, in this speech, has no need to defend what he believes. Unlike the other speeches in which Jas 3:17 figures, this was not a formal address, but a word of thanks for the gift of a Bible by the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society. As a result, many of the characteristics of Douglass’s longer and more formal speeches are missing.229 Yet, one can still see some similarities. The speech is short, and focuses primarily on Douglass’s personal history with reading. It consists primarily of autobiographical narrative, until Douglass begins to address the matter of the gift itself. The section of short speech in which Douglass speaks about the Bible begins with a reference to 1 Cor 13: What could be better than the Bible to me, contending against oppression, fraud and wrong? … It is full of wisdom and goodness – faith, hope and charity sparkle on every page, all of which deal death to slavery.230

Douglass then turns to southern practices of Christianity. Here he charges that the “Doctors of Divinity in the United States” who “expound this Word as to shelter the dark and daring system of slavery under its hallowed pages” have been “wresting the words of God from their original meaning…”231 Douglass’s declaration of the importance of the Bible immediately follows these charges. Table 4: Oral Parallelism in “The Bible Opposes Oppression, Fraud, and Wrong” This [holding the presentation Bible in his hands] – this is an excellent token of your regard. It is just what I want from you. It contains all the Words of Heavenly Wisdom – It is opposed to every thing that is wrong and it is in favor of all that is right. It is filled with that Wisdom from above, which is pure, and peaceable, and full of mercies and good fruits, without prolixity, and without hypocrisy. It knows no one by the color of his skin. It confers no privilege upon one class, which it does not confer upon another. The fundamental principle running through and underlying the whole is this – “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them.” If you claim liberty for yourself, grant it to your neighbour. If you, yourself, were a slave, and would desire the aid of your fellow-man to rescue you from the clutch of the enslaver, you surely are bound by that very desire to labor for the freedom of those whom you know to be in bonds. But I will not enlarge on this.232

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Although this is not technically an apologia, some of the same characteristics are visible. Douglass’s use of anaphora, for instance, is emphatic, underlining to a sympathetic audience the function of the Bible in his overall abolitionist message. As he has previously done with religion, he personifies the Bible, granting it the power to “oppose,” to “know,” and to “confer privilege.” Here, too, he uses elements of what Bacon calls signification. He reassigns the texts of the master, Jas 3:17 and Matt 7:12, to his own purpose. The former defines the contents of the Bible, which he earlier calls “the words of God.” The latter serves to summarize these contents.233 Further, in his personification of the Bible, he signifies that those who distinguish between persons based on skin color and who confer different privileges to different classes of people are somehow abiblical. In short, for Douglass, the Bible becomes a sign denoting the religion of those who perform toward the slave in ways that he affirms. It becomes a material equivalent of Douglass’s Christianity – perhaps the ultimate form of scripturalizing. It is through his understanding of what the Bible signifies – as exemplified by Jas 3:17 – that Douglass here reads “the dark and daring system of slavery”: that which, for Douglass, is “darkness.”234

“The Fourth of July” and Jas 3:17 Some six years later in what has come to be his best-known oration, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”, Douglass employed the rhetoric of Jas 3:17 again. In this speech, however, his motive was different. Whereas in the previous eight speeches, Douglass had used Jas 3:17 as a defense of his own religiosity and for the formation of an ideal of Christianity, in “Fourth of July,” Jas 3:17 stood as part of a thorough deconstruction of slaveholding religion, at the heart of a jeremiad aimed at slaveholding America. Table 5: Jas 3:17 in its Context in “Fourth of July” “Fourth of July”

Biblical quotations

These ministers make religion as cold and flintyhearted thing. […] It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers and thugs. It is not that “ ‘pure Pure religion and undefiled before God and undefiled religion’ and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world. (Jas 1:27)

which is from above, and which is ‘first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.”235 But a religion which

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. (Jas 3:17)

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favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation – a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might well be addressed, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea! When ye make prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD;

cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.”236

Then Peter opened [his] mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. (Acts 10:34)

Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; [it is] iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear [them]. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doing from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. (Isa 1:13-17)

235236

As in the speeches previously considered, this speech also contains several biblical quotations: Jas 1:27; 3:17; Acts 10:37; and, with very minor changes, an exact quote of Isa 1:13-17. And, this speech, also, is filled with pathos. In it, Douglass described a religion that systematically oppressed those who were already downtrodden, going so far as to alter the very nature of God by making God “a respecter of persons” and to “trample in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man.”237 But Douglass’s purpose in this oration was radically different. In the previous speeches, Douglass had sought to defend his position by arguing that the religion he was describing, and not the one practiced by slaveholders, constituted the very essence of Christianity. In this oration, Douglass’s intent



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was not self-defense but rather attack. So whereas in the former speeches, Douglass defined what religion is, in this speech, he illustrated precisely what religion is not. Previously he had been on the defensive; but in this speech, it was slaveholding religion that Douglass intended to render defenseless against the “scriptures.” In “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass followed the classic movement of the jeremiad, as traced by Howard-Pitney. At its outset, he had glowingly described to his audience “the promise [of America].”238 He declared: I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the RING-BOLT of the chain of your nation’s destiny; so indeed I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.239

Here was a nation founded on a promise, a promise, alluded to in his statement, of human equality. With its originators, Douglass argued, “justice, liberty and humanity were ‘final;’ not slavery and oppression.”240 In light of that promise, Douglass shifted to his critique of the “present declension, or retrogression from the promise.”241 The nation so founded in liberty had become corrupted, he argued, and complicit in that corruption was the religion of the pulpits of the south. Douglass directly attacked this religion, claiming that it fundamentally contradicted the Christian scriptures. It is telling that, as he ended this part of the jeremiad – an oratorical form based on the prophetic writings of the Hebrew Bible – Douglass chose an extensive quote from Isaiah, one that called the nation to repentance for its involvement in injustice. Douglass does end “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” with a “prophecy that society [would] shortly complete its mission and redeem the promise”:242 The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” (Gen 1:3), has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” (Ps 68:31)243

It was a hopeful ending to a blistering speech; he had held up a standard of “pure and undefiled religion” in the words of Jas 1:27 and 3:17, and he had judged the US wanting. And finally this was the distinction between “Fourth of July” and Douglass’s previous uses of Jas 3:17. In most of the previous speeches Douglass had acted the defendant, building his case for true religion upon Jas 3:17 and other scriptures. But in “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”, Jas 3:17 was the standard, a standard against which slaveholding religion had been measured and found to be wanting; and Frederick Douglass himself was the judge.

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“John Brown” and Jas 3:17 By the time Douglass delivered the speech “John Brown and the Slaveholders’ Insurrection,” some thirteen years had passed. It was 1860 and the United States was on the brink of Civil War. Douglass had escaped to Great Britain yet again, this time to avoid being tried and hanged with the Harpers’ Ferry conspirators. Returning to Scotland, now an internationally famous abolitionist speaker, Douglass spoke to an enthusiastic audience as it “crowded Queen Street Hall.”244 The speech consisted of a number of points. Douglass took time to describe the horrors of slavery. He explained the electoral contest that was at that moment occurring in the States and expressed his hope for a Republican victory. And he spent some time reviewing the progress that the antislavery movement had made, a movement that, by 1860, even included Thomas Chalmers, the founder of the Free Church of Scotland against whom Douglass had railed so vociferously in his earlier visit. But in the middle of his speech, Douglass turned to Harper’s Ferry, and at that point in the speech Douglass waxed biblical, reverting to the language which had so framed his earlier speeches. When Douglass responded to the felt need to defend “the rightfulness of John Brown’s cause,” his defense came primarily from that familiar New Testament text, the “Golden Rule.”245 Brown, he said, was “animated by a desire to do unto others as he should himself be done unto.”246 To those who questioned Brown’s attempt to assist slaves in acquiring their freedom, he issued the challenge that they make the case their own. Were they to be kidnapped by an “Algerine pirate” they should be happy for such assistance.247 This assistance he classified under the trope “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”248 But Douglass’s use of the Bible shifted significantly when he began speaking of his love of peace versus Brown’s use of armed struggle. According to the Scottish reporter, Douglass claimed himself to be “a peace man,”249 but his peace principles only led him to be peaceable towards those to whom peace was a blessing, and was really appropriate. He was not for “casting pearls before swine.”250 […] He was for the peace of which God himself was in favour – peace for well-doing; but he was not for a peace – as God had no such peace – to the wicked.251 There could be no peace where there was oppression, injustice, or outrage upon the right, – none but the most hollow and deceitful peace could ever exist between the man who was on his back on the ground, and the man that stood on his neck with his heel. […] The Divine arrangement was this, be first “pure and then peaceable.”252

This is a very different use of the Jas 3:17 passage from that evidenced in earlier speeches, a use that illustrates what James C. Scott calls a “hidden transcript,” “a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant.”253 In Douglass’s earlier years Jas 3:17 was the mark of his orthodoxy, the basis of his own moral struggle and his call for a crusade against the evils of slavery. He



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did not call his early audiences to armed conflict, nor advocate for it himself. Typical among those early speeches is this statement: There are, however, persons who honestly believe that we should not interfere with America in this matter. This objection would be fairly put forth, if we called for political interference, or for the interference of your arms […]. But we have no such measures to propose to you. We ask you to interfere by way of correcting the moral sentiment of America.254

However, the mood of the country and of the man had changed significantly by 1860. Douglass may not have felt himself able to issue an open call for armed revolt against slavery; he was, after all, in a self-imposed exile to Great Britain because of his alleged sympathies with the Brown revolt. So, he chose another way to reveal his true sentiments to his audience, a way that still involved biblical texts, but in very different ways. If, in the earlier speeches, Jas 3:17 was a central definition, now the same text had become a euphemism. “Euphemization,” Scott writes, “is an accurate way to describe what happens to a hidden transcript when it is expressed in a power-laden situation by an actor who wishes to avoid the sanctions that a direct statement will bring.”255 Who knows how sympathetic Douglass’s audience may have been had he blatantly called for armed conflict against southern slaveholders, even in the months before the outbreak of war in a supposedly neutral country? But by raising the question of peace through the use of biblical texts, texts that culminate in the much abbreviated Jas 3:17, Douglass is able to issue a veiled threat of resistance that, in its push for purity, may not be as “peaceable” as some might like. In terms of Wimbush’s proposed schema, Douglass’s uses of Jas 3:17 in 1852 and 1860 place him in a different location along the cycle of marronage. He is no longer constructing a place, a “location” from which Douglass can make his stance against the society at large; this was the work of formation. Douglass is now engaging in a form of de[con]struction, de[con]struction of the argument for peace at any cost.256 Douglass, in the 1860 speech in particular, is using his “rhetorical and discursive strategies … to level critique against … ‘the world’,”257 a world that argues that there should be an avoidance of conflict surrounding slavery, despite the needs and suffering of the slave. For Douglass, the work turns now from the formation of a biblically based, idealized “home” to the de-formation of a world that will not give justice to people long oppressed. By signifying upon that world, in a veiled threat, Douglass at the same time is able to reconfigure Brown as a Christian freedom fighter, following in the steps of the prophets, rather than as an insane vigilante. One might argue that Douglass does not need to veil his words, that as one of the best-known, internationally respected abolitionists, he could simply call forthrightly for armed resistance. That he chose to euphemize, to couch his sentiments in the texts of the Bible, suggests his own perception of his tenuous safety in the world. For Douglass was still a black abolitionist from the

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United States. In his land of origin, his life was still at risk every time he spoke out against slavery. In his twenty years of abolitionist speaking, he had been mobbed, beaten, and faced numerous small and large personal affronts. He had declared his independence from Garrison, and as such had even made enemies among white abolitionists. The “thing” had learned to speak a little too freely, even criticizing his former mentor in print. For some, the John Brown uprising was an ideal way to silence “nigger Fred” and he barely escaped capture, trial, and almost certain execution in his flight into the UK. So, although he had constructed a moral, rhetorical “home” as the basis of his anti-slavery argument, Douglass was under no pretensions. He knew that the world around him was still a place of “darkness,” that if a white man could be hanged for leading an insurrection, he, a black man, was an easy target of mob brutality. Thus, at the brink of US Civil War, if he were to engage in the dangerous act of de-forming US society, he would have to do so euphemistically.

The Language of Formation: Further Considerations Douglass’s use of James as his primary credo is clear. Why it was the case requires more analysis. In some ways, James is an unlikely text to choose if one wishes to establish one’s Christian orthodoxy. The text is hardly central. It is not a saying attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, which, in itself, would lend significant weight to its authority.258 Nor is the text a quotation from out of the large Pauline and Deutero-Pauline corpus.259 Rather, Jas 3:17 is a single verse taken from a relatively minor epistle in the Christian canon. James’s appeal, I will argue, emerges not so much out of its particular import as a central biblical text, as in its particular socio-political, rhetorical agenda. “James,” like Douglass, is “reading darkness,” not the darkness of US slavery, but another darkness, one that James calls  . It is James’s rhetoric, a rhetoric perhaps of reform[ul]ation, but certainly built on the premise of a response to “darkness” to which Douglass responds. Just as Douglass takes to himself the power to “read” that “darkness,” to name those who violate the central tenets of “true religion,” so also does “James.” And he, like Douglass, does so by signifying upon ancient texts and by calling his audience to a redefined set of behavioral norms. In the next chapter, I will explore the ways in which James’s rhetoric functions as a re-form[ul]lation of what it means to be a Christian for his audience. Over against the “darkness” of the  James will call his community to an identity of diaspora and exile over and against the desires fostered by the . He will issue an ultimatum: align yourselves with the  or with God. It is a clear duality, for, James will argue, friendship with the  is enmity with God.260 It is my contention that “James” appeals to Douglass precisely for this reason: because, he, like Douglass, is a “darkness reader.”

Chapter 4 “Friendship with the  is Enmity with God”: “Darkness Reading” and the Epistle of James As we have seen above, Frederick Douglass used Jas 3:17 to read the “darkness of slavery.” However, the matter of why Douglass read in this way still remains. Here, a guiding hypothesis may be helpful: Douglass read James, in part, because in James’s writing (as in much of the writing of the New Testament) a “darkness reading,” a response to some “emergency” or “trauma” through a number of lenses including that of “scripture,” may be seen.261 To demonstrate this hypothesis, a first step is to consider James’s definition of, and orientation toward, “darkness.” Next, as with Douglass, I will consider James’s use of “scripture” in his “darkness reading,” what I am calling his intertextual “scripturalizing.” Further, using similar categories to those used with Douglass, I will investigate aspects of James’s rhetoric, the ways in which James signifies on “darkness.” All of this will happen over two phases: a broader investigation of the epistle as a whole; and a specific investigation of the pericope in which Jas 3:17 is located. To bring the chapter to a close, I will make some preliminary conclusions about the relationship between Douglass and the epistle of James and pose some leading questions about the nature of “reading” itself, questions that I will take up fully in Chapter 5.

Reading “Darkness,” Reading James Clearly, I cannot in such a short exercise do a thorough or exhaustive reading of the epistle of James; nor is that my aim. Such an investigation would be my aim if the epistle were the subject of this book. However, in this study of “reading darkness,” the epistle, and by extension the pericope in which Jas 3:17 is located, functions as an indirect object: that which is being used as a means to read. The direct object is “darkness”; the subject is the “darkness reader,” in this case, the exemplum Frederick Douglass. This investigation of James, then, seeks to inquire what characteristics of this epistle, and specifically of this pericope, make it an attractive “indirect object” for the subject of this project, why a nineteenth-century “darkness reader” like Frederick Douglass would choose this lens, this set of foci through which to read “darkness.”

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A Brief Overview of the Epistle We begin with issues of genre, which, in turn, can help us to determine James’s world-stance. Martin Dibelius classified James as “parenesis,” a set of disconnected, aphoristic remarks intended for community instruction.262 However, later scholars have shown that James indeed has structure and form, and the question of James’s genre has emerged.263 Some scholars still continue to follow Dibelius to an extent, classifying its genre as parenesis, but arguing for an overall structure of James.264 Other suggestions have included James as a “diatribe,” as a “two-stage work” of redacted “sermons and sayings,” and as New Testament wisdom writing.265 The strongest case for genre, however, is made by W. H. Wachob, who suggests that James is “symbouleutic or advisory rhetoric.”266 He is responding, in part, to the argument raised by L. T. Johnson that James is “a protreptic discourse in the form of a letter.”267 Wachob agrees with Johnson that James is  , a commonly found term in the ancient rhetorical sources. However, he points out that the term is typically used only to refer to positive exhortation and encouragement. He argues, instead, for the more general term, “symbouleutic,” as a way to better encompass the shifting kinds of advisory discourse in James. Both Johnson and Wachob agree that this Jamesian advice comes in the form of a letter. For, even if James does not follow the classical style, it at least begins as an epistle and was intended to be read as communication to an audience.268 To summarize, then, the genre of James is a “symbouleutic” letter, a letter of various kinds of community-focused advice. In this sense, it differs markedly from the apologiai that Frederick Douglass wrote, which were intended for self-defense and as a pointed, public critique of the status quo. Dating James is a bit more difficult. Dibelius posits that James is pseudonymous and written well into the late first or early second century.269 Some more recent influential scholarship, contra Dibelius, argues for a very early date, possibly pre-Pauline; for James the Just, brother of Jesus, as the author; and for an historical location in or around Syria-Palestine.270 A smaller number argue for a two-phase redactional process of the epistle.271 I tend to be more convinced of an earlier rather than a later date. However, neither date would negate or necessarily affirm the proposition that James is an author who sees his world as a place of emergency and trauma, that James is a “darkness reader.” “Darkness reading” is not an event, but a stance over against world. It would be as easy for a postwar, pseudonymous James to take such a stance as for a pre-war “James the Just.” James as Re-form[ul]ation At least three themes in the epistle of James suggest themselves as possible places to investigate the possibility that James may be responding to “darkness.” The first is James’s concern with the conduct of his audience; the second,



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his concern with its speech; and the third, James’s broader concern about his audience’s interactions with the  in which they find themselves, as a “diasporic” people.272 James’s discussion of community conduct includes but is not limited to status-based conflicts. Such a conflict is first intimated in 1:9, by means of a paradox: “Let   boast in his exaltation and   in his humiliation.” Initially, this statement may not appear to reference economic status.273 For while   clearly references someone of wealth, James’s use of   rather than the more common   is better translated the “the abased” rather than the “the poor” kinsperson. The immediate context of this verse, however, suggests that economics are indeed the issue at stake; for verses 10 and 11 remind the community of the transience of the wealthy, comparing wealthy people to the grasses of the field. Further, as Pedrito Maynard-Reid notes, “The term [ ] as used in the LXX corresponds to the Hebrew terms ‘ani and dal, which represent the poor, oppressed, and afflicted one.”274 Any doubts about the economic implications of the paradox in 1:9 are dispelled in Chapter 2.275 Here it becomes clear that James intends 1:9-11 to be the opening volley of a longer assault on status distinctions within his community. Jas 2:2-4 illustrates how differently members of the assembly treat “a man with a gold ring in fine clothing” and a  in filthy clothes.”276 This difference is starkly demarcated by the physical positioning of the two persons: the former, directed to sit at a place of honor; the latter, to stand or to sit beside, or more graphically, “under” ( ), the host’s footstool (2:4). In response to these actions, James reminds the audience of its own history of oppression. “Do not   oppress you, and do they not drag you into court? Do they not defame the good name that was invoked on you?”(2:6b-7).277 And yet the community favors these, while to those who have nothing they extend merely a wish of shalom – “Go in peace (), keep warm and be filled” – a wish that is all the more cruel for its lack of provision (2:6a). The issue of status returns again in Chapter 5. There,   are depicted as those who have withheld the wages of their day laborers, hoarding them for themselves (5:4). Such hoarding, James warns, has caused the harvesters to cry out to the heavens for justice. And their cry has “reached the ears of the Lord of hosts” (5:4). Status, thus, dominates James’s concern about conduct. Appropriate conduct, however, includes broader matters than the community’s inappropriate favoritism toward   Thus James’s counsel to be “doers of the word” ( ), a mark of what James later calls “pure and undefiled religion (   )” (1:22, 27). Such  is defined over and against not just classism but also inactivity and community strife. Inactivity, “faith, if it does not have works” (     ) is famously problematic for James, who pronounces such faith to be dead (2:17). Community strife, similarly, particularly strife potentially devolving to violence, also receives James’s condemnation (4:1-2). As will be seen below, the actions

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caused by “false” wisdom, jealousy and factious ambition, (  ) are also condemned as disorder and every bad action (    : 3:16). A second theme of this epistle is James’s counsel against careless speech. Angry speech (1:19) is the most frequent example of this. In Chapter 3, James berates those who bless God and yet “draw down curses” () upon each other (3:9); in Chapter 4, James condemns the quarreling () and conflicts () among community members (4:1). James’s condemnation continues in 4:11-17, where the community is charged with slander () against one another.278 And the matter recurs once more in Chapter 5, as James rebukes the community for “grumbling [] against one another” (5:9). Neither does James like speech that boasts (: 3:5). He particularly dislikes those who brag () in the midst of their bitterness and envy for one another, equating such speech with lying () against the truth (3:14). Nor is he pleased with those who boast () in their plans for the future, which James notes are entirely out of their control (4:13-16).279 James also warns against doubting speech (), which will not yield any help from God (1:5); and against taking an oath, , which may cause one to fall under condemnation (5:12). The sum of James’s counsel about speech, then, is this: “If someone seems to be religious, but does not bridle his tongue…the religion () of that one is useless” (1:26). By contrast, any person who can speak faultlessly is “perfect” or “mature,” , able to bridle the whole body (3:3). Thus, like conduct, speech is to be carefully guarded in James’s community. These two concerns point, in different ways, to James’s primary concern: the interaction between his audience and the “darkness” that James calls .280 To James, the , representative of all things earthly, is the antithesis of the divine and all things heavenly. He puts it most plainly in 4:4: Adulterers! Do you not know that the friendship of the world (   ) is enmity of God? Therefore, those who may wish to be friends of the world (   ) establish themselves as enemies of God.281

This stark antithesis begins to explain why James’s definition of  includes a requirement that believers keep themselves spotless from the world (…  ) (1:27). Further, it explains James’s sharp contrast between the wisdom  and wisdom that is “earthly” (), thus “unspiritual” () and “demonic” () (3:15, 17).282 Even James’s greeting to “the twelve tribes in the diaspora” (      ) is clarified when one posits the  as “darkness” (1:1). A “diasporic” identification need not correspond to some physical condition of exile, although it is a mnemonic for the exile of the people of Israel and Judah from their lands. Rather, to say that the community is “diasporic” (  ) is to signify its marginalization, its liminality with respect to the



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. It is comprised figuratively, if not literally, of exiles: those scattered in the  who will continue to be disparate until the coming () of the Lord (5:7). James counsels these exiles to be joyful whenever they face trials, for these trials produce patient endurance () and in time people who have attained “perfection” or “maturity” () (1:3-4). But he warns them not to think that these trials originate with God, “for God tests no one” (1:13-14). Rather, testing emerges from desires (), those same desires that stem from “friendship” () of the  (1:13; 4:2).283 For James, then, the , and the dangers of friendship with it, function as a kind of “darkness”: “a certain complex order of existence associated with marginality, liminality, exile, pain, trauma.”284 James’s world orientation is markedly different from that of Frederick Douglass. Whereas Douglass is primarily engaging in a reading of formation, a reading intended to address and to challenge the dominant, oppressive reality – chattel slavery – by constructing some new reality in its midst, James’s engagement is not primarily of his dominant culture at all. Rather, James turns his focus on his own “diasporic” community; he is engaging in re-form[ul]ation. Wimbush’s definition of re-form[ul]ation points to “heightened collective criticism, sharply cut articulations of identity, and efforts of self-making [and] self-naming” within the community of darkness readers.285 Re-form[ul]ation includes “all sorts of rhetorical and discursive strategies employed in order to level critique against the self, against [dark] culture and, of course, against ‘the world.’ ”286 In re-form[ul]ation, “darkness readers” engage themselves in the critique of their communities and may propose, in that critique, the [re]creation of patterns of living which, in their minds, will either alleviate the “darkness” or make living over against the “darkness” somewhat more bearable. Thus, “darkness readers” engaged in re-form[ul]ation may be engaged in two internal moves: the de[con]struction of ways in which the “darkness” has invaded their own communities and the [re]construction of some other mode of interaction within those same communities. Our preliminary reading of James suggests that he is engaged in such a [re]construction of his own community. A closer reading of James’s discourse may further substantiate the assertion. A survey of James reveals that, in the 108 verses of the epistle, the author uses verbs in the second person plural some 77 times, 55 of which are in the imperative mood. This suggests that James is addressing himself to a collective over which he believes himself to have some authority. In addition, James uses the word  19 times, of which uses all but four are in the plural vocative form ; and of these 15, 11 are followed by the genitive singular pronoun , a strong indication that James’s focus is on his community, his fictive kinfolk, rather than on the wider  to which neither the imperative mood and the language of kinship might be persuasive.287 Further, the imperative nature of the discourse suggests that James is claiming a role of authority,

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an ability to command the cessation of various kinds of conduct and speech, and the adoption of alternative behavioral norms within the community. Re-form[ul]ative discourse often includes rhetorics both of de[con]struction and [re]construction. It not only discredits the darkness, but also suggests another way of being, a way that steers the community out of its place of trauma, whether temporarily or permanently. This may mean a physical movement or a change in particular actions within the community. But as often, it might mean a change in the way the community views itself, its duty, and its ways of relating to the world at large. Both of these kinds of [re]constructions are also evident in the epistle of James. James calls for both a [re]construction of conduct and of self-definition in his response to the favoritism being shown to  . With regards to conduct, James not only decries the actions taken; he also proposes counter-measures, included among which are visits to the orphans and widows (1:27). James also counsels the re-form[ul]ation of the community self-perception surrounding wealth and poverty. The counsel that   is to boast in abasement and   in exaltation (1:9-11) signals a direct reversal in self-understanding, a direct contradiction of the values of  . Similarly, while James typifies the rich as those who drag members of the community into court, who blaspheme the name invoked upon them, and who withhold wages, the poor are figured as those chosen by God “as rich in faith and as heirs of the kingdom” (2:5). This directly re-form[ulate]s for the community the perception that one’s wealth is an indication of one’s favor with God, thus of one’s honor.288 Similarly, James confronts the speech of his community both through the de[con]structive work of naming and decrying the nature of their current forms of speech, and through the [re]constructive work of suggesting alternative approaches to speech. Much of this involves proscriptions against forms of speech (e.g. do not grumble against each other, do not slander, do not swear [5:9, 11, 12]). In a more prescriptive vein, James counsels his community to be slow to speak (1:19) and to sing, to pray the prayer of faith, and to confess sins one to another (5:13-20). James’s proposal for the speech and conduct of this diaspora community may be summarized in the exhortation: “Thus speak and thus act: as those about to be judged by the law of freedom” (2:12). This exhortation is more than simply a summary. It points, again, to a Jamesian reform[ul]ation, this time of the community’s way of speaking over against that of the . As noted above, existence in the  is the ultimate “darkness” for James; and friendship with the  immediately identifies one as an enemy of God. James, then, must not only call for change in community conduct and speech. Fundamentally, he must re-form[ul]ate the essence of the community with respect to the . His address of the community as “diasporic” begins some of that work (1:1). The work continues as James redefines the identity of these “diasporic” persons in relationship with the deity and with one another.



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He begins by reminding his audience that God is one (2:19), the source of wisdom () (1:5; 3:17), and every other good gift from above (1:17), and the lawgiver and judge (5:12). From God comes the royal law (2:8) or the law of freedom (1:25; 2:12; 4:6-12), to which the community is subject and by which it will be judged. James then redefines the community, these exiles “in diaspora” (  ) as God’s children (1:18), into whom the  of God has been implanted. By virtue of their re-form[ulat]ed identity – not as exiles but as children of God – it is the responsibility of James’s audience to be friends of God and thus enemies of the  (4:4). As God’s children, living in the darkness of the , James counsels the community to exhibit joy and practice perseverance in the midst of trials (1:2-3, 12; 5:7-11), not to be swayed by the transience of wealth (1:10-11) or good fortune (4:13-17), to guard themselves against infighting (3:1-4:12), and to keep one another within the community, restoring those who have wandered off as necessary (5:13-20). Above all, the community is to practice, rather than just to believe, “pure and unstained religion” (   ) (2:13ff; 4:17), which is best exemplified by care for the poor and the separation of oneself from the  (1:27). So, James is not simply engaged in the de[con]struction of the community’s current way of being with one another, its speech and its conduct. In face of the “darkness” of the , James is engaged in the re-form[ul]ation of the very identity of his community, a re-form[ul]ation that defines them over/against the  as exiles, children of God rather than friends of the world.

Intertextuality and “Scripturalizing” in James As with Douglass, so also James’s “darkness reading” is based on those texts which he holds as scripture, particularly those of the Septuagint/Hebrew Bible. In particular, James’s language most often parallels that of the Psalms, Proverbs and Sirach.289 James prefers aphorisms about the nature of God, particularly about God’s compassion (Ps 111:14; Jas 5:11), God’s opposition to arrogance (Prov 3:34; Jas 4:6), and God’s impartiality (Sir 35:12; Jas 2:1ff.). He also includes in his discourse themes about the deity’s actions: particularly asserting that God gives wisdom (Prov 2:3-6; Sir 1:10; Jas 1:5; 3:13-18); but also that God leads no one to sin (Sir 15:11-20; Jas 1:13). Further, James’s discourse parallels ancient instructions regarding personal/communal piety. Thus, he appropriates language of the bridle from Ps 32:9 (Jas 3:1-12); argues against boasting about tomorrow (Ps 39:6; Prov 27:1; Jas 4:14); cautions against wrath (Prov 15:1; Jas 1:20); and warns against hasty speech (Sir 5:13, 19; Jas 1:19). By contrast, James shows far less interest in the great narratives of the Torah or of the historical writings. When he does reference these, his tendency is to condense the minutiae of their complex narratives into anecdotes intended less to be “fair” or “academic” readings of the Torah than to be concise readings of the needs of his own situation. Thus, the saga of Abraham is condensed such

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that Abraham becomes the one who demonstrated faith through his works (Gen 15:6; 22:2-9; Jas 2:21-23). Similarly, the story of Rahab’s treachery against the people of Jericho is summarized as being an act of faith (Josh 2:1, 15; 6:17; Jas 2:25); and the drought brought on by Elijah’s prophecy and ended by Elijah’s prayer is used as a concise illustration of the power of prayer (1 Kgs 18: 42-45; Jas 5:17).290 With regard to legal writings, James shows a preference for Lev 19, choosing to write about injustices against day workers and partiality, and to quote that which he calls the “royal law”: to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev 19:13, 15, 18). Outside of these, James deals very little with the law, short of alluding to the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:1-17; Jas 2:11) and the Shema (Deut 6:4; Jas 2:19). And, while James borrows some language from the prophets (e.g.,  and  from Isa 40:6-7), he does very little else with the prophetic traditions. The scholarly indecision surrounding the dating of James makes a discussion of intertextuality between James and New Testament writings difficult.291 Still, some observations may be made regarding James’s affinity with the traditions of the canonical gospels, of the early (Pauline) letters, and of the later epistles. James has an unusual congruity with the Synoptic gospels, both in content and often in choice of vocabulary. In content, some of their common themes include the persecution and endurance of the prophets (Matt 5:12; Luke 6:23); the keeping of the whole law (Matt 5:19; Luke 16:17); the fleeting nature of riches (Matt 6:19; Luke 12:33); the generosity of God (Matt 7:7; Luke 11:9); and injunctions against slander/judging (Matt 7:1-5; Luke 6:37) and doubting (Matt 21:21; Luke 11:24). Further, they all hold in common the importance of Lev 19:18, that which James calls the “royal law” (Mark 12:28-31; Matt 22:39; Luke 10:25-28). With respect to vocabulary there are also concurrences. Both Matthew and Luke, for example, use the combination of  and  to encourage prayer (Matt 7:7; Luke 11:9-13; Jas 1:5). Further, both Matthew and Mark’s parables of the sower include the combination of ,  and  to describe the withering impact of the risen sun on seeds without root (Matt 13:6; Mark 4:6), the very words that James uses in 1:11 to describe the way in which the possessions of the rich eventually disappear. As in James’s use of the Septuagint, one notes that James and the Synoptic gospels share little in common outside of the sayings traditions. Only once does James allude to a parable, and he never includes miracle stories, birth narratives or passion narratives in his epistle.292 This preference for the sayings tradition is in line with James’s preference for the aphorisms from the Hebrew Bible/Septuagint traditions. Of particular interest is the similarity between James and other epistolary traditions. Considering the early common wisdom regarding the antagonism between James and the Pauline tradition, it is important to note that James and the undisputed letters of Paul overlap significantly in their concerns and even in



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some of their central concepts. This similarity can be seen particularly in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians. For instance, in Romans and Galatians, Paul uses the epithet  to describe himself, an epithet with which James introduces himself at the beginning of his encyclical (Rom 1:1; Gal 1:10; Jas 1:1).293 Other similarities in vocabulary include Paul’s insistence that trial ( rather than ) produces  (Rom 5:3-4; Jas 1:2-3), and that such endurance may result in a crown () that is imperishable (1 Cor 9:25; Jas 1:12); that good things will come to those who love () God (Rom 8:28; 1 Cor 2:9; 1 Cor 8:3; Jas 1:12); and that a mark of the community of faith is the fruit of righteousness (  – Phil 1:11; Jas 3:18). Paul and James also agree that some persons are “unspiritual” (: 1 Cor 2:14; Jas 3:15); that the person full of zeal () and ambition () is destructive to the community (1 Cor 3:3; 2 Cor 12:20; Gal 5:20; Jas 3:14); and, with Matthew and Deuteronomy they share a certain fondness for perfection or maturity () (1 Cor 14:20; Jas 3:2). Additionally, Paul and James share other themes, such as the impartiality of God (Rom 2:11; Jas 2), the caution that internal fighting stems from desire (Rom 7:15, 23; Gal 5:13; Jas 4), the belief that God favors the poor over the wealthy (1 Cor 1:26-28; Jas 1:9-11), and, interestingly, a conviction that if the law is to be followed, it must be adhered to in its entirety (Rom 2:13; Gal 5:3; Jas 2:8-13). This, famously, is also their point of difference, a point made much of by scholars steeped in the traditions of the Protestant Reformation.294 But, it is pointedly clear that James and Paul are much less different than previously supposed. There is no evidence to suggest that James quotes Paul. And the difference between these two authors is central to each one’s ideology – the former arguing for the importance of action as a demonstration of one’s faith; the latter arguing against said action if it is mandatory of Gentile believers. But evidence suggests that both James and Paul were about the business of building up a community of faith while enduring persecution. Each, in his own way, is interpreting his scriptures to support his community, a community that each thinks should differ in some way from the overall population – the “darkness” that both call “.”295 Even more striking than the similarities between Paul and James are those between the Jamesian discourse and the first Petrine epistle. Like James, 1 Peter urges its audience to rejoice in the face of trial (), knowing that the testing of faith (   ) has positive consequence (1 Pet 1:6, 7; 4:12-13; Jas 1:3). Each shares the theological conviction of the deity’s impartiality; each insists on the deity’s disdain of arrogance (1 Pet 1:17; 5:5; Jas 2:1; 4:6). More importantly, each engages in the re-form[ul]ative act of re-working his audience’s self-identification, and in strikingly similar ways. Both identify their audiences as people in diaspora (1 Pet 1:1; Jas 1:1), who are born through the word (1 Pet 1:23; Jas 1:18), and who are called to honorable deeds (

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) (1 Pet 2:12; Jas 3:13) and humility (1 Pet 5:6; Jas 4:10), and to resist the devil (1 Pet 5:8-9; Jas 4:7). Thus, both are identifying their groups over against some perceived “darkness”; and in so doing, both writers are resisting the power of the darkness over their communities. This does not suggest that the communities are identical, but rather that the agendas of the authors are very similar – to re-form[ul]ate the “darkness” of their world by attending to, and strengthening, the self-definition of their community – until the promised .296

Signification and Other Rhetorical Moves in James A different way to consider James’s re-form[ul]ation is to consider his rhetorical choices. For, just as Frederick Douglass employed specific rhetorical moves to persuade his audience, moves that include the establishment of ethos, the intentional structuring of rhetoric and the use of pathos, so also does James. As Chesebrough reminds us, ethos is the rhetor’s need to create and maintain a sense of good-will with the audience.297 One aspect of ethos is the establishment of some connection between the rhetor and the audience. James tries to establish that connection in his use of the language of family, “my kinsfolk” ( ) (1:2, 16, 19; 2:1, 5, 14; 3:1; 5:12, 19).298 Kinship language persists, as James calls his community the first fruits of God’s creatures (1:18), brought to birth by the very deity they worship. A sense of good-will may also be based upon a rhetor’s tendency to self-deprecation and a rhetor’s demonstration of his credentials.299 Little can be found of either of these in James’s argument. However, the opening self-referential phrase – James, of God and the lord Jesus Christ a slave ( '     '  ) (1:1) – begs some examination. The choice of the self-referent  may be a form of ethos-building self-deprecation; one sees such a usage in Luke:                  

Thus, also, you – when you might do all the things commanded to you, say “We are unprofitable slaves. We have done what we ought to do.” (Luke17:10)

Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, James, in his use of “of God…a slave” ( …) may be claiming a certain amount of authority within the community. This latter argument seems to me the more plausible. The trope “slave of God” is an old one, found in the Psalms as a referent to Moses and to David. Paul, arguably the author’s contemporary, adopts it to himself. Wachob further argues that “the ‘slave’ metaphor was similarly employed by persons who desired to present themselves as spokespersons and representatives of their master or patron.”300 If this is James’s intention, then the self-referent “slave”



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() serves an alternative means of establishing ethos, a first demonstration of James’s credentials. He, like Moses and David, and perhaps also like Paul, is a “slave of God”. The author also establishes ethos by means of his intertextual references to the history and scriptures of the community.301 Note James’s use of exempla, particularly the exempla of Abraham (2:21-23), Rahab (2:25), Elijah (5:11), and Job (5:17-18). In using these, James establishes his familiarity with the scriptures of the people and his understanding of the deity’s work in history. Cheseborough suggests that, in addition to the author’s ethos, one might examine the author’s use of rhetorical structure to make his point.302 However, unlike the cadence-filled rhythms of Douglass’s oratory, James rarely uses the cadences for emphasis. Only on one occasion does James hint at the beginning of a cadence: in 5:13-14, one hears        . Here two subjunctives followed by  are answered by two imperatives. The pattern, however, does not continue, for cadence is not a commonly used rhetorical device in James.303 The rhetorical question, however, is used frequently as James tries to get the audience “to think with” him about the “darkness” of the  that surrounds them.304 “Is it not,” James asks, “the rich who oppress you?” (2:6-7) “What good is it if one someone should claim to have faith but not have works?” (2:14) “Do you want to be shown that faith without works is useless?” (2:20) James asks twelve questions in his five chapters, punctuating his teaching, calling his community to task. These questions begin his arguments: “Who is wise among you?”(3:13) They function as warnings: “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity of God?” (4:4) At other times, he uses them to upbraid the community: “Who are you to judge your neighbor?”( 4:12) In addition to questions, James includes a few antitheses. As noted above, he describes the rich as oppressors who withhold the wages of the workers (5:4), the very antithesis of “pure and unstained religion” (   ) to which James has been calling his community (2:13ff; 4:17). Similarly, the doubting person is negatively described as “a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind” (1:6), the antithesis of the faithfulness which James expects from those within his community. However, like cadence, this is less typical of James’s rhetoric. There are, however, traces of the outlines of the jeremiad within James, that form of speech which begins with a condemnation of some societal ill that is driving a wedge between the people and their God and which ends by promising restoration should the ill be rectified.305 Consider the fourth chapter. In 4:1-10, James begins by outlining several symptomatic societal ills, among them conflicts (), disputes (), cravings (), covetousness (), murder (), and all forms of hedonism. James continues by defining the wedge issue as “friendship with the world” (   ) (4:4). The call to repentance then goes forward. The jeremiad calls the com-

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munity to repentance, lamentation, and mourning, with the promise that if such activity should take place the community would be restored to right relationship with the deity (4:7-10). One might argue the presence of a similar structure in Chapter 3. Certainly there is the identification of a problem – that of the wild and destructive nature of the tongue ( ). There is even a rhetorical move to show the extent to which that problem separates the community from the deity; this is implicit. For while there is no outright charge of enmity of God, James describes the tongue as “a world of iniquity” which “stains the whole body, sets on fire the wheel of birth, and is itself set on fire by hell” (3:6). There is, however, no call to repentance, nor a promise of restoration, as one finds in Chapter 4. However, there is a model of an alternative life which, if not the explicit call to conversion of the classic jeremiad, nevertheless suggests a way of life patterned after the “wisdom from above” ( ) (3:17) What is most striking about James, however, is how much he, like Douglass, employs the rhetoric of pathos, the rhetoric that plays on human emotion, to try to win his audience. As part of this pathos, James employs humor in the form of satire and irony. The former is evident in some of the biting commentary he makes concerning faith without works. Persons insisting on such faith are described as those who cannot remember their own reflection upon seeing it in a mirror! This one is like a man who sees his natural face in a mirror; for when he sees it, he goes away and immediately he forgets his likeness. (1:23-24)306

He directly mocks the pietistic sentiments that would send away a hungry and naked community member with the injunction “be warm and fed”: Should a brother or a sister be naked, and be lacking food for the day, and should one of you say to them – “Go in peace. Keep warm and eat well.” – and you do not give them the things necessary for the body, what is the advantage (to them)? (2:15-16)

He issues these same persons a challenge to show their faith apart from their work (2:18), going so far as to caricature their belief in the unity of God as being no better than that of demons (2:18-19). Similarly he turns his satirical wit against those who make plans for the future but cannot determine it. Come now, those who say “Today or tomorrow we will go to such-and-such a town…” You are such that do not know what will happen tomorrow, what your life [will be].307 For, you are a mist that appears for a little, and then disappears.” (4:13-14)

And yet, satire is but one aspect of James’s humor; another is irony. The ironic twist of societal expectations, in which   is counseled to boast in his exaltation and   “in his humiliation” has already been noted repeatedly (1:10). James also enjoins the community to consider trials joyful (1:2). Irony, too, underlines his description of the impact of the tongue, that source both of blessing and of cursing.



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Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree…bear olives or a grapevine figs?” (3:10-12)

“These things,” he underscores, “ought not to be” (3:10). Thus, with both satire and irony, James highlights the discord between the community’s ideals and its practice. This same discord also fuels James’s anger. It does not appear directly very often, but it is revealed twice. Once, in the midst of the argument about faith and action, James’s annoyance erupts into the reproach “oh hollow () person (2:20). But pointed anger is only really visible once in this discourse, in the single word “Adulterers!” () aimed at those who desire the world’s friendship over God’s (4:4). James’s use of pathos is also marked by his use of the descriptive aspects of pathos: personification, metaphor, and emotionally laden words. Of these, James uses personification the least. However, he does employ it in his descriptions of two of his most important ideals: faith and wisdom. Faith’s death is pronounced in the oft-quoted warning that “faith without works is dead” (2:17). Here, faith is something that can be destroyed, something animate over whose survival the believers’ actions have the ultimate power. Wisdom, by contrast, has no such apparent vulnerability. Humans have no ultimate control over its demise, for it originates from above. Further, whereas James describes earthly wisdom in the more abstract terms “unspiritual, devilish” (3:15), when he turns to his description of  , James uses the language of agency: “willing to yield, full of mercy, […] without…partiality or hypocrisy” (3:17). Such language gives wisdom a life of its own, separate from the inaction of believers. Wisdom, specifically  , becomes a more perfect partner with which the community members are to interact, and from which they are to learn. James must enjoy metaphors, given the frequency with which he uses them. Most of those which he chooses emerge from daily life. So the image of the farmer emerges, toward the end of the discourse, as an exemplum of patience (5:7); and, as noted above, the grasses of the field evoke for James the transience of the wealthy (1:11). The mists of the earth are evocative of the lives of all humans (4:14). Even the deity is treated metaphorically, both as the “father of lights,” and as the birth-mother of the community by means of the word (1:17-18). James also employs metaphors of the sea, both in his description of the person who doubts and in his description of the tongue. The former he compares to a wave of the sea tossed about on the winds (1:6); the latter to a rudder that guides a ship through those waves (3:4). The section on the tongue is a source of many of James’s metaphors, as he struggles to get his community to understand the power and destructive capabilities of this “small member” (3:5). The tongue he compares not only to a rudder, but to a horse’s bridle, to fire, poison, and even to the theological locus of all evil, hell (3:1-6).

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Words charged with emotion add to James’s discourse, as he attempts to persuade his community away from that darkness which is friendship with the . Joy and hope underlie his descriptions of those things which emerge from above: generous acts of giving, pure and undefiled religion, and works associated with the   (1:17, 27; 3:13, 17). James’s own affection for the community emerges in his repetition of   and particularly in 1:16 when he adds to that moniker . By contrast, James strikes notes of warning, when he calls the community away from deception (1:16), from earthly wisdom (3:15-16), and from hasty speech and anger (1:19-21). His descriptions of the rich, like Douglass’s descriptions of slavery, evoke the horror of their oppression and his own amazement over his community’s deference to those with money (2:1-7; 5:1-6). Even the salutation of the discourse betrays the emotional content of the letter. For James does not address the letter in Pauline fashion to a political gathering, an . Rather, evoking the history of exile inscribed in the scriptures of his own people, James addresses his letter to a political scattering, “to the twelve tribes in diaspora” (      ) (1:1). In this one clause is inscribed identity and difference, belonging and alienation. James, in opening this way, evokes for his audience a discourse to exiles, not unlike the discourses of Jeremiah and Isaiah. Such a call may well have been sympathetically heard by an audience that figured itself as outcast, whether or not this was literally the case; and certainly this motive of exile connects with James’s call for enmity with the . Like Douglass, then, James is not writing in the realm of reason and cool logic. He writes from a place of passion, a place alternatively of love, anger, ridicule, and hope. His intention, in his use of these rhetorical tools, is community reform[ul]ation. Each of these rhetorical tools used in tandem with the scriptures of the community functions to perhaps turn the community toward a particular sort of identity. And the end of this persuasion is the reform[ul]ation of the community as it continues to struggle to exist within this evil  until the promised . This desired end is further advanced by the rhetoric of signification. Here again, Bacon’s categories apply. For James uses ironic reversal and “the language of implication” to reverse the traditional hierarchy that gives the oppressor power over the oppressed.”308 And James, like later signifying writers, engages in the repetition and revision of received meanings, tropes, and traditions, particularly those that emerge from canonical texts, employing them to make his own arguments.309 James’s use of irony has already been discussed. So also, to some extent, has his use of the language of implication. For the very opening of the discourse implies a great deal about the correct self-identification of James’s community. The “diasporic” address of the epistle does not merely suggest that the community is in exile. It suggests the illegitimacy of the conquering power. For the



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author does not abandon the political designation “the twelve tribes”; rather, he implies that the community’s diasporic reality does not negate its primary designation and identification. That designation hearkens back to a community scripture, a community history, a community identification that recognizes all powers of the  as ultimately secondary to the “father of lights,” the birth-mother of the community. If in the opening of the discourse James recalls the community to an identity set apart from the , in the rest of the letter he calls the community to a rereading of its own scriptures. For example, the “royal law” is refigured in James as the Levitical command to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev 19:18b; Jas 2:8). This, a relatively minor commandment, is elevated in James to stand as the essence of the received canon. By contrast James implies the relative insignificance of the Shema in his satirical look at the trembling of demons (2:19), a major redefinition of what may have been a central scripture to his community. Similarly, James refigures major biblical characters to his own arguments. Abraham becomes the very exemplum of faith “made perfect by” or “made mature by” () his deeds. James argues Abraham, our father, was he not vindicated () by works when he brought Isaac his son to the altar? You see that faith worked with his works and by works the faith was made perfect (); and the scripture was fulfilled which says: “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness and he was called a friend of God.” (Jas 2:21-23)

With him is paired the traitor Rahab, as exempla of faith in concert with works (Jas 2:25-26). One cannot but wonder the extent to which James’s choice of this woman, rather than Deborah or Ruth, Miriam or Esther, is a signification both on faith and on resistance to the “darkness” which the  represents. As exemplary of patient suffering, James engages both Job and “the prophets,” collapsing this latter category into one overarching theme, and ignoring the issues of theodicy implied in the narrative surrounding the former character (5:10-11). After all, in James’s mind, God does not bring suffering (1:13-16). Similarly, ignoring all other traditions of Elijah, including the one in which Elijah chooses to run from the wrath of Jezebel, James chooses this biblical character as the ultimate example of the power of prayer (5:17). My argument is not that James does not know his own scripture. To the contrary, I would argue that he knows it so well that he is able to use it as “scripture,” the very essence of which usage is that willingness to refigure received texts, to signify upon them, in order to address the matters relevant to one’s contemporary reality. That James does so, very intentionally and creatively, reveals the authority which he takes upon himself to “scripturalize” for his community; and it reveals the issues with which he is struggling, as he tries to help his community understand itself differently in the face of the darkness of the . James reads “darkness” which he calls . By signifying on his

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community’s scriptures, he is able to convey the urgency with which he feels the encroaching “darkness,” an urgency which, through the use of scriptures, becomes a call to resistance through community re-form[ul]ation.

“Darkness Reading” and Jas 3:17 Frederick Douglass’s oft-quoted Jas 3:17 can be located in the symbouleutic letter and darkness reading called the epistle of James toward the end of a discussion about  and the characteristics of  .

The Contours of the Pericope: Formal and Structural Considerations 13.                 

Who is a wise and understanding person among you? Let that one show through a good manner of life his works in the gentleness of wisdom.

14.

But, if you have bitter jealousy and “factious ambition”310 in your heart, do not boast and lie against the truth.311

15.

This is not the wisdom that comes down from above but [is] earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

16.

For where there is jealousy and factious ambition there is disorder and every bad action.

17.

                  

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, reasonable, obedient, full of mercy and good fruits, not judging,312 sincere.

18.         313

And a fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

                                       



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With L. T. Johnson, I agree that the structure of this pericope resembles a diatribe.314 The integrity of these verses as a pericope can be demonstrated by examining the almost poetic rhetorical parallelism of the pericope. Verse 13 opens with a question seeking the identity of “the wise and understanding one” (   ). This person is exhorted to show by good conduct his/her works “in the gentleness of wisdom” (  ). The  in the latter phrase parallels   in the former. A second internal set of parallels occurs between the twin subjects,   and , and the twin descriptors of the way in which the actions of the wise and understanding one are to be done: “through a good manner of life”(    ) and “in the gentleness of wisdom” (  ). Similar parallelism is found in verse 14. “Bitter jealousy and ‘factious ambition’” (   ) define the two internal states that might exist. “Boast[ing]” () and “ly[ing] against the truth” (   ) point to the twin negative consequences of those internal states. Verse 16 is similar. Here “jealousy” () and “factious ambition” () constitute the first set of parallel states of being with “disorder” () and “every bad action” (  ) as the negative consequences. Verses 15 and 17 focus on the “wisdom from above” ( ). In the first of these “from above” () is contrasted with “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (  ). Verse 17 then presents a four-part virtue list in synthetic parallel structure that defines  . The first quality of   that it is “pure” (), is set apart, perhaps emphatically, from the rest of the sentence by its enumeration as . The author, then, describes three virtues of wisdom: it is “peaceable, reasonable, obedient,” tying these three virtues together by what must be intentional alliteration:   .315 The following phrase is governed by the adjective , -, - or “full.”    is “full of mercy” ( ) and, attributively, full of “good fruits” ( ). The virtue list concludes with a second alliterative phrase: ,  “not judging, sincere,” two words formed from the verb . The final verse of the pericope, 3:18, is also synthetic in its parallel structure. “Fruit” (), in the first line, is paired with “is sown” () in the second; and “peace” () is repeated in the second half of each line. This concluding verse mirrors the first verse, the subjects of which two verses, “the wise and understanding one” and “those who make peace,” frame a discussion that focuses the audience’s attention on wise “works” (3:13) and “a fruit…of righteousness” (3:18). Douglass’s Jas 3:17, then, is part of a larger argument on the nature of wisdom, an argument built on the contrasts between two extremes. Those who are full of “jealousy and factious ambition” in their hearts practice an “earthly

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wisdom” that causes “disorder and every bad action” (3:14, 16) By contrast, the   produces “mercy and good fruits” which are akin to the “fruit…of righteousness that is sown in peace.” (3:17-18).316

Re-form[ul]ation and Jas 3:13-18 Within this pericope, as in the epistle overall, James concerns himself with matters of conduct, speech, and (obliquely, here) with the community’s alliance with the .317 Speech emerges as a first concern; some in the community are boasting () that they are wise () and have understanding () (3:13).318 James opposes these claims of wisdom, which he characterizes as born of zeal and ambition, as the ambitions of braggadocios who are lying against the truth (3:13-14, 16), the same truth () through which God gave the community birth (1:18). These opponents, according to James, are lying against the truth, thus belying their origins and their divine originator, and wandering from their community (5:19). The consequence of following their leadership is “disorder and every bad act” (3:16). Theirs is not  , but is earthly () wisdom, surely an oblique reference to the darkness of the  (3:16).319 As such, it is to be discredited. In critiquing the community’s conduct, James’s earlier admonition that people should show () their faith by means of their works ( ) (2:18) is paralleled in 3:13b of this pericope. The “wise and understanding one” is to “show () by good behavior his works ( ) in the gentleness of wisdom.”320 A similar call for a change in conduct can be seen in 3:16. Here, James’s polemic that “jealousy and factious ambition” lead to “disorder and every bad act” contrasts with the picture James constructs of  . The speech of such a person is not delineated in 3:13-18; however, the conduct of   is marked by a good life full of works done in the gentleness of wisdom (3:13). Rather than engage in “earthly” wisdom,   acts according to the   (3:17). Notably, all of the practices of   counteract attempts to splinter the community. Bitter jealousy and factious ambition are replaced with peacefulness, gentleness, a willingness to yield, mercy, good fruits, impartiality, a lack of hypocrisy and a righteousness that has grown out of a clear intention to sow peace (3:17-18).321 As noted above, underlying these contrasts is a distinction between a sort of  that is  and the   . Just as in 4:4 James condemns “friendship of the world,” so also here, he makes a clear contrast between things earthly and things of the deity. The “darkness” in 3:13-18 is plain; there is another kind of wisdom attempting to insinuate itself. This is the so-called wisdom of the ambitious – which James polemicizes as “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (3:16). This “darkness” seems to be another incursion of the  in the form of false wisdom. James challenges its presence by unveiling its fallacious and insidious nature for his “diasporic” community.



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Intertextuality in Jas 3:13-18 As in the larger epistle, so too in this pericope, James’s “darkness reading” is aided by his use of the scriptures of his community. Jas 3:13-18, in particular, highlights the author’s fondness for the wisdom tradition of his community’s scriptures. Within these six verses, James makes two references to texts within the wisdom tradition and one to a prophetic text. The first of these is in 3:13, where James’s direction that “the wise and understanding one” ought to show () this wisdom through “his works in the gentleness of wisdom” (     ) directly echoes the instruction of Sir 3:17a: “Child, in gentleness ( ) do your works (  ).”322 In Sirach, this instruction is located within a discourse that counsels against excessive inquisitiveness (3:23) and for a kind of self-abasement (3:18), a self-abasement that, Ben Sira argues, glorifies God (3:20).323 By contrast, those who have a “hard heart” “are distressed at the last,” “get lost in danger,” “are oppressed by toil,” “add sin to sin,” and cannot be healed of their arrogance (3:17-31).324 It may well be James’s intent to parallel these “hard-hearted persons” with those exhibiting “jealousy and factious ambition,” arguing for the renewed infiltration of the community of the wise by the stubborn, arrogant persons seen in the days of Sirach. James’s use of   is more oblique in its reference. If one follows James’s argument, one finds that in 1:5, James counsels those who are lacking wisdom (   ) to ask God for this gift (   […] ). Later in the same chapter, James states that every good act of giving and every perfect gift is from above ( ) (1:17). Thus, for James, it would seem that wisdom is one of those gifts from above, which is a perfect gift of God. In these three verses may be heard echoes of Prov 2:6, in which the author of Proverbs avers that “the LORD gives wisdom and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding” (          ). In his use of the Proverbs and Sirach texts, James implies a context of “instruction,” the context which both texts share.325 This implication creates a natural connection between 3:13-18 and opening admonition of Chapter 3: “let not many become teachers” (3:1). James, through his intertextual “scripturalization”, is encouraging his community to remain as students, students who are wise and humble, and thus glorify and receive good gifts from God. As if to emphasize the importance of the gifts of the deity, James continues by alluding to Isa 32:17.326 Isa 32 is written as a warning to the people of Jerusalem that sieges of Jerusalem will continue “until a spirit from on high is poured out on us […]” (   ).327 Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. And the works of righteousness [   ] will be peace []. (16-17a)

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James seems to echo this apocalyptic promise of righteousness accompanied by peace in 3:18. After describing the   as a gift from the heavens, a gift full of “good fruits” ( […]  ) (3:17), James suggests that the result of this good gift is that “those making peace” (  ), that is, those who are full of wisdom, sow “a fruit of righteousness in peace” ( […]   ). Thus, in a similar pattern to that of Isaiah, James envisions a peace that is ultimately a result of a divine, or at least heavenly, gift to the community under siege.328 James, thus, is making a plea as teacher to students to remain in   (3:15). He is calling his community to identify not with the “darkness” of earthly () wisdom, from which emerges bitter jealousy and factious ambition (3:16). Rather, as in the larger epistle, James is calling his community to re-form[ul]ate the “darkness” around them by creating a self-identity over and against that darkness, a self-identity based on the  . One cannot presuppose that James’s motives for this counsel are purely altruistic. His “scripturalization” contains an intentional polemic against his opponents, opponents who may be styling themselves as   and in that capacity sowing dissension against James’s leadership. By choosing scriptures of the community as the basis of his re-form[ul]ation, James seeks to strengthen both the community allegiance to him, as well as the community’s stance against what he perceives to be a very real threat, the encroaching “darkness” of the “earthly” (), of the .

Signification, Rhetoric and Jas 3:13-18 With regard to the matter of signification in this pericope, much has already been said. According to Bacon, James’s repetition and revision of a received trope is a form of signification.329 That James does so in this pericope through his use of his community’s scriptures has been established. Two other rhetorical moves in 3:13-18 bear brief attention: James’s use of the rhetorical question, and of personification. James begins 3:13 with a question: “Who among you is wise and understanding?” The question dare not be answered. For, immediately as one stands forward to claim her wisdom or his understanding, James counsels them to do good works in meekness. The question, and James’s counsel which follows it, effectively removes any validity from anyone who claims to have the right of leadership by virtue of wisdom. This question is the beginning of James’s rhetorical move to redefine wisdom for his community, a re-form[ul]ation that removes wisdom from the realm of earthly, claimed leadership and places it in the heavenly regions () effectively out of reach of anyone of whose “wisdom” James does not approve. By so doing, James subtly reserves leadership for himself, the most humble  … James strengthens this rhetorical move by personifying  . Wisdom is no longer a metaphysical construct. For James, it actually has the



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power to act as he details in the virtue list of 3:17. Nor should we suppose that those who practice   manifest these virtues. James specifically states that it is   itself that manifests these actions. To  , James ascribes the power to be “peaceable, reasonable, obedient, full of mercy and good fruits, not judging” – all personifications. For James, writing in the tradition of the sapiential literature of his own scriptures, wisdom is not a “what” but a “who.”330 Interestingly, he does not do the same for its converse. He describes several actions taken by persons, and categorizes them as “earthly, unspiritual, demonic.” But he does not create a separate entity that stands against  . Without such an entity, the fault must necessarily fall on those persons acting in ways contrary to wisdom, persons who are, in James’s definition, jealous and ambitious, boastful and untruthful, earthly, psychic, demonic. For those so identified, their only hope for restoration is to abandon their ambitions and earthly wisdom; they must become like students and pattern themselves after the community of the wise, the community governed by the  .

James and Darkness: Preliminary Conclusions At this stage, a few conclusions may be drawn regarding James as a “darkness reader.” The rhetoric of this epistle points to a community that is being encouraged to self-identify as exiles, persons existing in the liminality of diaspora. To this community, James writes a moral discourse that encourages it to position itself over against “darkness” – the . As a pericope within this discourse, Jas 3:13-18 identifies a particular form of “darkness,” a wisdom that is “earthly,” that is causing discord within the community. In the rhetoric specific to this pericope, James calls his community to re-form[ulate] itself over against the darkness of this “earthly” wisdom by following the pattern of the  . What we have, then, are two darkness readers: Frederick Douglass and “James.” Each perceives his attendant reality as “darkness” and uses his scriptures to address that darkness in some fashion. At stake, next, is this whole matter of “reading.” What might it signify to call each of these persons a “reader,” to talk about “reading” darkness? In the next chapter, where at last I return to the matter of Douglass as Bible reader, I consider the matter of “reading” itself. I argue that reading, in particular the reading of scriptures and of the world, is a tendentious matter. For “reading” is deeply tied to the matter of “interpretation”; that is, the reader shapes what is being read, whether Bible, “darkness” or both. I will propose that Douglass and James are resisting that which each has named as “darkness” in large measure through the act of reading. Part of that resistance is each reader’s use of scriptures, scriptures that function not as “truths” in themselves but as weapons in a fight over against world, as tools in the construction of self – in short, as objects to aid in the act of resistance.

Chapter 5 Taking “An Ell”: Reading, Darkness, and Resistance A “Reading” Lesson In the first of his autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass describes his earliest education at the knee of Mrs Sophie Auld, the wife of his master, Mr Hugh Auld.331 The young Douglass had just been sent as a house slave to the family of the Aulds in the city of Baltimore. Seeing that the child could not read, Mrs Auld determined to teach him his letters. He had just begun “to spell words of three or four letters” when his master discovered the practice and immediately forbade it. Douglass would later tell the story in Narrative. To use his own words, …, he said, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master – to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger…how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.” These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. […] I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. […] From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.332

If one takes Douglass at his most literal – that the ability to decode specific signs and make meaning with them is the seat of power – one can certainly argue with him. There is an abundance of historical evidence of black men and women who, although functionally illiterate, resisted slavery in ways great and small.333 However, insofar as “reading” connotes an ability to decode psychosocial signs and realities – to begin to make meaning with those signs and to question their existence and function – then Douglass is exactly correct.334 The ability to “read,” to “read” “darkness,” is power. The last two chapters have dealt with the question of “darkness,” how it is figured and “read” by Frederick Douglass and, earlier, by James. This chapter turns its attention to a closer investigation of “reading” itself. For at stake in this project is not merely that Frederick Douglass, or James, confronted “darkness” – whether euphemized as “” or named clearly as chattel slavery.



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Of interest also is the act, the “reading” of darkness. What is the process of reading? What makes it resistant? And what might it mean to “read” darkness through scriptures? Only after these questions are answered can the question be posed: why does Frederick Douglass “read” James? In Douglass’s depiction of his first encounters with reading, he illustrated the extent to which reading – literally and psychosocially – was, for him, an act both of power and of resistance. Douglass’s commentary on his master’s reaction continued: That which to him was a great evil [i.e. a literate slave], to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn.335

Reading was a means of resisting the desires of his master and even of resisting slavery itself.336 This resistance was, at first, the mere act of reading. And it was surreptitious. He stole copybooks from his master’s son and traded food for knowledge with the neighborhood boys.337 He even rescued pages of the Bible “from the filthy street gutters of Baltimore” that he might read them.338 Reading, the physical act of decoding signs, was Douglass’s first means of negotiating and resisting the world in which he found himself. As Douglass grew, the material that he read would add to the resistance that his reading represented. Douglass’s purchase of the Columbian Orator, a collection of orations, poems and other literary works, would begin to expose him to anti-slavery rhetoric, rhetoric encoded in some of the orations considered pivotal by his peers. Consider his relationship with “Dialogue Between a Master and a Slave,” a selection from the Orator by John Aikin.339 Douglass used this piece not only to learn its arguments against slavery, but to develop and begin to express his own. The dialogue was pointedly critical of the world in which Douglass found himself. Clearly and systematically, the dialogue responded to many of the questions that troubled him about slavery and his personal condition. Should he be grateful for his master’s kind treatment of him? The dialogue’s message was strikingly clear on this point. Douglass should not be grateful for any kind treatment by his owners who, if they did treat him well, did so purely for their own advantage. Was it wrong to try to escape from slavery? Decidedly not, said the dialogue. The act of running away was justified because the slave was taking back the liberty that was legitimately his. Had Providence, in some way, ordained slavery? Again, the dialogue answered – human beings, not God, had created slavery.340

In addition to Aiken’s “Dialogue,” other texts in the Columbian Orator fueled Douglass’s growing discomfort. I met there one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches, on the subject of Catholic Emancipation, Lord Chatham’s speech on the American war, and speeches by the great William Pitt and by Fox. […] …from the speeches of Sheridan, I got a bold and powerful

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First Pure, Then Peaceable denunciation of oppression and a most brilliant vindication of the rights of man. If I ever wavered under the consideration, that the Almighty, in some way, ordained slavery, and willed my enslavement for his own glory, I wavered no longer. I had now penetrated the secret of all slavery and oppression, and had ascertained their true foundation to be in the pride, the power and the avarice of man. The dialogue and the speeches were all redolent of the principles of liberty, and poured floods of light on the nature and character of slavery.341

Sheridan’s speech was not fashioned in response to American chattel slavery. However, in his rhetoric regarding Catholic emancipation, Sheridan used metaphors of slavery “to think with.”342 In his integration of the writings anthologized in the Columbian Orator, Douglass moved from reading text to polishing the rhetoric necessary for an effective, public reading of world. At stake in Douglass’s integration of these arguments was not so much his ability to decode text as his ability to deconstruct world – the world that was chattel slavery – in a way that could be heard by his audiences. One has a sense that this was the danger to which Auld was pointing – the danger of a slave using the act of reading to begin to “read world.” And the danger was real. Douglass’s literacy was transformed from a secret act of resistance against a particular master to acts of public resistance against slavery in general. After his escape from slavery, in the relative safety of New Bedford, his public “reading” of his world would become a force with which to be reckoned. Over the next forty years, Douglass would continually “read” his world, first against the darkness of slavery and later against the darkness of racism and segregation.

“Reading” as Resistance What is it about “reading” – particularly the psychosocial act – that allows it to be used as an act of resistance? One answer is that both the physical act of reading and the psychosocial act of “reading” open the reader to know more than “to obey his master – to do what he is told to do.”343 “Reading” opens a space within a reader – and within a community – for what James C. Scott in Domination and the Arts of Resistance calls “a dissident subculture.”344 The work of this subculture is “ideological negation,” the confrontation of elaborate ideologies that justify inequality, bondage, monarchy, caste, and so on… Resistance at this level requires a more elaborate riposte, one that goes beyond fragmentary practices of resistance. Better put, perhaps, resistance to ideological domination requires a counterideology – a negation – that will effectively provide a general normative form to the host of resistant practices invented in self-defense by any subordinate group.345

“Reading” helps to provide this kind of counterideology, a counterbalance to the hegemonic ideology of the dominant culture. But the counterideology does not emerge ex nihilo. In fact, as Scott has noted, often the site of ideological



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dispute is precisely that set of societal norms upon which both the dominant and subdominant agree. So long as men and women continue to justify their conduct by reference to values, the struggle for the symbolic high ground between groups and classes will remain an integral part of any conflict over power.346

Michael Walzer makes this point more strongly in Interpretation and Social Criticism. For the purposes of this discussion, it will be helpful to follow Walzer’s argument at length. Walzer argues that the person who presents a counterideology, “the social critic,” is, in fact, a product of the dominant society. Every human society provides for its members […] standards of virtuous character, worthy performance, just social arrangements. The standards are social artifacts; they are embodied in many different forms: legal and religious texts, moral tales, epic poems, codes of behavior, ritual practices. […] We know that we do not live up to the standards that might justify us. And if we ever forget that knowledge, the social critic appears to remind us. […] But he is a serious, not a comic, figure because his principles are ones we share. They are only apparently external; they are really aspects of the same collective life that is perceived to require criticism.347

Walzer argues that society creates its own critics out of persons who accept the underlying social norms but critique the ways that they perceive society to be ignoring or even blatantly violating those norms. Social critics “apply standards that [they] share with the others to the others, [their] fellow citizens, friends and enemies.”348 This argument is of deep significance, for it suggests that to be a social critic is to affirm one’s membership, however tangential, in society. One cannot call a society to task for the violation of its norms if one does not first accept them as normative. One cannot create an effective counterideology without first being at least partially aware of the ideology against which one is fighting. Thus the social critic: He is not a detached observer, even when he looks at the society he inhabits with a fresh and skeptical eye. He is not an enemy, even when he is fiercely opposed to this or that prevailing practice or institutional arrangement. His criticism does not require either detachment or enmity, because he finds a warrant for critical engagement in the idealism, even if it is a hypocritical idealism, of the actually existing moral world.349

This connection to society even extends to those in political exile. “Political refugees,” Walzer writes, “do not escape to nowhere in particular; if they can they choose their refuge, applying standards they already know, looking for friends and allies.”350 Exiles that present counterideological arguments, Walzer argues, seek places of refuge that share the ideals (but not the practices) of the ones out of which they are exiled. Thus they shape their arguments from the ideals and norms of the very societies out of which they have been exiled. Marginal persons who stand to take their place as social critics take their right to do so, and shape their arguments, from the very societies on the margins of

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which they exist. Or to put it another way, “readers” read the society that is in front of them, in part, based on the rules and norms taught to them within that society. This is the danger of Douglass’s “reading.” In his reading of text – and more importantly of context – he learns to apply the rules and norms of western society against the horrors of the chattel slavery that it supports. And, in so doing, he “reads” himself into that very society that would marginalize him. Thus his reading has the force of social criticism, of resistance, and it is this resistance that is at the heart of “reading” darkness.

“Scriptures”: The Norms of “America” The social critic may be compared to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible tradition, argues Walzer. Like the arguments of modern social critics, “the prophetic message depends on previous messages. It is not something radically new; the prophet is not the first to find, nor does he make, the morality he expounds.”351 Rather, just as the modern social critic, the biblical prophet relies on the received traditions of his day, the “lay and popular religiosity” of his audience.352 It is the prophet’s job to “recall and repeat the tradition,” and to “interpret and revise it” to meet the current societal crisis.353 The prophet, as the social critic, does so from an ideological position firmly wedded to at least some of the common beliefs of the dominant society. Another way to phrase this is that the prophet, as “reader,” reads the society through the “scriptures” – written and oral – of the people. For Douglass to be a social critic, this must be the criterion – that he is “reading” the society through its own traditions, including “scriptures.” This question necessarily follows: if the social critic – the prophet – is relying on common norms, on lay religion, on “scriptures,” what are those “scriptures” and what does it mean to “read” them? To begin to answer this question, a point must be reiterated: “scripture” is not a term that solely pertains to the ancient documents of the western Protestant or Catholic canon. Wilfred Cantwell Smith asserts scripture is a human activity. …That the text is preserved, is noticed, has to be explained first; it is the prior fact. No doubt their scripture to a mighty degree makes a people what they are. Yet one must not lose sight of the point that it is the people who make it, keep making it, scripture.354

A corollary to this follows. “There is no ontology of scripture.”355 No one document or collection of documents, regardless of how revered, is ontologically scriptural. For if “scripture” is adverbial, describing an activity, an engagement between people and a text, then any text may be treated “scripturally,” whether or not it is recognized as such in common parlance. There is a third element in the “scriptural” relationship: that of “the world.”356 Smith speaks of the “scriptural” relationship as the “relation between a people and the universe, in the light of their perception of a given text.”357 Here, Smith



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gets into a discussion of transcendence and the extent to which “scripture” encodes, even functions as, a “reduction” of the experienced transcendence of those who read it.358 Perhaps more helpful to this discussion is the fact that the “scriptural” relationship juxtaposes some transcendent ideal with the realities of lived experience. Over against the mundane world of sorrow, of self-interest and its loneliness, of injustice and failure, scriptures have played a role of enabling human beings to be aware of and indeed to live in relation to the other dimension of reality that characterizes our humanity by being somehow near and within our life yet also somehow far from it.359

This, most of all, captures the lived experiences of “readers” in/of “darkness.” In the midst of the trauma of their world, they focused their attentions on a transcendent, idealized reality. Thus Charles Long writes: [Black people] learned to know another reality, a reality not created or given by the man. This otherness is expressed in the black spirituals as God, or as a mode of perception of the world which is not under the judgment of the oppressor. It is equally expressed in the practical and concrete proposals that speak of another place. […] This sense of otherness, or the sense of the other which has arisen out of black experience is equally present when the black thinks of America as free society; for if blacks are to be free persons in American society, this society will indeed have to be a radically different society; it will indeed be an-other society.360

The act of “scripturalizing” involves the use of some rhetoric – spoken or written or otherwise distributed – as a source of an-other world, the source of the vision of what “ought” to be. “Scriptures” are those “texts” with which a “reader” enters into relationship to understand and to help to shape that reader’s relationship with the world. The relationship can, but need not, include the “reading” of that world as “darkness.” However, for those who experience the world as “darkness,” “scriptures” become a way to read the world: to critique its current declension, to suggest “an-other” possibility that arises out of the commonly held scripture, and to re-define self in light of the critique and the proposed “other” world.361 For Frederick Douglass, “scriptures” cannot simply refer to the Protestant canon commonly called the Bible. For as often as Douglass quotes the texts of the Bible, he is also in relationship with the “texts” that underlie the “myth” of “America.” From these he draws an image of “an-other” place, one which lives up to the ideals inscribed within these American “scriptures.”362 In speaking about these texts as part of a “myth,” I am speaking of them as representative of a collective of people. For myth represents …the voice not of individuals but of entire peoples; society creates myth and myth speaks to society. […] To contact many minds at once, myth must employ a semiotic repertoire that time and usage have hallowed and rendered widely accessible, so a mythology is a composition of cultural metaphors.363

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The “myth” of America consists of those cultural metaphors, inscribed in particular rhetorics – oral and written. And this myth transcends the particularities of the history of the nation. As David Howard-Pitney describes it: On one level, “America” refers to a particular society and polity; on another, it represents a mythical space of unlimited human potential. It is the setting in which humanity’s dreams can and will be finally realized.364

Ralph H. Gabriel suggests three “Doctrines of Democratic Faith”365 that together comprise this American “myth.” The first is that of “natural law.”366 Drawn from the belief that reason was a natural form of divine revelation, this first doctrine held that free individuals with consciences filled by God – consciences that are persuaded by nature (i.e. reason) and God – will seek the good together. They will build their world based on their visions of the good on that sacred ground, not by force, but by choice. In the terms of Locke’s own religion, they will “aim for the Kingdom of God.”367

Out of this first doctrine emerged the familiar formula “life, liberty and property,” which Jefferson would modify to become “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”368 The second doctrine, that of individual liberty and, in particular, of freedom of conscience, emerged naturally from the first.369 If individuals were going to be faithful followers of the pre-existent natural law, they would have to be allowed to follow their consciences freely, without restrictions by either a national church or a theistic state. This second doctrine was of such importance that Barbara McGraw, in Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, asserts that “freedom of conscience generally was deemed by those of the founding generation to be the core civil right.”370 The third doctrine was that of “the mission of America.”371 Liberty, according to a widely accepted version of American mythology of the early nineteenth century, had been established by Deity in an empty western continent so that, freed from the burden of European tradition, it might flourish and become an inspiration to the world.372

This is the natural outgrowth of the Puritan rhetoric of “a City on a Hill.”373 “America” was to be that “‘City on a Hill,’ a shining example of socioreligious perfection lighting the way for the coming of God’s earthly kingdom.”374 One of the central “scriptures” of this “myth” of America was the Declaration of Independence, that document that specified the rationale for the colonial revolt against England in 1776. Although it says nothing of the “mission of America,” the Declaration contains within it some of the best-known rhetoric surrounding the doctrines of “natural law” and “individual liberty.” Thomas Jefferson wrote that, in light of the revolt, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” dictated the need for the document. He argued that this “Creator” had endowed all “men” with the “inalienable” rights aforementioned, i.e. “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”375



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Frederick Douglass engages these words, and the ideals that they inscribe, “scripturally.” That is, he uses the words and constructs of the Declaration of Independence to help him to “read” the world in which he was living, and to help him to imagine “an-other” “America.” Not surprisingly, as a slave, Douglass was particularly drawn to that “core civil right,” individual liberty.376 In “Slavery Corrupts American Society and Religion,” for instance, he “reads” “America” eloquently. …America had started on the highest, noblest principle that ever actuated a nation – the principle of universal freedom […]. Yes, she started and proclaimed to the world that all mankind were created freeborn; and for the maintenance of that principle she solemnly swore before high Heaven that she would vindicate and uphold it by force, at expense, at the sacrifice of life, and everything that was dear to honour and integrity.377

But, argued Douglass, the great promise of “America,” its mission, had become corrupted by slavery. Thus, as he said to an audience in Leeds, I have come to call your attention to America, where there are 3,000,000 of persons in slavery – 3,000,000 of human beings liable to be put on the auctioneer’s block and sold as beasts and swine – and this in a nation which declares that all men are equal! […] This, too, exists under the very droppings of that sanctuary which professes to preach liberty to the captive, to open her arms and succour those in bonds.378

The power of Douglass’s “reading” was in part his facility in “reading” the American “myth.” Relying on the document that had become a sort of national “scripture,” Douglass named the mythic origins of the nation. And he highlighted the ways in which America had strayed from the “mission” of America: as he “read” it, “to preach liberty to the captive, to open her arms and succour those in bonds.”379 In so doing, he took the role of Walzer’s social critic: to “recall and repeat the tradition,” and to “interpret and revise it” to meet the current societal crisis.380

Evangelical Christianity and the Myth of America “The tradition” that Douglass was “recalling and repeating” was further bolstered by the power and influence of evangelical Christianity, especially in the wake of the Second Great Awakening. Within this movement, the doctrines of America – natural law, freedom of conscience, and the mission of “America” – were filtered through the lens of “enthusiastic” Christianity.381 In Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, Barbara McGraw contends that natural law and freedom of conscience …are all derived from this initial theological premise: There is God who created human beings free and equal. […] God communicates the “natural law” through revelation, insight, and nature, including reason, to individuals. […] God is not coercive. However [human beings] still owe a duty to their Creator to be and do in accordance with the natural law. The only legitimate judge, other than God, as

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The Second Great Awakening took this notion of the “revelation of natural law” and the “freedom of conscience,” and through them argued for the rights of individuals to interpret the Bible as each saw fit. As noted above in Chapter 2, “Individuals found meaning, guidance, and sometimes prophetic power through this awakening. […] Each believer was ultimately free to create a new theology and a new church.”383 Freedom of biblical interpretation was joined by millenarian theology, a form of theology that encapsulated the hope of a transcendent reconstruction of the contemporary world into “an-other” world in which all wars, hate, and oppression would cease.384 In that day, “America,” the hope of the world, would have saved the world “from the governance of Satan” and the reign of Christ would commence.385 Through these theological lenses, Americans read the Bible as “scripture.” In their search for “an-other” world, Americans looked to the Bible for support of their faith, a faith that through natural law, and by freedom of conscience, God would intervene and transform America into what it was destined to be, that “city on a hill” of Puritanic imagination. Douglass’s quoting of the Bible, then, was not simply an act of piety, any more than Douglass’s quoting of the Declaration of Independence was simply an act of patriotism. Rather, in his “reading” of the Bible as “scripture,” Douglass stood in fundamental agreement with the basic theological premises that undergirded the “myth” of “America.” And it was precisely because Douglass knew and accepted these theological premises that he was able so effectively to use the jeremiad. The jeremiad drew heavily on the “myth of America,” in that, as noted previously, it cited “the promise [of America]”; critiqued the “present declension, or retrogression from the promise”; and resolved its critique by means of “prophecy that society will shortly complete its mission and redeem the promise.”386 This “promise” of “America” and the return to the “mission” of America were aspects of the basic “myth” of America. Freedom of conscience in concert with the belief in divine revelation of natural law gave Douglass the “right” to critique the present declension for what he “read” as a “retrogression from the promise,” i.e., slavery.387 And he did. Douglass argued that slavery fundamentally deprived persons of the freedom of conscience and the right to follow natural law necessary for religious and moral behavior, not only for citizenship: God has given [the slave] an intellect – the slaveholder declares it shall not be cultivated. If his moral perception leads him in a course contrary to his value as property, the slave holder declares he shall not exercise it. […] If any of these three millions find for themselves companions, and prove themselves honest, upright, virtuous persons to each other, yet in these cases – few as I am bound to confess they are – the virtuous live in constant apprehension of being torn asunder by the merciless men-stealers that claim them as their property.388



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And Douglass argued that, contrary to its self-proclaimed mission – to “welcome those who are stricken by the storms of despotism” – “Christian America will aid the tyrant in catching his victim,” when that victim is a runaway slave.389 America was no more upright theologically than it was philosophically consistent. It is no small matter that the jeremiad is patterned along the lines of biblical rhetoric, for it functions as an example of the Bible being used as “scripture,” through which lens the world is to be “read.” While the prophetic texts are not themselves quoted, their world-orientation is directly mimicked: a world orientation that critiques the contemporary world as “darkness” and calls the people back to the ideals of their tradition. Like the prophet in Walzer’s argument, Douglass takes a rhetorical form recognized within US society – one drawn first from the religiosity of the Puritans, and ultimately from the Bible, and he uses that “scriptural” rhetorical form as a means to evaluate “America” on the matter of slavery, to find it wanting, and to call it back to its “promise”: a promise of liberty inscribed into its foundational myth. What this demonstrates is that Douglass’s “reading” of Bible is not an objective act separate from the world in which he lives. Rather Douglass is a “social critic” as described by Walzer – he is using the ideals of the very society out of which he is exiled, through which ideals he is reading “scriptures,” to shape his anti-slavery rhetoric.

“Taking an Ell”: “Reading” and “Darkness” Then, it was dangerous that Douglass could “read.” For from his location, a location of slavery, Douglass surely “read America” far differently than he would as an owner of slaves. And in his “reading” through the Bible and other “scriptures,” Douglass became one of a number of voices struggling for the “right” reading of US slavery, each one taking the “right” to read. To understand the proslavery struggle to read US slavery, a prior understanding must first be reached. For the proslavery proponents, “darkness” – the place of emergency and trauma – was not slavery. “Darkness” was the potential emancipation of millions of slaves. This emancipation was fundamentally seen as dangerous. In an 1820 letter to John Holmes, Thomas Jefferson described the matter most poignantly: …we have, as it were, the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.390

“Self-preservation” was the crux of the “darkness” for the proslavery lobby. As Henry Bidleman Bascom, a Southern Methodist slaveholder wrote: “We say to our common country, free us of the danger and we consent to the removal of the evil.”391 Douglass knew this was the perceived threat; it was a threat heightened by the Haitian uprising. “Slaveholders,” he noted,

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exclaim – “The South are surrounded by a dangerous population, degraded, stupid savages, and if they could but entertain the idea that immediate, unconditional death would not be their portion, they would rise at once and enact the St. Domingo tragedy.”392

It was out of this perceived need for “self-preservation” that slaveholders set out to find “scriptural” injunctions against abolitionism. They found them; slavery was, after all, a common ancient practice. The Bible, as “scripture” – in this case as a lens through which to understand the practice of slavery – was constantly quoted in justification of its practices. A favorite story of Douglass in illustration of this was of a whipping that he witnessed. My own master was a Methodist class leader, […] and he bared the neck of a young woman, in my presence, and cut her with a cow skin. He then went away, and when he returned to complete the castigation, he quoted the passage, “He that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.”393

More typical were his depictions of the use of the Bible to justify slavery to the slaves and to themselves. For a long time when I was a slave, I was led to think from hearing such passages as “servants obey, &c.” that if I dared to escape, the wrath of God would follow me. All are willing to acknowledge the right to be free; but after this acknowledgement, the good man goes to the Bible and says, “After all, I see some difficulty about this thing. You know, after the deluge, there was Shem, Ham, and Japhet; and you know that Ham was black and had a curse put upon him; and I know not but it would be an attempt to thwart the purposes of Jehovah, if these men were set at liberty.”394

In addition to their “scriptural” dependence on biblical texts, slavery proponents argued in the theology of the Calvinists that, contrary to the evangelical notions of freedom of conscience, humankind was in a “fallen state,” and slaves much more so. This state could not be rectified by the ideals of Enlightenment philosophy, but would only be reversed at the millennium of Christ. Around the “darkness” of emancipation, then, grew what Douglas Ambrose calls a rhetoric “of stations and relations.” Its proponents argued that the abolition of slavery would mark the abolition of “a divinely established institution by which the most depraved and dangerous individuals and groups could be brought under the influence of civilization and religion.”395 The antislavery groups also claimed divine sanction for their position. In The War against Proslavery Religion, John R. McKivigan notes: …antislavery militants accused religious institutions of thwarting rather than promoting God’s will. As early as 1834, abolitionists warned “that the American Church is stained with the blood of ‘the souls of the poor innocents,’ and holds the keys of the great prison of oppression; and that she can never go forth to millennial triumph until she shall wash her hands from blood – open the prison door – and let the oppressed go free.” Modeling themselves on the biblical prophets, abolitionists



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began a campaign to save the churches from divine retribution by rousing them from their toleration of the “sum of all villainies.”396

Note the echoes of the familiar “myth” of America: the hope of “millennial triumph,” the persistence of divine justice, the call to liberty. For abolitionists, slavery itself was the “darkness,” a “darkness” that would result in divine retribution because it ran counter to “God’s will.”397 To “read” this darkness, they would also turn to the Bible as “scripture.” However, this was no easy task, as abolitionism was a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of ideas. They would succeed in “reading” the “darkness” of slavery through “scripture,” but in their case “scripture” would refer to the whole tenor and meaning of the Gospel, which breathed a spirit of kindness and love. How could the proposition that man can hold property in man be made to square with a religion founded on the Sermon on the Mount? […] The Golden Rule and the second great commandment were characterized by abolitionists as the summary expression of all the particular precepts enjoined in the New Testament. The law here inculcated, they said, does not mean merely that we should do to our slaves as we would be done by if we were slaves, as the pro-slavery men argue. No, the rule goes deeper. We must test the relation of master and slave itself by it and see if that relation is consistent with the Saviour’s maxim.398

What made these texts useful as “scriptures” for abolitionists was not their content, as it was for the proslavery faction. Rather, abolitionists responded to the world-orientation of these texts: They did not specifically contain commandments that required the emancipation of slaves, but they reflected a stance toward the world, even a vision of “an-other” world, that could not, the abolitionists argued, support slavery. Abolitionists would also enlist other “scriptures,” the “scriptures” of the myth of America. In the face of the argument of human depravity and the divinely sanctioned institution of slavery, they put forward arguments that “relied heavily on Enlightenment concepts of natural law, inalienable rights, and the innate goodness of all humans.”399 The point of contention for these two camps was not the “scripturality” of the Bible. That the Bible could, and should, be used as “scripture” was presumed. Nor, finally, was the point of contention the actual words in the texts of the Bible; this was not, in the crudest sense, a matter of correct translation. Rather, at the heart of the matter was “reading” of “darkness” – its definition and the ways in which it was to be addressed. The Bible was secondary to the main point of contention, a tool in the struggle to read “darkness,” i.e. world. And only some of the texts of the Bible would be used as “scripture”: those that mirrored in word or in orientation the “other world” sought by the “reader.” Douglass was an abolitionist and a fugitive slave. As such, he read “slavery” as “darkness.” To strengthen his reading, he relied heavily on the American “myth” born in the Enlightenment, especially as it was transformed in evangelical Christianity. And he used the Bible as a “scriptural” source, only insofar as it supported his “reading.” Douglass would insist upon the “rightness” of

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his “reading,” and upon his “right to read.” His “reading” of America was legitimated by its consonance with the common “lay religion,” the “myth” of America, and by its emergence out of his own lived experience. “Scriptures” – biblical and civil – were only one of the means of that legitimation. And thus, for Hugh Auld and other slaveowners, Douglass’s reading was dangerous. For Douglass used his ability to “read” to “read” “darkness,” filtering his analysis through the lens of “scriptures” over against the darkness of slavery, the very slavery that would have stopped him from “reading” at all. Perhaps, this is the “ell” that Douglass takes: the audacity to “read America,” and to pronounce it a place of “darkness” with regards to chattel slavery. Douglass may be understood as “taking an ell” insofar as he is a counterideological “reader,” a social critic, taking “liberty” with, and from, the “scriptures” of America.

Why did Douglass “Read” James? With this understanding of how it is that the Bible functioned as “scripture” in the “reading” of “darkness,” it is now possible to return to the main question – why did Frederick Douglass “read” James? The answer cannot be that James wrote strong words opposing ancient slavery. Indeed the word slave, , only occurs once in James, as a self-descriptor (1:1).400 Rather, Douglass responded to the world-orientation of James, to a depiction in James of “an-other” world that, Douglass argued, could not support the “darkness” of chattel slavery. In earlier chapters, the world-orientations of Douglass’s speeches and of the epistle of James have been considered. Douglass focused on rhetorics of “formation” – of proposing an alternative “world” to the “darkness” of slavery. James, by contrast, turned his rhetorical attention to the self-identity of the community, “reform[ulat]ing” it over against the “darkness” of the . Despite the differences in location, emphasis, and definition of “darkness,” however, both Frederick Douglass and James “read” in ways that reflected a similar attitude toward their world and a parallel set of hopes for “an-other” world. Three examples of these parallels will serve to illustrate this: the parallel rhetorics of exile, “an-other” world, and the re-definition of self-identity.401 James begins his discourse by addressing an audience as “the twelve tribes in the diaspora” (1:1). “Diaspora” carries with it some history, a history of Babylonian exile. Luke Timothy Johnson writes: Translating a number of Hebrew verbs, the Greek diaspeirein (“scatter”) is used by the LXX for the dispersal of Israel by the Lord among the nations as a punishment …, only to be gathered back from the places they were scattered…. The noun form diaspora likewise translates a number of different Hebrew words – often ones denoting punishment or a tribulation… It can, therefore, refer both to the population dispersed […] and to the geographical territories where they were scattered […]. In Acts, the verb diaspeirein is used for the scattering of the church beyond Jerusalem […]. And in 1 Peter 1:1, the substantive diaspora is used for the readers of that letter located throughout Asia Minor.402



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“Diaspora” is tied to the story of a people. It calls to mind a time in which the people were not under their own rule, but were subject to powers. In its use, James denies the legitimate authority of the place of dispersion. This metaphor, combined with that of the “twelve tribes,” is one way in which James “recalls and repeats the tradition,” and “interprets and revises it” to meet the current societal crisis.403 For the “twelve tribes” designation makes sense only within the framework of one specific set of texts and one shared story in the Mediterranean world. Readers who accept their status as recipients of this letter…accept also this designation and a place within that symbolic world.404

Readers who accept James’s designation of them as tribes in diaspora always already reject the dominant “world” as one to which they have little, if any, fealty. As exiles, their loyalty is to “an-other” world. James’s description of a community in exile is consonant with other such descriptions found in the New Testament. In 1 Peter, for example, the community is referred to as “aliens and exiles” (  ) and persons “of the Dispersion” () (1:1; 2:11). Hebrews also contains this trope, recalling that ancestors in the encomium on faith self-identified as: …strangers and foreigners (  ) on the earth. For, those who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. […] And now, they aspire to a better one, that is, a heavenly one. (Heb 11:13b-14,16a)405

The theme also appears in Paul. In Phil 3:20, for instance, Paul exhorts his audience that “our citizenship is in heaven” (      ), which is to say, not in the current declension. Even the Johannine Jesus uses this rhetoric of exile. In the trial narrative before Pontius Pilate, John’s Jesus announces his exilic status in the face of Roman domination when he claims “My kingdom is not of this world” (         ) (18:36).406 Whether or not these writers saw themselves as physically in diaspora, certainly psychosocially they expressed a sense of exile from “world.” The rhetoric of exile, of not belonging to the “world” in which one is located, is also one that Frederick Douglass used to describe his orientation to the “darkness” of American slavery. He was a physical exile – in his earliest extant speeches, he confirmed that he was in the United Kingdom, “in order to avoid the scent of the bloodhounds of America.”407 But Douglass also understood his exile to be psychosocial, and he figured himself as a man without a country. …the Rev. Mr. Norris, recommended that I be hung as a traitor. Two things are necessary to make a traitor. One is, he shall have a country. I believe if I had a country, I should be a patriot. […] How can I love a country where the blood of my own blood, the flesh of my own flesh, is now toiling under the lash?408

Douglass was an exile in, and from, the land of his birth insofar as he refused to accept the US definition of what his or his people’s station ought to be.

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Physically, he was forced to relocate: first as a fugitive slave from the system of chattel slavery in place in his natal state, Maryland; and later, after the publication of his first autobiography, for safety’s sake, as “it was thought better for to get me out of the way lest my master might use some stratagem to get me back into his clutches.”409 And when he returned, his manumission paid, he still maintained his lack of fealty to the dominant power as long as the institution of slavery continued, daring to question the status quo with questions such as “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass’s rhetoric reflected his lived reality; its orientation placed Douglass in the same rhetorical trajectory as James and several other biblical writers. In addition to the trope of exile, both James and Douglass imagine “an-other” world, one very different from the status quo. In 5:7, James describes the manifestation of that “other” world as the “parousia of the Lord” (   ). This “other world” originates , from which “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift” comes (        ), the source of the  that is “first pure, then peaceable” (…   ) (1:17; 3:17). The  represents a time when the present “darkness” will be overcome and a new reality will emerge, one that favors James’s understanding of the proper ordering of the world, an ordering characterized by “friendship” () with God (4:4). So, in place of the current  things that are “earthly” () (3:15), James envisions hope of the  that like all good things, originates “.” James’s use of  is typical within the New Testament. Luke Timothy Johnson notes that the “predominant use” of the term is in New Testament literature with reference to the future coming of Jesus (1 Cor 15:23; 2 Pet 3:4, 12; 1 John 2:28) as Son of Man (Matt 24:3, 27, 37, 39), or, above all, as ‘Lord’ (kyrios): 1 Thess 2:19; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23; 2 Thess 2:1; 2 Pet 1:16.410

Such a use of  is not found in LXX material, and is only occasionally found in intertestamental literature.411 But rhetoric of  is not the only way that New Testament authors describe “an-other” world. In Matt 16:18, the  is that world against which “the gates of Hades will not prevail” (    ). At the beginning of Luke (1:78), Zechariah describes it as “the dawn from on high,” (  ). In his epistle to the Romans (8:18), Paul describes such “an-other” world as “the coming glory about to be revealed to us” (     ). And in the canonical Apocalypse (21:1), the “other” world is called “a new heaven and a new earth” (    ).412 And, although the LXX does not use the term , a parallel sentiment is found in the prophetic rhetoric about the Yom YHWH.413



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For Douglass, the “other” world was the “religion” that he loved, that was “first pure, then peaceable.”414 Douglass used James to construct, rhetorically, this “other world” as the antithesis of the “slave-holding, the woman-whipping, the mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that exists in the southern states of America.”415 Certainly the language of James was not the only language Douglass uses to describe that “other” world. In “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland,” he describes that “religion” as one “that sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of him that has fallen among the thieves”; and “which makes its followers do unto others as they themselves would be done by.”416 For Douglass, the specific biblical text is not as important as how that text can be used, “scripturally,” to construct a vision of, and mandate for, a slavery-free world. Douglass and James also engage in the re-definition of identity of self and of community over against the “darkness” of the world. In Chapter 3, I demonstrated how James exhorts his community to see themselves as a people of a divine genesis (1:18), a community of “truth” and of “wisdom” (5:19; 3:13-17). James’s audience was not to befriend the  (4:4) with its stance of enmity toward the community progenitor – the “father of lights” (1:17-18). Rather, the community was to be marked by its social ethics and by its endurance until the fulfillment of the promise of the “other world,” the promised  (5:7). As in the previous examples, so also here, James’s re-definition of community is not unique within the New Testament corpus. In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (5:13-14), the “disciples” who are being taught (5:1) are defined over against the world. “You are,” says Matthew’s Jesus, “the salt of the earth. […] You are the light of the world” (      […]      ). Paul’s metaphors are familial; to the Romans (8:1617a), he writes “we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (              ). In the first Petrine epistle (2:9), the metaphor becomes one of an alternative national identity; the audience is described as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (       ). But one needs to look for such pointed examples; even the common use of  as a means of addressing the nascent Christian communities in the epistolary tradition marked a shift in identification toward a new rhetoric of “fictive kinship,” an identification over against more mundane societal bonds of kinship.417 Douglass’s rhetorics of re-form[ul]ation were two-fold. His rhetorics renamed the slave as “neighbor” and as “the one who fell among the thieves.”418 This served two purposes. It stood in opposition to the dominant fear that slaves were dangerous brutes, to be controlled lest they rise up and kill their owners. Further, Douglass’s use of this language, with its reference to texts that were commonly held as “scripture,” forced his audience to read itself into the biblical narratives. In the latter case, the Good Samaritan, it intimated the question: Will

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you “go and do likewise” as the biblical text commands? Will you succor the slave who has fallen among thieves? Douglass also used his rhetoric to redefine himself. “Persecuted, hunted, and outraged in America, I have come to England, and behold the change! The chattel becomes a man. I breathe, and I am free.”419 As important as the former re-form[ul]ation was, this latter was equally important. Over against the dominant world that defined him as the stolen property of his master, Douglass declared himself free, and more than that, a man, a declaration that struck at the very essence of what it meant to be a slave. Orlando Patterson notes “because the slave had no socially recognized existence outside of his master, he became a social non-person.”420 In the face of the “darkness” of slavery that declared him and his people “non-persons,” Douglass declared his personhood. He would similarly declare the personhood of those still held in slavery. These were not brute, dangerous beasts to be feared. In Douglass’s rhetoric, they became men and women, 3,000,000 of persons in slavery – 3,000,000 of human beings liable to be put on the auctioneer’s block and sold as beasts and swine – and this in a nation which declares that all men are equal! […] This foul blot of American slavery calls upon you, cries aloud to you, demands of you, in the name of that God whom you have promised to serve […] to render your assistance and co-operation in bringing about the emancipation of these 3,000,000 of your fellow-men.421

Douglass was doing more than illustrating the horrors of slavery; he was putting the lie to the “darkness” that insisted on the subhuman status of slaves, calling into question their very personhood. Douglass used James, then, not merely for the metaphors that James employs. For, as noted above, James does not address the matter of manumission. Rather, in James, and in other biblical writings, Douglass found, and “scripturalized,” a world-orientation that questioned the status quo, problematizing it as “darkness.” Through texts with this specific orientation, an orientation over against the world, Douglass “read” slavery; as Walzer put it, he drew upon the lay religion of the people, the “scriptures” that he and his audiences held in common, and used them to “recall and repeat the tradition,” and to “interpret and revise it” to meet the current societal crisis.422 Biblical texts used as “scriptures” – including, but importantly not exclusive to James – became a lens through which Douglass “read” “darkness.” This was the “ell” that Douglass took. He dared to turn the “scriptures” of the dominant society against it, “reading” through the ancient resistance to hegemony his right to do the same. In so doing, he reclaimed his personhood, and with it his power: the power to define his location in relationship to society; and the power to call into existence “an-other” world over against their present darkness. The Bible, or rather specific texts and rhetorics from within the Bible, were tools in this reclamation, but only tools. At the heart of the reclamation was a man who refused not “to read.”



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The original truism applies: reading darkness is far less about reading the Bible in some systematic, “scientistic” way, and far more about readers who read the Bible so that they can “read,” and respond to their own contemporary darkness.423 When a “scripture” is used to “de-form” a darkness situation, it is not because of some ontological “scripturality” in a text, but rather because inscribed in the text is a fundamental critique of world. “Scriptures” are used to formulate and reform[ulate] for precisely this reason as well: that the chosen passage acts as a metaphor, even at times a blueprint for what must be done to build “an-other” world. These sorts of critiques, rhetorics over against world: they are, finally, why Douglass “read” James.

Chapter 6 “Reading Darkness” and “Biblical Studies” The oppressed must deal with both the fictive truth of their status as expressed by the oppressors, that is, their second creation, and the discovery of their own autonomy and truth – their first creation. The locus for this structure is the mythic consciousness which dehistoricizes the relationship for the sake of creating a new form of humanity – a form of humanity that is no longer based on the master-slave dialectic. The utopian and eschatological dimensions of the religions of the oppressed stem from this modality.424

So writes Charles Long in Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion. “Darkness readers” are reading over against history. “Darkness readers,” as Kimberly Benston puts it, are “de-naturalizing ‘history’ as an essential teleological display of a pre-constituted being-as-blackness.”425 Underlying both of their descriptions is a basic problematizing of how “history” is told, who gets to do the telling, and what kind of history is to be put in its place. And behind that problematizing is a stance over against the world as it is currently constituted, a world in which the history written presumes the on-going anomy of “darkness.” “Darkness readers” take their stance over against that world-orientation, that which David Howard-Pitney calls the “present declension.”426 “Reading darkness” represents the readers’ response, a decision to remove the self from that other-defined status, to create a new “story,” one in which the “darkness” cannot exist, and to claim a new identity, one chosen rather than given. Wimbush has called these decisions “de-formation,” “formation,” and “re-formulation.”427 For “darkness readers,” the Bible is not the way to accomplish this ideological separation from the dominant society, because not all of the Bible can be accepted by “darkness readers” as “scripture.” However, preserved in the texts of the Bible are the voices of those who question their own “present declension.”428 Insofar as “darkness readers” enter into relationship with some of these, contra-world texts – as “scriptures” – they may use them to assist in the “reading” of “darkness.” The Bible, then, can serve as a locus for rhetorics about “an-other” world, as “a language world within which those violently cut off from their home could speak.”429 For “darkness readers,” the Bible can serve as a way to assist in “reading darkness.” But it cannot be stated too strongly: for “darkness readers,” the “reading” of “darkness” necessarily precedes the reading of Bible.



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This much has been established in the previous four chapters. What remains to be considered is this: what might be the implications of “reading darkness” for a different kind of “biblical studies?” What might it mean for “biblical studies” to privilege “darkness readers” in their critique of world, to hear them on the subject of “scripture,” and to consider, seriously, the implications of their “readings” of “darkness,” and by extension of Bible?

“Reading Darkness” as “Changing the ‘Subject’” In her response to African Americans and the Bible, Elizabeth Castelli speaks of the project as “the radical intellectual, political, and spiritual gesture of ‘changing the subject’”430 In common parlance, “changing the subject” is the way we describe a shift in the conversation. […] Changing the subject is a way of shifting focus and attention […]. …the defiant exercise of this volume […] involves changing the “subject” of biblical scholarship itself, disrupting the ordinary expectations of who speaks and by what authority, refusing the requirement (in Wimbush’s words) that the self recede. The “subject” here is the agent of interpretation, the one who speaks, the socially constituted self, resituated consciously in relation to the text.431

To privilege “reading darkness” is, as Castelli puts it, “to change the ‘subject’ ” of biblical studies. It is to de-center the Bible as the “subject” of study, and in its place to put “darkness readers” – their relationships to world and “scriptures,” including, but not exclusively, the Bible. Given Castelli’s response, one can posit a number of guild concerns that, for “darkness readers,” and those who study them, are not – cannot be – the “subject.” First, to privilege “reading darkness” is to assert that these ancient documents do not have some ontological importance in and of themselves. That is, the Bible is not, primarily, the “subject.” It is not that the Bible is unimportant. Rather, “reading darkness” asserts that the texts of the Bible are only important insofar as they are “scripturalized.” The contents are made important by the people, the ‘subjects,’ that have used them as ideological tools – as “scriptures” – in their subjective confrontations of “darkness.” The corollary to this first point is this: academic methods that treat the Bible as a set of ancient, alien documents, arguing over historicity, literary character, rhetorical structure, socio-economic location, and so on – these methods, finally, are not the “subject” either. The understanding of biblical texts within their contexts may be enlightening. However, meaning cannot be made through the study of historical minutiae. This assertion calls into question the guildbased obsession with the ancient world. Similarly, the exegetical search for a single, “objective” meaning of a biblical text must also be removed as the “subject” of biblical studies. If, as has

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been asserted, it is the “darkness readers” who make meanings with these texts, who use these texts as “scriptures” in ideological struggles, then the search for meaning through the use of dispassionate, pseudo-objective, Euro-American methodologies, those which Schüssler-Fiorenza has called “scientistic,” cannot finally be the “subject” of biblical studies.432 “Reading darkness,” then, radically de-centers both the Bible and EuroAmerican methodologies for biblical study as “the subject.” Its aim, however, is not to dismiss them in toto.433 Its argument is not so much that the guild-methods are somehow “wrong” in some objective sense, but rather that they, also, are culturally located. They, too, are derived from an ideological struggle, and, as such, contain pretexts both about the Bible and, far more importantly, about the nature of the “world.” “Reading darkness” argues that, by institutionalizing these methods, the guild has been “covertly promoting a universalization of Euro-American perspectives,” perspectives grounded not only in a specific race but also in gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and (high Protestant) theology. It calls into question the presumptions of the guild regarding what is primary in its importance, what fundamentally is, or ought to be, the “subject.” This does not mean that historical matters will not be addressed with historical-critical methodologies. What it does mean is that the Euro-American methodologies of the guild, and the ways in which they have been used to determine the “subject,” must take a secondary place to a new “subject,” a new location from which biblical studies must begin.434 Then what is the subject? The subject is “reading darkness,” but even more importantly, the subject is the “darkness reader.” That is, what makes these texts important is not their content, but the people, the “subjects,” that have used them as ideological tools – as “scriptures” – in their subjective confrontation of “darkness.” Frederick Douglass’s use of James illustrates this point. Had he never quoted James in his speeches, had he never used James as the beginnings of a model of the religion that he loved, James would nevertheless have been in the New Testament canon. However, for Douglass, the argument could not be made that James was “scripture.” Douglass’s use of James in his speeches, as the beginning volley in a credo about “an-other” world, “an-other” religion than that practiced in the South, raised James to a level of importance for Douglass – and for his audience – above other biblical texts, even above other texts that he knew, quoted, but did not “scripturalize.”435 Douglass’s use made James important as “scripture.” Douglass, in using James, or even the Declaration of Independence, is essentially inventing “scriptures.” Therefore, Douglass, and not James’s epistle, must be the “subject.” The “subject” then, must shift. The primary questions can no longer be the hypothetical matters of what James might have meant when he wrote the epistle, questions of early or late dating, literary form, or even the unity of the text. Rather, the question is why might Douglass have chosen this text as one through which to address slavery? With what characteristics of James, this document



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of the first or second century of the Common Era, did Douglass resonate to the extent that he chose to use them in order to signify upon the dominant world he knew? In Chapter 4, I suggested that it was James’s world-orientation to which Douglass was reacting – a fundamental questioning of world encoded in the language world of the epistle. James, the epistle, would have been acceptable rhetoric to the dominant culture, because it emerged out of a shared tradition – the Bible. However, Douglass found that James also contained a critique of the , a critique that Douglass used as “scripture” in his reading of the “darkness” of chattel slavery. In “scripturalizing” James, Douglass held up this ideal, this orientation over against world inscribed in the language of the epistle. Who is the “darkness reader,” the proposed new “subject” of study? For the purposes of this study, the simplest answer remains Frederick Douglass, an African American fugitive slave. It is he who was the interpreter of scripture, the signifier on slavery through the words of the Bible. In this study, Douglass drove the choice of the biblical text – Jas 3:17 – because of his use of the text in his “darkness reading.” It is tempting, here, to think of Douglass as one of a new cadre of great teachers, a model of “darkness reading.” Certainly, he did not use mainline Euro-American techniques to decide what meaning to make from James. He challenged the dominant myth; he found the world that sanctioned slavery, wanting; he came to speech around that darkness and used the Bible to signify upon that world. It is he who, given an inch, took the ell, “reading” not only words, but his world. However, “reading darkness” cannot be contained in the interpretations of one man, even a man as prolific as Frederick Douglass. “Darkness readings” may be found throughout the history of African America. They may emerge out of specific “readers” – Douglass, for instance. Or, “darkness readings” may be collective and anonymous: such is the case with the Negro spirituals.436 Further, even within African American “darkness readings,” the “darkness” in question is not always the self-evident one: the anomy of being black in America. The tradition of challenging the status quo, of “reading darkness,” may be turned to other “darknesses.” Take, for instance, the “darkness reading” of Sojourner Truth. In one of her most famous speeches, a speech in favor of women’s rights, she asks “Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with it.”437 Like Douglass, Truth is “reading darkness,” but the “darkness” for Truth is not, in this instance, slavery. It is, rather, the lack of women’s rights. And, in reading that darkness, Truth signifies upon the Lukan and Matthean birth narratives to point out that, even if this present “darkness” does not recognize the importance of women, there is “an-other” reality in which women and their power are honored. Truth illustrates, again, that it is the “darkness reader” in her particularity, in her socio-historical reality, that ultimately sets the terms for the definition of “darkness” and how it is to be “read.”

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Moreover, “darkness readings” need not be specifically African American readings. Wimbush’s criteria for “darkness” open this possibility. It is important to affirm, unequivocally, that the theoretics behind “reading darkness” emerge out of the study of a specific set of “darkness readers” – African Americans – and their traditions of biblical interpretation. As Marie Case has noted, African Americans and the Bible, the conference and the volume, placed “African Americans at the heuristic center [of] a New Testament and Christian origins project.”438 And, as Wimbush notes, the “dark peoples” of the world have much to tell us on this matter of darkness. Nevertheless, “darkness” per se is not a racial category. Rather, Wimbush defines “darkness” as: a particular orientation, a sensibility, a way of being in and seeing the world. It is viewing and experiencing the world in emergency mode, as through the individual and collective experience of trauma.439

If Wimbush is to be taken to his logical conclusion, the study of “darkness readers” and their “readings” cannot be limited to the study of African America.440 Wimbush’s theoretical proposal of “reading darkness” has wideranging impact outside of the traditions of African American Christianity and biblical interpretation. “Reading darkness” not only challenges analysts to take seriously the breadth and depth and richness of African American community(-ies) in relationship(s) to the Bible. It also serves as a template, a lens through which other “darkness readers” might be identified and considered. Hal Taussig makes this point in his response to Wimbush’s volume. He notes that the theoretics behind reading darkness – and the traditions from which the theoretics emerged – “can help identify more clearly other positions and traditions of biblical interpretation which have gone unrecognized.”441 And included here must be “other ‘minority’ hermeneutical positions.”442 A cautionary note must be raised here: as was demonstrated in Chapter 4, darkness readings are not necessarily altruistic. This was the case in the religion of the southern slaveholder; as I noted in Chapter 4, in response to the perceived danger of the uprising of millions of African slaves, these “darkness readers” used the Bible to read repression. And while it is tempting to argue that Euro-American slaveowners, by virtue of their history, present an unusual case, the fact is that not even African American “darkness readers” are immune to repressive responses to a “darkness reading.” Roderick Belin, in his response to African Americans and the Bible, charges that the practices of some African American churches [are] to create, marginalize and annihilate the other within the walls of the sanctuary. […] it seems fairly common practice in the church to disempower the “others” within the church who have arrogated to themselves the right to be (to exist differently) without sanction or license.443



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Belin describes these “others” as “those who find themselves in marronage because of their gender, sexual orientation, their singleness, or the constitution of their families.”444 Belin’s critique highlights the irony in many “darkness readers,” readers both from within and outside of the African American community(-ies). Although they themselves have faced the “second creation” of the dominant society, this does not mean that they will avoid imposing that “second creation” on others seen as subdominant within their own societies. “Darkness readers” are not intended as Weberian ideal types, models to be fully, uncritically imitated in their “darkness readings.”445 Each one serves as a window onto ideological struggle with which each is engaging, a struggle not primarily over ethics, but over definitions and the right to “read.” At issue, too, are the “scriptures” being employed by “darkness readers.” As philosopher Leonard Harris points out, the Bible is neither a neutral, nor necessarily altruistic, player in this discourse. It also requires critical assessment – not so much as an historical document – but as a current ideology. He warns “it could be that the Bible as a sacred text is so pervasive because it is never fully accused of the social damage African Americans suffer.”446 Reading “darkness readers,” then, may cause a re-evaluation of the “scriptures” they choose to use. Are they, in fact, benign – or even good, as Douglass claims? And if not, how are they used, and for, or against, whom? If biblical studies were to rise to these challenges, to change its “subject,” then it will have to become a kind of cultural studies. The Bible would have to be understood, not as an ancient document, but as a contemporary, cultural document: a modern source of ideology, and ideological struggle. “Reading darkness” would force biblical studies to become a study of society, a study of how moderns and ancients read their world in relationship to “darkness,” and continue to enter into relationship with these texts as “scriptures.” Such a change would herald many similar studies of Frederick Douglass, and indeed of other African American and other non-African American “darkness readers.” For there is yet a wealth of information to mine. Indeed, it is to be hoped that a study of “darkness readers” and the Bible would open up not only biblical studies but all academic disciplines for cross-fertilization. Instead of the bracketing that the Bible frequently gets within academic discourse, a focus on “reading darkness” could begin the discussion of the extent to which “darkness readers” and “darkness readings” have used biblical rhetorics in their interactions across a wide range of discourses.447 The Bible would cease to be the province of only one guild; rather, a wide range of persons would be invited to think critically about Bible as “scripture,” as cultural phenomenon, and as the site of ideological struggle. This would particularly open up studies about the uniquely American uses of Bible by “darkness readers,” uses that are situated within a national ethos of “freedom of conscience,” an insistence on the rights of individual readers to interpret the “plain meaning of the text.”

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Within religious and theological studies, a change in subject to the “darkness reader” might cause the methods in the field of biblical studies to shift from the Euro-American, ecclesiastically sanctioned methods of biblical interpretation to closer attention of the perspectives and performances of “darkness readers.” Indeed, the study of “darkness readers” as social critics may well call into question the entire agenda of the teaching of exegesis to church leaders, a discipline that, far from creating social critics, has, in the words of Castelli, “cultivate[d] either aphasia or apologetics.”448 And, if Harris’ critique is to be taken seriously, a fundamental question in all of this may well have to be: why the Bible, in the first place? What, in these texts, has attracted “darkness readers” to use them as “scripture?” For, if it has no ontological importance in itself, then why do, why should, these “darkness readers” engage these ancient texts at all? One answer has been offered in this project, an answer that talks about a kind of contra-world rhetorics encoded in some biblical texts. But this answer remains an answer specific to one particular “darkness reader” in one particular location. The greater question still remains. Why, after all, do African Americans, why do any “darkness readers,” enter into relationship with, “read” their world through, “read” the Bible? Perhaps the best preliminary answer for now is Peter Brown’s: “to think with.”449

Appendix Listed below, in canonical order, are the biblical texts to which Frederick Douglass refers in his extant speeches from 1841–60 as collected by John W. Blassingame in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series 1: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, vols 1–3. Each reference is listed by volume and page number of the Blassingame series (e.g. 1:1 designates volume 1, page 1). Series 1, Vol. 1 covers Speeches from 1841–6; Vol. 2 from 1847–54. From Volume 3 (1855–63), I have only indexed speeches before 1861, as this covers the historical scope of my paper. The first speech which Blassingame indexes in 1861 was given on April 28, sixteen days after the attack on Fort Sumter signaled the beginning of the US Civil War. This seemed to me a good terminus ad quem for Douglass’ antebellum speeches. References in parentheses denote allusions to texts normally otherwise quoted. A quick glance at the appendix will illustrate the breadth of Frederick Douglass’ familiarity with biblical language. As I have argued above, Douglass uses these texts as a kind of vocabulary, a “language world,” and he does so fairly freely. As a result, tropes may recur in otherwise dissimilar passages. With the notes to this appendix I have tried to help the reader trace these parallel tropes in a way that I hope will be helpful.

Hebrew Bible Genesis 1:3 1:26-27450

2:387 1:60, 109, 246; 2:27, 68, 112, 119, 214, 255, 267, 344, 417, 528; 3:147, 168 1:26, 28 1:94,109 4:9 3:337 4:15 1:351 7–8 2:99 9:6 1:60,109; 2:27, 68, 112, 119, 214, 255, 267, 344, 417, 528; 3:147, 168 9:18-27 2:99 12:4-5 1:49,451 154, 181, 302 16:15-16452 2:170

47: 20-21455

2:343 1:154,453 302 1:154,454 302 2:21 2:73 2:416, 423, 435, 548; 3:102 2:73

Exodus 1-14 1:8-14 1:10-12 3:5456 5:2 7:16457 8:1

2:488; 3:21 2:73 2:320 1:185; 2:156; 3:362 1:405 2:182 2:182

18:20 26:12-33 29:21-24, 28 37:3 37:18-36 42:21

Appendix

100

Job 1:9 2:4 5:12-13

20:17 21:13 21:19 21:24 32:26

2:149 2:182 2:182 2:182 2:390 2:182 2:360 3:166 2:362 3:282 2:262, 267 1:105459 1:377460 1:144,188, 377; 2:175; 3:285 3:285 3:24,462 179 2:257 3:244 2:283

Leviticus 19:18b 25:10-13

1:143,463 282, 358 1:116

Psalms 2:1 8:5 8:6 9:17 18:27 19:7 23:4 24:1 26:6 39:12 68:31 72:8 73:13 76:10 78:5 80:4 90:2466

Numbers 35:6-15

2:419, 531; 3:285

90:10 103:17

Deuteronomy 3:24 5:11 10:14 23:15 28:37 32:30 34:1-4

1:22,464 210 1:105 2:390 1:79, 260; 2:23 2:270 1:287; 3:49 3:250, 257

Joshua 6:1-20

2:467

1 Samuel 17:4-51

Proverbs 14:34

3:165, 274

1 Kings 1:50-51

22:6 25:21-2469

2:103, 270, 397; 3:131, 196 1:347 2:233; 3:372, 397

3:285

2 Chronicles 19:17

Ecclesiastes 1:9

2:261; 3:20, 21, 50

1:11, 19; 2:378

Isaiah 1:3

1:94

8:1-13 8:20 9:1 9:13 9:29458 10:3 12:1-39 13:21 14:23-30 17:12 20:3 20:7 20:14 20:15461

106:48 118:23 126:6 133:1 137:1-6 137:6 145:4

2:253 3:9 1:118; 2:56; 83, 94, 482, 559

3:33 2:9, 255; 3:109 1:94; 2:295 1:405 2:271 1:152 3:12, 250 2:390 1:233 2: 44 2:387; 3:341 2:28; 3:34 1:233 2:83, 94; 3:169 1:152 1:219;465 2:25 2:261, 454, 491, 558; 3:7, 277 2:360; 3:259 2:261, 454, 491, 558; 3:7, 277 2:261, 454, 491, 558; 3:7, 277 1:153, 361, 406, 463, 472; 2:329 3:256 1:50467 2:368 1:212468 1:22, 210

Appendix

1:4-20 1:13-17 1:15 1:15-17 5:20 6:6470 8:16, 20 9:6 11:6 33:15-16 35:6 40:3471 42:7 45:23 48:22472

49:8 57:1 57:21

58:1 58:5 58:6

59:1 60:2 61:1 65:25

1:146–7, 348 2:378; 3:39 1:147, 159, 327 1:327 3:167, 224 2:189, 377 1:152 3:45 1:78 2:270 2:367 3:39 1:309, 327 2:271 1:304; 2:259, 416, 422, 435, 457, 495, 548; 3:12, 102, 317 2:366 3:108 1:304; 2:259, 416, 422, 435, 457, 495, 548; 3:12, 102, 317 1:383; 2:15, 32 3:195 1:57, 182, 230, 246, 423; 2:101, 110, 153,188; 3:39, 195 2:386 1:152, 406 1:13, 309, 327; 2:30,473 178 1:78

101

66:1

2:158

Jeremiah 3:9 22:13 32:19

1:53, 361, 406 1:327; 3: 137 1:22, 210

Ezekiel 3:26

1:212

Daniel 1-12 3:12-20 5:5 5:5-31 6:8 6:12-23

2:554 1:117, 150–1, 429–30; 3:330, 370 1:229 2:392 2:412 1:117

Amos 3:3 5:26474

1:159 2:330

Micah 5:13 6:8

1:361, 406 1:327–8; 2:320

Habakkuk 3:6

3:51

Zechariah 3:2

1:153, 361, 406, 471

New Testament Matthew 3:2475 3:3 3:7476 3:8477 3:9478 3:10479 3:11480 4:4481 5:3 5:13 5:14 5:14-15 5:15483

1:361 3:39 3:90 3:283, 338 2:366–7 3:39 3:239 3:193, 195482 1:179 2:390; 3:188–9 2:34, 353 1:445 3:300

5:24 5:29-30484 5:44485 6:9-14 6:22 6:24 6:33 7:1 7:12

2:352 2:111 2:104 1:61, 137, 160; 2:142, 355; 3:291 3:18486 1:106, 159, 283; 2:365 2:170 1:108 1:17, 44, 47, 129, 282, 305, 327, 347, 380, 396; 2:32, 100, 129, 188, 320, 344, 355; 3:7, 47, 137, 283, 315, 317

102 7:15 7:16 7:16, 20 7:18 7:20 9:10-11 9:13; 12:7 9:16-17487 10:4488 10:25 10:29 11:4-5 11:20-21, 23 11:30 12:24-29 12:25489 12:29 13:24-30 12:34 13:31490 13:35-40 13:47-48 13:54, 58 14:17-19491 15:2-6492 16:26493 18:8-9 19:6494

19:8 19:18 19:19 19:26 21:42 22:14 22:32497 22:39 23:14 23:15 23:22 23:23 23:24 23:27 23:33 23:29 25:21, 23

Appendix 2:92, 285 2:483, 550; 3:126 1:164, 192–3, 237 2:172; 3:156 1:108, 332 3:42 2:189, 377 2:182; 3:220 1:448, 458 1:159 2:525 2:188 1:22, 210 2:367 1:159 3:237 1:166 3:326 3:90 3:166 3:326 1:11, 20 1:22, 210 3:376 3:284, 349 3:193 2:111 1:41, 78, (93), 197, 274, 304, 345, 410, 447; 2:328, 533 3:349 1:144, 188; 2:175 1:143 2:438495 1:153, 361, 406, 463, 472; 2:328 2:324496 3:172 1:143, 282, 358 1:422–3, 481 1:109 1:219 1:161; 2:286, 376, 377, 391, 419; 3:38 1:423; 2:286 2:286 1:481; 2:286; 3:90 2:367 3:256

25:35-36 25:35-46 26:26 26:52 27:24 Mark 1:31 2:15-16 2:21-22 3:19 3:22 3:25 3:27 4:21 4:31 4:39 6:2, 5, 14 6:38-41 7:3-13 7:9, 13 8:36 9:23 9:40 9:43, 47 10:5 10:9

10:27 10:49-51 12:11 12:27 12:31 12:40 14:22 14:36 16:4 16:15498 Luke 2:9 2:10 2:14 2:29-30 3:4 3:7

2:419 3:328 2:232 2:152 2:74

3:39 3:42 2:182 1:448, 458 1:159 3:237 1:166 3:300 3:166 3:167 1:22, 210 3:376 3:284, 349 3:182 3:193 2:438 3:171 2:111 1:176; 3:182, 349 1:41, 78, (93), 197, 274, 304, 345, 410, 447; 2:328, 553 2:438 2:189 1:53, 361, 406, 463, 472; 2:329 3:172 1:143, 282, 358 1:304, 422–3, 481 2:232 2:438 1:176 1:362

3:110 2:257 1:460; 2:129, 189, 377; 3:196 3:110 3:39 3:90

3:8 3:9 3:16 4:4 4:18 5:30 5:36-37 6:16 6:26 6:27, 35 6:29 6:31

7:22 9:13-16 9:50 9:62 10:27 10:30-35

11:2-4 11:15-17 11:17 11:33 11:34 12:47

13:19 14:13, 21 14:19 16:9 16:13 18:13 18:40-41 19:37 20:38 20:47 23:12 23:33

Appendix 2:366–7; 3:283 3:39 3:239 3:193 1:13, 157, 327, 328, 380; 2:30, 178, 425; 3:35 3:42 2:182; 3:220 1:448, 458 1:55 2:104 3:138 1:17, 44, 47, 129, 282, 305, 327, 347, 380, 396; 2:32, 100, 129, 188, 320, 344, 355; 3:7, 47, 137, 283, 315, 317 2:188 3:376 3:171 2:325 1:143, 282, 358 1:114, 283, 348, 369, 427, 445; 2:35, 99–100, 188, 344, 381, 391; 3:254 1:61, 137, 160; 2:142, 355; 3:291 1:159 3:237 3:300 3:18 1:3,499 13, 43, 86, 144, 152, 188, 202, 314, 357, 360, 376, 401, 405, 412, 418, 461, 469, 471, 482; 2:113 3:166 2:101 2:324 3:375 1:106, 159, 283; 2:365 1:351 2:189 1:22, 210 3:172 1:302, 422–3, 481 2:430 1:77,500 328, 330

John 1:23 3:20 5:39 5:46 6:9 6:71 7:24; 8:16501 8:39 12:7 18:36 Acts 7:33 7:43 9:3-4 9:6 10:34 17:16 17:24, 28 17:26 17:28 21:28 Romans 1:16 2:11 3:4 6:1 12:20 13:9 14:11 15:1 1 Corinthians 3:7 6:12502 8:10 9:26 10:23 10:26,28 11:7

11:24 11:29

103

3:39 1:105, 294 1:44, 160, 256, 377 3:31 3:376 1:448, 458 3:45 2:366–7 3:45 1:302; 2:92

1:185; 2:156; 3:362 2:330 1:182 1:405, 423, 471 1:11, 19; 2:378 1:230 1:405 1:230; 2:383, 480, 505; 3:334 2:125 3:35

2:232 1:11, 19; 2:378 3:168 3:275 2:233; 3:372, 397 1:143, 144, 188, 282, 358; 2:175 2:271 1:60

1: 209; 3:275 3:40 1:24503 2:311, 481 3:40 2:390 1:60,109; 2:27, 68, 112, 119, 214, 255, 267, 344, 417, 528; 3:147, 168 2:232 1:233

Appendix

104 13:11 13:13 16:22

3:365 1:128; 3:286 2:354, 382

2 Corinthians 5:7 6:14 6:15 10:4 11:14

3:330 1:159 3:327 1:373; 3:215 2:310, 313

Galatians 3:28504 5:14

3:200 1:143, 282, 358

Ephesians 1:19 2:19 6:5

Philippians 4:8 Colossians 3:11 3:22

1:22, 210 3:200 1:12, 17, 43, 151–3, 302, 304, 359–60, 404, 405, 462, 470–1; 2:88, 92, 97, 99, 175, 188, 329

2 Timothy 4:2

1:130

5:8 6:1

Titus 2:9

2:525; 3:109

4:1

3:200 1:12,505 17, 43, 151–3, 302, 304, 359–60, 404, 405, 462, 470–1; 2:88, 92, 97, 99, 175, 188, 329 2:329

2 Thessalonians 2:10

2:163

1 Timothy 1:10

6:10

327, 330, 331, 349, 350, 351, 355, 357, 368, 370, 377, 378, 379, 380, 389, 397, 414, 416, 423, 427, 430, 439, 443, 446, 448, 449, 450, 451, 452, 456, 461, 464, 466, 481; 2:92,110, 269, 285, 356, 357, 378; 3:24,507 30, 179 3: 203 1:12, 17, 43, 151–3, 302, 304, 359–60, 404, 405, 462, 470–1; 2:88, 92, 97, 99, 175, 188, 329 1:124

1:35,506 49, 50, (80), 81, 109, 110, (111), 115, 138, 155, 159, 160, 162, 164, 175, 176–7, 182, 185, 192, 200, 230, 235, 236, 246, 247, 248, 256, 259, 274, 286, 298–9, 303, 304, 315, 326,

Philemon 1-25

Hebrews 13:3

James 1:17 1:27 2:8 3:17

1 Peter 1:10

1:12, 17, 43, 151–3, 302, 304, 359–60, 404, 405, 462, 470–1; 2:88, 92, 97, 99, 175, 188, 329

1:49, 115, 116, 181, 256, 260, 297, 302–3, 332; 2:343; 3:258, 363

1:330, 350, 382, 427, 439; 3:33, 137, 257, 282

3:217 1:358, 378 1:143, 282 1:35, 44, 129, 235, 282, 358, 472, 479; 2:99, 378; 3:317

1:17

Appendix



3:18 5:8

1:11, 17, 43, 151–3, 302, 304, 359–60, 404, 405, 462; 2:88, 92, 97, 99, 175, 188, 329 1:97 2:313

2 Peter 2:15 3:18

1:162, 174, 470–1 2:97

1 John 4:1 4:8 4:18

2:313 1:263 1:149

Revelation 1:8, 11508

1:404–5

2:18

1:9 3:12509 6:2510 6:16 12:7 13:8511 13:10 14:6 19:6 19:20 21:1 21:2 21:6 21:27 22:13

105 2:167 2:351 3:99 1:105 2:135 2:223, 240; 3:8, 279 2:73, 152 3:197 3:196 3:99 2:74, 136 2:351 1:404–5 2:223, 240; 3:8, 279 1:404–5

Notes 1. Frederick Douglass, “The Bible Opposes Oppression, Fraud, and Wrong,” News Letter (Belfast), 9 January 1846; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 129. The biblical citations are Matt 7:12 and Jas 3:17; ibid., n.3, but Blassingame misses the quote from James. Douglass’s quotes are all taken from KJV. For a list of Douglass’s use of the Protestant Bible in vols. 1–3 of The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews, see the appendix. 2. Gregory P. Lampe, Frederick Douglass: Freedom’s Voice, 1818–1845 (MSU Press Rhetoric and Public Affairs Series; East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1998), ix. 3. Blassingame acknowledges the importance of the Bible to Douglass. He cites it alongside “contemporary newspapers, pamphlets […] and Shakespeare” as the source of “the content and style of his speeches.” J. W. Blassingame, “Introduction to Series One,” in J. W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), xxiii. Waldo E. Martin, Jr., historian of Frederick Douglass’s intellectual development also notes the importance of the Bible, and in particular texts from the gospels, to Douglass’s abolitionist work. Waldo E. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 49. See also the appendix to this book. 4. Sterling Stuckey, “ ‘My Burden Lightened’: Frederick Douglass, the Bible, and Slave Culture,” in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 251. 5. Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza, “The Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: Decentering Biblical Scholarship,” JBL 107: (1988): 13. Further study ought to be done on the tremendous impact that Schüssler-Fiorenza’s presidential address has had on certain areas of the guild of biblical studies, study for which there is not enough room in this project. But I do thank G. Guy Pujol, Jr. for pointing out that need to me. 6. Ibid., 10–11. 7. Ibid., 13. 8. This great chorus of voices now includes global (i.e. non-Western, non-European), gendered (feminist, womanist, and GLBT/Queer), and US racial-ethnic readings of biblical texts. From these have emerged various volumes in which (primarily, but not exclusively) guild-trained scholars have intentionally, unapologetically chosen to interpret biblical texts from their subjective perspectives. In addition, scholars are beginning to listen carefully to the interpretations of the communities of readers outside of the guild of biblical studies, readers as diverse as modernday South-African base communities, medieval European communities, and African American slaves – readers who, though untrained in the methods of traditional biblical exegesis, nevertheless read and interpreted the texts of the Bible in ways that were appropriate for their times and places. Some examples of this are Fernando Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert eds, Reading from this Place (2 vols.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); R. S. Sugirtarajah, ed., Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (rev. ed.; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006); Elisabeth



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Schüssler-Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone: the Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation (10th anniversary ed.; Boston: Beacon, 1995); Gerald O. West and Musa W. Dube, eds. The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories and Trends (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2000); Ken Stone, ed., Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup, 334; Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2001); and a number of African American volumes (see notes 19ff below), the most seminal of which is Cain Hope Felder, ed., Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991). 9. Renita J. Weems, “Reading Her Way through the Struggle: African American Women and the Bible,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (ed. Cain Hope Felder; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 64; emphasis added. 10. Daniel Patte, Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: A Reevaluation (Louisville: Westminster/ John Knox, 1995), 101ff. 11. Ibid., 101. 12. Ibid; author’s emphasis. 13. Vincent L. Wimbush, “Introduction: Reading Darkness, Reading Scriptures,” in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 7. 14. Krister Stendahl, “The Bible as a Classic and the Bible as Holy Scripture.” JBL 103:1 (1984): 3. 15. Barbara A. Holdredge, “Beyond the Guild: Liberating Biblical Studies,” in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 140–43. 16. Ibid., 141. See the discussion of African American biblical interpretation below for contemporary-world focused “tempocentrism”. 17. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 18. 18. Timothy Fitzgerald, “The Ideology of Religious Studies,” BCSR 28 (April 1999): 39–41. 19. Randall C. Bailey, “Beyond Identification: The Use of Africans in Old Testament Poetry and Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (ed. Cain Hope Felder; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 165. 20. Charles B. Copher, “The Black Presence in the Old Testament,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (ed. Cain Hope Felder; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 164. 21. Some examples of the thorough scholarship surrounding African presence in the Bible can be found in Cain Hope Felder, ed., Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation. See especially chapters 6–8. Other sources for this scholarship include Charles B. Copher, “Three Thousand Years of Biblical Interpretation with Reference to Black Peoples,” in African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (ed. Gayraud S. Wilmore; Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1989), 105–28; Charles B. Copher, Black Biblical Studies: An Anthology of Charles B. Copher: Biblical and Theological Issues on the Black Presence in the Bible (Chicago: Black Light Fellowship, 1993); and Cain Hope Felder, Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class, and Family (The Bishop Henry McNeal Turner Studies in North American Black Religion 3; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002), especially Part I. 22. I would argue that Copher and his branch of scholarship function as apologia, and that such an apologia is one of the necessary academic outgrowths of the apologetic black independent church movements. As Peter Paris demonstrates: “the nineteenth-century black church independence movement is […] an effort to institutionalize a nonracist principle grounded in a biblical anthropology, implying moral and political obligation for the society as a whole.” Peter J. Paris, The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), xvi, 10–20.

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Copher’s work seems intended to justify such an anthropology by grounding it in ancient history. Bailey does note that there are several African American scholars who are using “ideological approaches in trying to discover our story and how to use it as a strategy for reading”. Among those he cites are R. Liburd, A. Smith, O. Hendricks, W. Johnson, H. Bennett, A. Redding, and G. Byron. Randall Bailey, “Academic Biblical Interpretation among African Americans in the United States,” in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 704. However, the examples Bailey offers all focus exclusively on the ancient world. Although they are defiant readings from within the guild, they are still tempocentric readings of the Bible. 23. A multitude of African American preachers may be named as predecessors to Cone’s Black Theology, among them Richard Allen, Edward W. Blyden, Andrew Bryan, Alexander Crummell, Martin Delaney, Julia Foote, Frances Joseph Gaudet, John Gloucester, Absalom Jones, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jarena Lee, George Liele, Maria Stewart, Henry McNeil Turner, and James Varick. Cf. Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans (3rd ed.; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), esp. chaps 5–6; Chanta M. Haywood, Prophesying Daughters: Black Women Preachers and the Word, 1823–1913 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003); Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church (Washington: Associated, 1921); and Benjamin E. Mays, The Negro’s God (Boston: Chapman and Grimes, 1938). 24. James Hal Cone, God of the Oppressed (rev. ed.; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 74–5; his emphasis. 25. Obery Osayande Hendricks, “Guerilla Exegesis: A Post-Modern Proposal for Insurgent African American Biblical Interpretation,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 22: (1994): 107. I include in this school that which R. Bailey calls “ideological criticism”; for even if the reader is critiquing the text or the Deity as unethical, she is still engaging in a theo-ethical and/or theological reading of biblical text. Bailey, “Academic Biblical Interpretation”. One of the most recent ideological constructions, a “Neo-Womanist” hermeneutic, was proposed by Michael Joseph Brown toward the end of his monograph, Blackening of the Bible. In it, Brown proposes that “the stories of  [African American] transvestites…could form the core” of such a hermeneutic. Brown privileges the transgendered among African Americans in an attempt “to reinscribe the idea that a liberated and liberating hermeneutic involves the recognition that even the most marginalized in our society deserve the possibility of authentic human existence.” Michael Joseph Brown, Blackening of the Bible: The Aims of African American Biblical Scholarship (African American Religious Thought and Life; Harrisburg, PA, London and New York: Trinity Press International, 2004), 175–83. 26. Fitzgerald, “Ideology,” 39–41. 27. Jacqueline Grant, “Womanist Theology: Black Women’s Experience as a Source for Doing Theology, with Special Reference to Christology,” in African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (ed. Gayraud S. Wilmore; Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1989), 217. 28. Weems, “Reading Her Way,” 68. See also the argument made by Clarice J. Martin in “The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in African American Biblical Interpretation: ‘Free Slaves’ and ‘Subordinate Women,’” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (ed. Cain Hope Felder; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 206–31. 29. Holdredge, “Beyond the Guild,” 141–2. This, I would argue, is the primary error in Schüssler-Fiorenza’s Rhetoric and Ethic, the text that built on her Presidential address of 1994. In it, she focuses the attention of the biblical critic on the transformation of the contemporary world. Schüssler-Fiorenza states “In order to become a critical transformative intellectual rather than just a professionalized one, s/he must reclaim the public space of the ekklesia as the arena of



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biblical and religious studies, I contend. Since ekklesia is not primarily a religious but a political term, such a change would position biblical scholarship in the public sphere of the polis and transform it into a critical discourse that seeks to further the well-being of all the inhabitants of the cosmo-polis today.” Schüssler-Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 10–11. Schüssler-Fiorenza’s proposal omits any sense of the use of the Bible as scripture by real persons over time. By contrast, Renita Weems’ essay “Reading Her Way through the Struggle,” in Stony the Road begins to get at this issue when she references the interaction between Howard Thurman’s grandmother and the Bible. Thurman’s grandmother, in her rejection of Paul, exemplifies one type of African American interaction with the Bible. Weems writes that, for this darkness reader, “her experience of reality became the norm for evaluating the contents of the Bible.” Weems, “Reading Her Way,” 61–2. 30. Blount defines the “micro-interpersonal” as inclusive both of a scholar’s “life-relation: […] a methodological encoding that helps determine the conclusions reached” and a scholar’s “pre-understanding: […] The scholar’s internal interests influence his or her interpretation”. Brian K. Blount, Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New Testament Criticism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 92–6. 31. Ibid., 11. 32. Ibid., 8. 33. Ibid., 11–12. In this instance, then, language is a behavior; it is an act taken by a person, a form of power used to affect some end. In the evaluation of the textual matters of a linguistic event, one analyzes the grammatical structure in order to ascertain how the text is being used. Of course, this can lead to the matter of positivism, as Blount himself acknowledges. For even grammatical structure is a matter of power, and the use, and sometimes purposeful discarding of the same, is behavior which, if evaluated by the norm, may be wrongly analyzed if seen at all. Ibid., 16. 34. Ibid., 8. 35. Ibid., 8. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 92. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 11–12. 40. Ibid., 16. 41. Ibid., 17 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 23. 44. Ibid., 177. 45. Ibid., 184; emphasis added. 46. Michael J. Brown, review of B. Blount Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New Testament Criticism, JR 78: (1998): 106. 47. Blount, Cultural Interpretation, 3. 48. Blount himself admits this. In his discussion of differing types of interpretations, he states “We…recognized…serious text-linguistic deficiencies in these micro-interpersonally oriented research efforts. The most immediate concern is that the popular approaches fail to consider carefully enough, if at all, the textual features of the language in the trial scenes.” Later he adds, “while macro-interpersonal reconstructions should not be viewed as ends in themselves, they are necessary because they provide restraints on what and how the text language can mean. A micro-interpersonal interpreter cannot present an appropriate interpretation of the language if he or she gives to the language a meaning for which there is no historical precedent.” Ibid., 181. And yet, the whole point of textual interpretations outside of the dominant structure is the act of

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“signifyin(g)’” upon the text, an act that may well include interpreting language loosely, even obliquely. See below for a further discussion of this. 49. I thank my colleague Rosamond Rodman for this insight. Given the ways in which the texts were interpreted within the US context of black enslavement and black disenfranchisement, and for the protection of Christian “whiteness,” it is truly a wonder that African Americans read the Bible at all! See her “Unhomeliness: Harlem, Heaven’s Gate and John’s Gospel” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2004), for a study that takes seriously the presuppositions and dynamics of scripturalizing among the alienated. 50. Weems writes, “the experience of oppression has forced the marginalized reader to retain the right, as much as possible, to resist those things within the culture and the Bible that one finds obnoxious or antagonistic to one’s innate sense of identity and to one’s basic instincts for survival”. Nevertheless, even such resistance suggests the centrality of the Bible and its “scripturality”; it is this fundamental centrality and scripturality that Weems never questions. Weems, “Reading Her Way,” 63. 51. Kimberly Benston, Performing Blackness: Enactments of African American Modernism (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 12. 52. Ibid. 53. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 21. 54. Throughout I will use the term “darkness reader(s)” to refer to that person or those persons engaged in the act of “reading darkness” as defined by Wimbush. Their specific readings I will refer to as “darkness readings”. 55. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 21. 56. For Douglass, these tools would have included the works of Shakespeare, poets such as Longfellow and Whittier, novelists such as Dickens and Dumas, and contemporaries such as Burke, Tennyson, Bryant and Browning. Blassingame, “Introduction to Series One,” xxiii. 57. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 23. 58. Ibid., 25. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid., 25–6. 61. Ibid., 26. 62. Ibid., 27. 63. Ibid., 25–6. Wimbush does note that flight is “also ever present in particular sub-groups of African American life, and of course, among many individuals – those for whom the trauma continues to be most palpable and present”. Nevertheless, the implication here appears to be the trauma of the external, dominant society rather than any trauma, real or perceived, experienced within the newly formed escaped community. These persons are not fighting their own people; they are not engaged in self-critique. Rather, even if it might be shown that they are in a relatively safe space “the trauma continues to be…[so] palpable and present” that they continue in their orientation of flight from the larger society. 64. Ibid., 26–7. African American culture – the primary focus of Wimbush’s project – presents both clear boundaries and extraordinary opportunities at the outset. The boundaries – historical, geographic, temporal, psychosocial, and so on – help to narrow the scope of the project, to keep the project from becoming unwieldy. At the same time, African American culture(s) – based as they are on the darkness of mass deracination and the communal need to reconstitute selves and cultures in a foreign, hostile culture – constitute a complex, highly influential (e.g. theologically, linguistically, musically, artistically, gastronomically, etc.) subculture(s) on the US subcontinent. The possibilities for research are enormous. Further, insofar as other subdominants, whether whole cultures or smaller groups, have taken their cues from African American culture (I think about the international spread of musical genres, for instance), beginning with African American



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culture sets the stage for the inevitable widening of the discourse, both within and vastly outside of biblical studies. 65. Ibid., 26. 66. Ibid., 23. 67. Ibid., 21. See the above definition of reading darkness 68. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (20th anniversary edition; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 68. 69. Albert Raboteau, “African-Americans, Exodus, and the American Israel,” in AfricanAmerican Christianity: Essays in History (ed. Paul E. Johnson; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 9, 12. 70. Leonard E. Barrett, Sr., The Rastafarians: Sounds of Cultural Dissonance (rev. ed.; Boston: Beacon, 1988), 3. 71. George Eaton Simpson, Religious Cults of the Caribbean: Trinidad, Jamaica and Haiti (3rd ed.; Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico: Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico, 1980), 212–13, notes: “Among the favourite chapters of the Ras Tafaris are: Isaiah 43, 44, 47, 34, 3, and 9; Proverbs 8; Jeremiah 50, 51, 8, and 2; Amos 9 and 3; Malachi 1; Revelation 18, 17, 6, 5, 22, and 19; James 5; Lamentations 5; Joel 3 and 34 [sic]; Zachariah 8 and 14; Micah 4; Deuteronomy 28, 30, and 4; Ezekiel 37 and 48; Daniel 2, 7, and 12; Leviticus 25; Psalms 87, 68, 48, 97, 99, 140, and 135; Genesis 2 and 18; Habakkuk 2 and 3; and the First Epistle of John 4.” 72. Ennis Barrington Edmonds, Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 44. 73. Ibid., 54. 74. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 26. 75. Edmonds, Rastafari, 117–21. 76. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail – April 16, 1963,” in Afro-American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (ed. Milton C. Sernett; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985), 439. “And I will show you a still more excellent way: If I speak with the tongue of men and of angels and have not love…” 1 Cor. 12:25–13:1a (rsv). 77. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 26. 78. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 15. 79. Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Ultimately, It’s not a Change of Color, but a Whole Change-ofSubject-Kind-of-Thing,” in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 850. 80. Hendricks, “Guerilla Exegesis,” 107. 81. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 21. 82. Ibid. 83. Douglass has other world-orientations also, but in his use of Jas 3:17, the world orientation of formation is primary. 84. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 2–3; Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (Boston, 1845); repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers (series 2: Autobiographical Writings; vol. 1: Narrative; ed. John W. Blassingame, John R. McKivigan, and Peter P. Hinks; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 13. 85. Douglass, Narrative, 13, 15. 86. Douglass, Narrative, 28; Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 4. 87. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 4. 88. Douglass, Narrative, 28. Hugh Auld was the brother of Thomas Auld. 89. Ibid., 30. 90. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 9. I will say more about Frederick Douglass’s early forays into reading in Chapter 5.

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91. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 15; William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 37–8. 92. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 17. According to McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 36–7, Lucretia Anthony Auld, the wife of Thomas Auld, had died; the Baileys – Frederick and his family – thus became the property of her widower, Thomas Auld. Frederick was, at the time, still working for Thomas’ brother, Hugh. A dispute arose among the Aulds apparently spurred on by Thomas’ second wife, the result of which was the return of Frederick Bailey to plantation life in rural Maryland. 93. Douglass, Narrative, 46–55; Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 19. 94. Douglass, Narrative, 66, recollected: “My master sent me away because there existed against me a very great prejudice in the community and he feared I might be killed.” The entire attempt to escape may be found at Douglass, Narrative, 62–6; Cf. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 23. Such concern on the part of his master seems to strengthen the possibility that Douglass was the son either of an Anthony or an Auld and was thus “family” although unrecognized as such. 95. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 312 and Nathan Irvin Huggins, Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass (Library of American Biography, ed; Oscar Handlin; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1980), 298, note that the two were married in 1838; Anna Murray Douglass died in 1882 at the age of 69. Two years after Anna’s death, Douglass would marry Helen Pitts, a white abolitionist and suffragette, to whom he would remain married for the last eleven years of his life. Cf. Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Studies in American Negro Life; ed. August Meier; New York: Atheneum, 1969), 298–315; McFeely, 315–81. 96. Douglass, Narrative, 77. 97. Ibid. 98. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, is an invaluable source for Douglass’s biography before he began his abolitionist speaking with Garrison’s organization. 99. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 276. 100. His wife and children, being free-born, were in no such danger. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 73. 101. Blassingame, “Introduction to Series One,” in J. W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), lii–liii. 102. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 276. For the dates of West Indian Emancipation, see Edmonds, Rastafari, 30. 103. Douglass’s other two autobiographies were My Bondage and My Freedom (New York, 1855; repr. Ebony Classics. Chicago: Johnson, 1970); and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford: Park, 1881; repr. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1983). Douglass was the editor of The North Star, Frederick Douglass’s Paper, Douglass’s Monthly, and The New National Era. For a history of Douglass’s later life, cf. Douglass, Life and Times, 380–488; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 238–386; Huggins, Slave and Citizen, 104–80; and Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 203–50. 104. J. W. Blassingame, “Introduction to Series One,” l. 105. This is telling in light of Douglass’s relatively elite status. Orlando Patterson noted that the role of the elite slave “is identical with that of the most miserable field slaves. He was always structurally marginal, whether economically or socially, politically or culturally. His marginality made it possible for him to be used in ways that were not possible with a person who truly belonged.” With regard to Douglass, Patterson’s last statement can be read in two ways. On the one hand, Douglass’s elite status allowed him to be “used” by the abolitionist movement as “exhibit A,” a kind of carnival attraction – a living example of the horrors of slavery. On the other hand, Douglass played upon this marginality, intentionally using it to make his point more forcefully. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 332.



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106. Nathaniel P. Rogers, “Southern Slavery and Northern Religion,” Herald of Freedom (Concord, NH), 16 February, 1844; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame, vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 26–7. 107. Weems, “Reading Her Way,” 67. 108. J. W. Blassingame, “Introduction to Series One,” l. 109. “Whereas both sides in the religious disputes over slavery insisted upon their biblical orthodoxy, the institution’s defenders relied particularly heavily on a literal interpretation of the Scriptures. […] The proslavery biblical scholars identified blacks as the descendents of Ham or of Cain, heirs to curses of perpetual subjugation. They argued that Old Testament patriarchs practiced a system of servitude much akin to American slavery. Slavery also existed at the time of Christ and his apostles, and the defenders of the South pointed out that the New Testament contained no condemnation of the institution. Almost invariably, these writers noted that Saint Paul in several of his epistles had admonished slaves to be obedient to their earthly masters and in one instance even ordered the escaped slave Onesimus to return to his master, Philemon.” John R. McKivigan, The War against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830–1865 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 30. 110. Without question, the power dynamics underlying whether or not Douglass can and/or ought to be categorized as a “Christian,” with all of the meanings underlying that nomenclature in the last half-century, have a lot to do with historians’ skepticism regarding Douglass’s religious affinity. 111. McFeely’s case is overstated; he may mean to assert that Douglass found it impossible to pursue his ambition toward ordination and still become a traveling abolitionist speaker. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 84–5. Perhaps a fairer description of the situation is given by David Chesebrough. He writes that Douglass reacted not to Christianity per se, but rather to the “chasm between profession and practice in religion”. David B. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery (Great American Orators 26; Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998), 99. 112. J. W. Hood, One Hundred Years of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (New York: A. M. E. Zion Book Concern, 1895), 541–2, quoted in Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism, 115. 113. Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass (New York: Haskell House Publishers, Ltd, 1907, 1968), 93. 114. Caroline L. Shanks, “The Biblical Antislavery Argument of the Decade, 1830–1840,” Journal of Negro History 16 (1931); repr. Religion and Slavery (ed. Paul Finkelman; Articles on American Slavery 16; New York: Garland, 1989), 616. 115. Frederick Douglass, “The American Constitution and the Slave,” in George Thompson and Frederick Douglass, Constitution of the United States (London Emancipation Committee; Tract no. 5; London, 1860), 16–34; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1855–63 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 3 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 362–63. 116. Smith, What is Scripture? 18. 117. J. W. Blassingame, “Introduction to Volume One” and “Preface,” in J. W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), xiii, lxxi; J. W. Blassingame, “Introduction to Volume Two,” in J. W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers:1847–54 (vol. 2 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), xiii; J. W. Blassingame, “Introduction to Volume Three,” in J. W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1855–63 (vol. 3 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), xiii.

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118. J. W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979); J. W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers:1847–54 (vol. 2 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982); J. W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1855–63 (vol. 3 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985); and J. W. Blassingame and John R. McKivigan, eds., The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1864–80 (vol. 4 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991). 119. The appendix is a first attempt to give as complete a list as possible of Douglass’s biblical references in his extant abolitionist speeches. It is indexed to the Blassingame volumes. 120. See the appendix for the use of both of these texts. Wolfgang Meider makes the argument that the Golden Rule is a common societal proverb, and that Douglass is using it proverbially. See Wolfgang Meider, “ ‘Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You’: Frederick Douglass’s Proverbial Struggle for Civil Rights,” Journal of American Folklore 114 (Summer 2001): 331–57. 121. In “Irish Christians and Non-Fellowship with Man-Stealers,” Douglass pleads, “Friends of the poor slave, be therefore firm and faithful in your remonstrances with Americans; let your press team with denunciations; let your pulpits proclaim to the world that Christianity disowns all fellowship with man-stealers.” Frederick Douglass, “Irish Christians and Non-Fellowship with Man-Stealers,” in Evening Packet and Correspondent (Dublin), 4 October 1845; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 35. For a complete list of Douglass’s uses of 1 Timothy in his abolitionist speeches, see the appendix. 122. Two bases for this were the “New Divinity Thought” of persons such Rev. Samuel Hopkins, and the political philosophy of John Locke. At the heart of “New Divinity” was the “‘ethic of enlightened self-interest.’ […] Hopkins thought that capitalism left few men uncorrupted and pointed to the benevolence and spiritual strength of women. […] One approached Christian perfection through acts of disinterested benevolence. It was necessary to act consistently with the essential nature of God, which was benevolence. Salvation required looking after the downtrodden and poor – especially slaves.” Donald C. Swift, Religion and the American Experience: A Social and Cultural History, 1765–1997 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 15. Lockean philosophy also reflected this notion of concern for the other so reflected in the “Golden Rule”. As a result, a cornerstone of Lockean thought is sometimes referred to as a “reverse ‘Golden Rule’: Do not do unto others what you would not want done unto you. “In addition to supporting the ‘no harm’ rule, this reverse Golden Rule is the rule of logical consistency in Locke’s argument, which Locke exhibited throughout his work and clearly held as a foundational principle of moral action. In this regard, we must not deny to others what we are not willing to deny to ourselves.” Barbara A. McGraw, Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground: Public Religion and Pursuit of the Good in a Pluralistic America (SUNY series; Religion and American Public Life; ed. William Dean; Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 55. 123. Richard T. Hughes, Myths America Lives By (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 81, argues “Douglass makes it clear that white Americans had absolutized the myth of the Christian Nation. In its highest form, that myth would call Americans to live out the moral principles of Jesus, especially his admonition to love one’s neighbor as one’s self.” Emphasis added.



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124. For a treatment of the former, see Margaret Aymer, “Douglass Identifies the Body” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southeast Conference on the Study of Religion, WinstonSalem, NC, 12 March 2005). 125. Jas 3:17, kjv. 126. In chronological order: “Irish Christians and Non-Fellowship with Man-Stealers,” “I am Here to Spread Light on American Slavery,” Southern Reporter (Cork, Ireland), 16 October 1845 (supplement); repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 39–45; “The Bible Opposes Oppression, Fraud, and Wrong,” (see n.1); “The Free Church Alliance with Slaveholders,” in Free Church Alliance with Manstealers… (Glasgow, 1846), 19–24; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 231–9; “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland,” in American Slavery: Report of a Public Meeting Held at Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, to Receive Frederick Douglass, the American Slave, on Friday, May 22, 1846 (London, 1846), 3–24; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 269–99; “Slavery Exists under the Eaves of the American Church,” Mercury (Liverpool), 23 October 1846 (Supplement); repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 466–74; “England Should Lead the Cause of Emancipation,” Times (Leeds, England), 26 December 1846; in The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 474–85; “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country,” in National Anti-Slavery Standard, 28 October 1847; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1847–54 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 2 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), 93–105; “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” in Frederick Douglass, Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, July 5th, 1852 (Rochester, 1852); repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1847–54 (ed. J. W. Blassingame, vol. 2 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), 359–93; and “John Brown and the Slaveholders’ Insurrection,” Witness (Edinburgh), 1 February 1860; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1855–63 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 3 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 312–22. 127. Douglass, “The Bible Opposes Oppression,” 129. 128. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 282. 129. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 26. As will be evident in Chapter 3, there is at least one example of Douglass’s use of Jas 3:17 in a de-formative rather than a formative stance. 130. Ibid. 131. Richard Price, “Introduction: Maroons and their Communities,” in Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (ed. Richard Price; 3rd ed.; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996), 5. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid., 6. 134. Sacvan Bercovitch, “The Biblical Basis of the American Myth,” in The Bible and American Arts and Letters (ed. Giles Gunn; SBLBAC 3; Philadelphia: Fortress; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 221. Hughes, Myths America Lives By, 66–90, argues that among the myths of

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America is “the Myth of the Christian Nation,” a myth founded in part upon the texts of the Bible. Cf. Matt 5:14, kjv. 135. Bercovitch, 221–2. 136. Price, “Introduction,” 2. 137. Kingdom of God/heaven language is interspersed through all of the Synoptics; the other two references are to Phil 3:20 and John 1:12-13. 138. Vincent L. Wimbush, The Bible and African Americans: A Brief History (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 87. 139. Swift, Religion and the American Experience, 75. 140. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 317. 141. Only forty years of those speeches are available, because there are no extant speeches that pre-date Douglass’s involvement with William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist movement. It is known that, as early 1838, Douglass became a “class leader” in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a position that required “exhortation.” In the following year, he was licensed as an “exhorter,” or “religious public speaker,” in the same denomination. Still, it is highly remarkable to have evidence of forty years of the speeches of any one person; even more remarkable when one considers that the person began speaking as a US fugitive slave. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 38–9. 142. “Reading darkness” then becomes an example of Benston’s “performative response to the historical condition of blackness-as-exile,” or more broadly “darkness”-as-exile. Benston, Performing Blackness, 12. 143. David Howard-Pitney, The Afro-American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 6. Other persons who have written about the role of the jeremiad in American life include Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The 17th Century (New York: MacMillan, 1939); Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); David W. Noble, The End of American History: Democracy, Capitalism and the Metaphor of Two Worlds in Anglo-American Historical Writing, 1880–1980 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985); Hughes, Myths America Lives By; and James Moorhead, American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War, 1860–1869 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), who notes: “The jeremiad was considerably modified during the Revolutionary and early National periods, but it never fully disappeared as a theological rationale for the sufferings of a chosen people.” Moorhead, American Apocalypse, 44. 144. Howard-Pitney, 8, author’s italics. 145. Ibid., 12. Indeed, he, with Wilson Moses, suggests that “the jeremiad was the earliest expression of black nationalism and [a] key mode of antebellum Afro-American rhetoric.” Ibid. 146. Ibid., 19–20; emphasis added. 147. Blount, Cultural Interpretation, 68; emphasis added. Many persons have made this point. See, for example, Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), especially Chapters 3–6; Will B. Gravely, “The Rise of African Churches in America (1786–1822): Reexamining the Contexts,” in African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (ed. Gayraud Wilmore; Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1989), 301–17; and Anthony Pinn, Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), especially 87ff. 148. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 240. 149. Ibid., 317. 150. Ibid., 319. 151. Henry Louis Gates, Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 247.



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152. Ibid. 153. Jacqueline Bacon, “Taking Liberty, Taking Literacy: Signifying in the Rhetoric of AfricanAmerican Abolitionists,” Southern Communication Journal 64:4 (1999): 272. As specific forms of signification, Bacon suggests “aporia; repetition and revision of a received meaning, tradition, or trope from another text; exploitation of multiple linguistic meanings, including punning; irony and ironic reversal; intertextuality that parodies, revises, or comments on other texts; and apparent flattery that is at once praise and mockery.” Ibid., 274. I will return to these forms in a later chapter. 154. Gayraud Wilmore, “Introduction to Part Two: Biblical Studies,” in African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (ed. Gayraud Wilmore; Durham, NC and London, Duke University Press, 1989), 101. 155. Vincent L. Wimbush, “The Bible and African Americans: An Outline of an Interpretative History,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (ed. Cain Hope Felder; Minniapolis: Fortress, 1991), 88; Blount, Cultural Criticism, 56. However, in making this assertion, Blount does not critique the fundamental agenda of the guild: that finally biblical interpretation is about the Bible as end rather than as means to some end. 156. Wimbush, “Interpretive History,” 88; emphasis added. It is this aspect of African American biblical criticism, and “dark” biblical criticism in general, this signifying upon one’s social context, with the Bible as only one of several tools, that should expand the study of African American biblical reading, and “darkness reading” overall, to something far more than a source for an expanded “meaning potential” of biblical texts within the constructs of guild-sanctioned biblical exegesis. 157. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 236; emphasis added. 158. Charles H. Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 2; emphasis added. 159. Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: Crossing, 1984), 110–13. 160. Ronald K. Burke, Frederick Douglass: Crusading Orator for Human Rights (New York: Garland, 1996) contains a chapter on Douglass’s “Rhetorical Development” but it serves more as a biographical chapter than as an oratorical analysis. In a similar biographical vein are the works written by Gerald Fulkerson and by Robert T. Oliver respectively: Gerald Fulkerson, “Exile as Emergence: Frederick Douglass in Great Britain, 1845–1847,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 60:1 (Feb 1974), 69–82; Robert T. Oliver, History of Public Speaking in America (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1965), 245–53. Meider, “ ‘Do Unto Others,’ ” 331–57, focuses on Douglass’s use of biblical and societal proverbs in his rhetoric, but does not analyze the speeches as a whole. 161. Bernard K. Duffy and Halford R. Ryan, “Series Forward” in David B. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery (Great American Orators 26; Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998), x. 162. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass, 83, n.1. So too do Duffy and Ryan. See Bernard K. Duffy and Halford R. Ryan, “An Introduction to American Political Oratory in the Twentieth Century,” in American Orators of the Twentieth Century: Critical Studies and Sources, eds Bernard K. Duffy and Halford R. Ryan (New York: Greenwood, 1987), xiii–xxii. 163. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 269–99. 164. The exceptions are “Love of God,” which he gave in Syracuse, New York, 24 September 1847 and “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” delivered in Rochester, New York, 5 July 1852; “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country,” 93; “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” 359. 165. J. W. Blassingame, “Introduction to Series One,” l.

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166. Henry Louis Gates, Figures in Black, 104–105. 167. Blassingame, “Introduction to Series One,” lv. 168. Blassingame, vol. 1, 1841–46, 102, n.5. 169. Ibid. 170. “Charges and Defense of the Free Church,” in Anti-Slavery Soirée: Report of the Speeches Delivered at a Soirée in Honor of Messrs. Douglass, Wright, and Buffum… (Dundee, 1846), 21–9; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 180–2; “The Free States, Slavery, and the Sin of the Free Church,” Advertiser (Renfrewshire, Scotland), 28 March 1846; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 188–9; “The Relation of the Free Church to the Slave Church,” Advertiser (Renfrewshire, Scotland), 28 March 1846; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 194; “A Few Facts and Personal Observations of Slavery,” Advertiser (Ayr, Scotland), 26 March 1846; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 204; “Send Back the Blood-Stained Money,” Advertiser (Renfrewshire, Scotland), 2 May 1846; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 242–3; “American and Scottish Prejudice against the Slave,” Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh), 7 May 1846; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 247–9; “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland,” 297–9; “Slavery, the Free Church, and British Agitation against Bondage,” Guardian (Newcastle), 8 August 1846; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 336–7; “The General Assembly of the Free Church,” in Report of the Proceedings of the Great Anti-Slavery Meeting Held in the Rev. Mr. Cairns’s Church, On Wednesday, 23d September, 1846, Including the Speeches of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Esq. and Frederick Douglass, Esq. Taken in Shorthand by Cincinnatus (Paisley, Scotland, 1846); repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 426–33; and “Slavery, the Evangelical Alliance, and the Free Church,” Argus (Glasgow), 5 October 1846; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 451–2. 171. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 272. 172. Ibid. 173. Ibid., 275. 174. Ibid., 273–4, 277–9. 175. Ibid., 281. 176. Ibid., 282. 177. Ibid., 282–3. 178. Ibid., 286. 179. Ibid., 287.



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180. Ibid., 288–9. 181. Ibid., 289–90. 182. Ibid., 296. 183. Ibid., 297–8. “Men-stealer” is a common trope deriving from 1 Tim 1:10. See the discussion of this trope in Chapter 2. 184. Ibid., 298. 185. Ibid., 299. 186. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass, 83. 187. The latter two are parallel texts, the first from the Synoptic tradition, and the second from the Q source. See Table 1, above. 188. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 282. 189. Douglass does not restrict his quotes to the New Testament. Within this text, in addition to the six citations noted, and the trope “men-stealers” from 1 Tim 1:10, he quotes Deut 32:20; he also references New Testament texts John 3:23 and Philemon. 190. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass, 96–9. 191. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 282–3. 192. See the underscored sections of sentences 1-5, above. 193. Sentence 9, above. 194. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 283. 195. See the bold-print sections of sentences 6–8, above. 196. The latter half of sentence 5, above. 197. See the italicized portions of sentences 9 and 10, above. 198. See italicized sections in sentences 9–12, above. 199. Ibid. 200. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass, 90. 201. Ibid., 96. 202. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 275, 279, 283. 203. Ibid., 283. 204. See text in table above. 205. Ibid. 206. Perhaps contra McFeely; although there is no evidence in these speeches of Douglass’s allegiance to a denominational body, or even to a worshipping community, there is overwhelming evidence for his ongoing religiosity, well past his first leave-taking of New Bedford in 1845, as will be seen below. 207. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 282–3. 208. Ibid. Douglass appears to be paraphrasing Matt 6:24 209. Jacqueline C. Bacon uses these three descriptors as her definition of signifying, see n.100 above. Bacon, “Taking Liberty,” 272. 210. Ibid. 211. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 282. 212. Ibid., 281. 213. Ibid. 214. Ibid., 282. 215. Bacon, “Taking Liberty,” 272. 216. Ibid. 217. Douglass, “American Slavery,” 282. 218. Thus his quotations of the Grimké sisters’ Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses and James Birney Gillespie’s The American Churches; see above. 219. Shanks, “Biblical Anti-Slavery Argument,” 616.

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220. Ibid. 221. Ibid., 282. 222. Douglass, “Irish Christians,” 35. 223. Douglass, “I Am Here,” 44. 224. Douglass, “Free Church Alliance,” 235. 225. Douglass, “Slavery Exists Under the Eaves,” 472–3. 226. Douglass, “England Should Lead,” 479–80. 227. It is probably not the only time Douglass did so; however, according to Blassingame, a large number of Douglass’s papers were lost in a house fire, and those that survived were neglected by historians for many decades. So recovering further evidence of Douglass’s use of Jas 3:17 in the US seems unlikely. However, if Douglass’s practices in the US did not deviate dramatically from those in Great Britain, it seems probable that, just as he repeated themes and tropes in his British speeches, he would have done the same in his American speeches. J. W. Blassingame, “Preface” to vol. 1, xiii. 228. Douglass, “Love of God,” 99–101. 229. Douglass, “The Bible Opposes Oppression,” 126. 230. Ibid., 128. 231. Ibid., 128–9. 232. Ibid., 129. 233. Ibid., 128. 234. Ibid., 128–9. 235. Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” 378. 236. Ibid. 237. Ibid. 238. Howard-Pitney, Afro-American Jeremiad, 8. His emphases. 239. Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” 363–4. 240. Ibid., 365. 241. Howard-Pitney, Afro-American Jeremiad, 8. His emphases. 242. Ibid. 243. Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” 387. 244. J. W. Blassingame, untitled opening paragraph to Frederick Douglass, “John Brown,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1855–63 (vol. 3. of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews; New Haven: Yale, 1985), 313. 245. Douglass, “John Brown,” 315. 246. Ibid. Cf. Matt 7:12; Luke 6:31. 247. Ibid., 317. 248. Ibid. The quote is more likely the Matthean version than the Lukan. “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” Matt 7:12 (kjv). 249. Ibid. 250. “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” Matt 7:6 (kjv). 251. “There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.” Isa. 48:22 (kjv). See also Isa. 57:21. 252. Jas 3:17. (contra Blassingame, vol. 3, 317 n. 9); Douglass, “John Brown,” 317. 253. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), xii. 254. Douglass, “England Should Lead,” 477. 255. Scott, Domination, 152.



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256. Classifying this according to Wimbush’s schema is a bit difficult. Arguably, Douglass is engaging in de-formation, the de[con]struction of that which is being constructed by the dominant society. An argument may also be made that, insofar as he is addressing a group of “insiders,” that is, of abolitionists, and is instructing them on the correct analysis of a series of events in their mutual struggle, Douglass is engaging in a form of reform[ulation], the de[con]struction of a false perception of his own “community”. There is, of course, the matter euphemization; for if Douglass had been completely comfortable in this community, one wonders if he would have felt the need to euphemize upon Jas 3:17. However, even in addressing one’s own community, one must presume the occasional necessity of euphemization for the protection of the orator and the audience who always already exist in the “darkness” of suspicion from the dominant culture. The difficulty here is, in part, the definition of Douglass’s “community,” and whether that definition always already includes all abolitionists or only includes those of color. Certainly, Wimbush’s schema intends the third definition to refer to African Americans addressing African American communities; but to what extent does the whole question of “insider-outsider” break down when one is truly in exile? 257. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 26. 258. Note, however, that Douglass almost always pairs this text with Matt 7:12/Luke 6:31 which is directly attributed to Jesus. 259. I could find no evidence that Douglass was aware of nascent historical criticism; thus there is no reason to suppose that he would have known the difference between undisputed Pauline texts and the various schools that arose around Paul. Certainly, Douglass’s familiarity with the pro-slavery choice of texts attributed to Paul might have made him leery of all texts attributed to that author. 260. Jas 4:4. 261. For the sake of convention, I will refer to the author of this ancient discourse as “James” and to the ancient document alternatively as “the discourse” and “the epistle” (for it does have at least an epistolary introduction). Unless otherwise noted, all of the translations in this chapter are my own. 262. Dibelius argues that James “…es fehlt in dem ganzen Schriftstück der gedankliche Zusammenhang.” In support of his assertion, he identifies different smaller or longer groupings of sayings within the epistle: treatises (Abhandlungen), series of sayings (Gruppenbildungen), isolated sayings (isolierte Sprüche), and groups of sayings (Spruchgruppen), in which last category he includes 3:13-17, excluding 3:18. Martin Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus (ed. Heinrich Greeven; Göttingen: Vanderhoek and Ruprecht, 1959), 2; Martin Dibelius, James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James (rev. Heinrich Greeven; Hermeneia – A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 1. 263. However, there is as yet no agreement among scholars regarding the structure of that argument. There are too many exempla of potential structures to give a thorough accounting of them in this short analysis. Nevertheless, it will be helpful to highlight a few for reference. E. Baasland, W. H. Wueller, W. H. Wachob and others posit a rhetorical structure of James based heavily on the rhetoric of the ancient world. (Wilhelm H. Wuellner, “Der Jakobusbrief im Licht der Rhetorik und Textpragmatik,” LB 43 (1978): 36–7; Ernst Baasland, “Der Jakosbusbrief als neutestamentliche Weisheitschrift,” ST 36 (1982): 132; Wesley Hiram Wachob, The Voice of Jesus in the Social Rhetoric of James (SNTSMS 106; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 55–6). Timothy B. Cargal, Restoring the Diaspora: Discursive Structure and Purpose in the Epistle of James (SBLDS 144; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 52, prefers a Greimasian semantic structuring of the epistle. Other commentators, like David Hutchinson Edgar and P. H. Davids, present outlines based on their particular interests in literary-rhetorical analysis and redaction criticism, cf. David Hutchinson Edgar, Has God Not Chosen the Poor? The Social Setting of the Epistle

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of James (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 216–17; Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 27–9. 264. E. C. Blackman, The Epistle of James: Introduction and Commentary (TBC; New York: MacMillan, 1957), 23, follows Dibelius exclusively. Todd C. Penner, The Epistle of James and Eschatology: Re-reading an Ancient Christian Letter (JSNTSup, 121; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 123, 158–213, argues for both paraenesis and epistle, saying that James is a letter “of exhortation and advice”. Ibid., 123. 265. In order, E. M. Sidebottom, James, Jude, 2 Peter (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 1; Davids, Epistle of James, 22; and Patrick Hartin, James and the Q Sayings of Jesus (JSNTSup, 47; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 34. 266. Wachob, The Voice of Jesus, 52. 267. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB, 37A; New York: Doubleday, 1995), 24. 268. And they are not alone. Pedrito U. Maynard-Reid, Poverty and Wealth in James (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987), 11, argues simply that James is an epistle, as does Adamson, who considers James “the first Papal Encyclical”. James B. Adamson, James: The Man and his Message (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 110–16. 269. Dibelius, 11–47; and also in Adamson, James: The Man and his Message, 1–6; Blackman, The Epistle of James, 31; Pheme Perkins, First and Second Peter, James and Jude (IBC; Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1995), 83–5; James Hardy Ropes, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of James (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), 49; and Sidebottom, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 12. 270. Hartin, James and the Q Sayings of Jesus, 233–40; L. Johnson, The Letter of James, 89–121; Douglass J. Moo, The Letter of James: An Introduction and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 19–35; Maynard-Reid, Poverty and Wealth in James, 1–11; Penner, The Epistle of James and Eschatology, 259–78 (however, Penner does not identify James the Just as the author); A. T. Robertson, Studies in the Epistle of James (rev. Heber F. Peacock; Nashville: Broadman, 1959), 1–27; Alexander Ross, The Epistles of James and John (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 11–20; R. V. G. Tasker, The General Epistle of James: An Introduction and Commentary (TNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960), 13–38. 271. Davids, The Epistle of James, 22; Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James (BNTC; London: A. & C. Black, 1980), 38–42; and Ralph P. Martin, James (WBC 48; Waco, TX: Word Books, 1988), lxxvii. 272. For James’s concern about conduct, see Jas 1:9-11, 22-27; 2:1-4, 14-17; 3:13-16; 5:1-6; and 5:19-20; for his concern about speech, see Jas 1:5-8, 19-21; 3:1-12; 4:11-17; and 5:12-18; for his concern about the community’s relationship to , see Jas 1:2-4, 12-18; 2:5-13, 18-26; 3:17-18; 4:1-10; 5:7-11. 273. For some commentators, it does not. Martin Dibelius, for instance, identifies the  as the “pious poor” or the “poor in spirit”. Dibelius/Greeven, James, 84. While A. T. Robertson does not go to Dibelius’ extreme, nevertheless he aligns himself with the notion of the “pious poor” (Robertson, Studies in the Epistle of James, 45). “Thank God,” he writes, “that this infinite wealth of spirit is still open to the poor all over the world who find the door of competency closed in their faces. The pious poor is more than a phrase. It is often literal fact.” Ralph P. Martin distinguishes between James’s use of  in this passage and of  in a later one. The former, he argues, is an identifying marker of social stigmatization, while the latter denotes economic poverty (Martin, James, 23). In a different vein, Edgar, citing the work of Bruce Malina, argues that “ is not principally an economic term, but rather denotes one who, due to unfortunate circumstances, has experienced a devaluation of his inherited status within the structures of kinship and politics, consequently having to exist precariously, in destitu-



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tion or near-destitution on the margins of society” (Edgar, Has not God Chosen the Poor, 106). His assertion strikes me as self-contradictory. 274. Maynard-Reid, Poverty and Wealth in James, 40. James B. Adamson also reads the text economically, envisioning a rich member of the community involved in the Lucan utopian act of giving away wealth to the general community. This passage, he argues, “chimes with early Christian ‘communism’[…]”Adamson, James, 25. Other commentators who favor an economic reading include Moo, Letter of James; Sidebottom, James, Jude, 2 Peter; Davids, Epistle of James; Ropes, Critical and Exegetical Commentary; Laws, Epistle of James; and Richard Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage, New Testament Readings (London: Routledge, 1999), 102–4. Cain Hope Felder focuses on the class matters in Jas 2:1-13 in “Class and God’s Law: The Epistle of James,” in Troubling Biblical Waters, 118–34. Luke Timothy Johnson further points out that   are typically recipients of God’s favor in LXX. He specifically links this text with Prov 3:34, in which God “resists the arrogant but gives a gift to the lowly” (). (L. Johnson, Letter of James, 185). 275. The class differentiation in this passage seems largely unchallenged. Its rhetoric is a simple “antithetic comparison” of two vastly different persons. Wachob, Voice of Jesus, 75. There is some question, initially raised by Dibelius, regarding the historicity of such an exemplum. Dibelius argues that said passage cannot be used “as a historical source for actual circumstances within the Christian community” because of its literary nature. Dibelius/Greeven, James, 131. (I am mindful of those who refused to believe Douglass’s first-hand accounts of chattel slavery.) Perhaps in response to this, Sophie Laws notes that “for the example to convey [James’] message, it must presumably bear some relation to his readers’ experience, and portray a situation which either has or could obtain for them.” Laws, Epistle of James, 98. Most telling is Dibelius’ indictment that James focuses more on the distinction between wealth and poverty than on the distinction between “believer and non-believer”. He writes, “[James] warns against a cringing servility toward the rich person, no matter what his faith or general convictions might be. The spiritual welfare of the rich man remains totally outside the consideration.” Dibelius/Greeven, James, 136. 276. Note that the poor person, now definitively  rather than , is not accorded the designation . 277. As Laws notes, in this passage, James is appealing to the community’s direct experience. Laws, Epistle of James, 98. 278. For the translation of  as slander see L. Johnson, Letter of James, 292–3. 279. James alternates between , , and , all related syntactically. There is a sort of boasting that James praises: the boasting of the poor in their exaltation and of the rich in their impoverishment (1:9). 280. Some will, no doubt, point out that the word  is absent from James, and from this seek to make the argument that a discussion of “darkness” here is inappropriate. However, even if James does not use the term, it will become evident that “” for him designates that which is emergent and traumatic. As such, it is a kind of “darkness” consistent with my, and Wimbush’s, definition of this term. 281. Or more literally, “whoever might wish to be a friend of the world establishes himself as an enemy of God” ( and  are both masculine). 282.  only occurs in three other references in GNT. In 1 Cor 2:14, it is used to describe someone who “does not receive the things of the spirit of God” (      ); in 1 Cor 15:44, it describes a kind of body ( ) which is the direct, and unfavorable, opposite to the “spiritual body” ( ); and in Jude, those who are causing division ( ) are described as    . Thus, I agree with L. Johnson that the best translation of this term is “unspiritual”. L. Johnson, James, 272.

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283. See the use of  in Jas 4:2. 284. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 17. 285. Ibid., 26. My emphasis. 286. Ibid. Wimbush here specifies “African American” culture, but as he has previously stated that such need not be the only darkness readers, I have expanded it, in this case, to use with James. 287. As L. Johnson points out, the use of  in James is “entirely egalitarian: the readers are ‘brothers and sisters,’ not only of each other but also of the author” (L. Johnson, Letter of James, 82). Nevertheless, James’s use of the imperative suggests that he sees himself (and expects to be seen) as the first among equals. 288. Such rhetoric stands in contradiction to the J and D traditions concerning berakah in the Hebrew Bible; for both the Yahwistic and Deuteronomist traditions, the mark of the berakah of the deity is wealth. I thank R. Bailey for this insight. 289. James’s language parallels Ps 32:9; 39:6; 78:70; 101:5; 103:8; 105:26; 111:4; Prov 2:3-6; 3:9, 34; 10:12; 11:20; 15:1; 16:27; 27:1; and Sir 1:10; 2:1; 3:17; 5:13, 19; 14:1; 15:11-20; and 35:12. Several commentators address these matters, among them L. Johnson, Letter of James, 27– 43, 48–58; Wachob, Voice of Jesus, 114–53; Hartin, James and the Q Sayings of Jesus (passim); Edgar, Has Not God Chosen the Poor (passim); and Penner, Epistle of James and Eschatology, 74–103. 290. As will be seen below, this sort of signification closely parallels what Frederick Douglass does with the biblical text. And there are similarities between James’s use of scripture and that of his contemporaries: cf. Paul’s use of Abraham (Romans 4 and Galatians 3). 291. Not even Hartin, James and the Q Sayings of Jesus, who argues that James is part of the Jewish-Christian trajectory of first-century discourse, will go so far as to argue for dependence. 292. James refers to the parable of the sower; see above. 293. This usage likely derives from the Septuagint’s description of Moses and David as  of God (Pss. 78:70; 105:26). 294. Martin Luther described the epistle as “eine rechte stroherne Epistel,…denn sie doch keine evangelishe Art an ihr hat”. Quoted in Revere F. Weidner, “Excursus II,” in Annotations of the General Epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude (The Lutheran Commentary: A Plain Exposition of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, vol. 11; New York: Christian Literature, 1897), 88. 295. There is no historical evidence of any Roman or regional civic persecution of either James’s or Paul’s communities. However, their interpretation – their reading – of the world around them as reflected in their rhetoric suggests a profound discomfort with the world. It is perhaps the case that identifying with these illicit groups brought with it some social stigma. It is impossible to know the extent to which this might have been the case; it is enough to note that both James and Paul considered it to be enough of a threat to their audiences that they try to combat defection and to urge endurance in the face of trial. Some Pauline references that contrast Paul’s community with the  include 1 Cor 2:12; 3:19; 4:10-13; 7:31; 11:32; 2 Cor 1:12; Gal 6:14; and Phil 2:14-15. 296. L. Johnson notes some differences between the two discourses, notably the Petrine author’s “fundamentally world-affirming stance” as well as Christological and ecclesiological differences. This, he argues, make the points of resemblance of these two discourses “fade into a fabric of quite another color” (L. Johnson, Letter of James, 55). However, Douglass’s work also differs strongly from James in world-affirmation and a host of other matters; this does not negate dependence, but rather points to a trajectory of thought emerging from James’s work that he might not have considered (nor of which might he have approved). 297. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass, 83.



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298. In other instances, James uses  without the qualifier “”. These are found in 4:11; 5:7 and 5:9. Wachob notes that this choice (along with others such as   and ) suggests “that ‘communal relations’ are the overriding concern” (in at least part of James). Wachob, Voice of Jesus, 161. 299. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass, 23, 33, 83, 84. 300. Wachob, The Voice of Jesus, 136. 301. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass, 83. 302. Ibid., 96–9. 303. By contrast, the encomium on faith in Heb. 11, with its constant repetition of , is a marvelous ancient example of the use of cadence. For a discussion of the anaphoric use of  in the encomium, see Pamela Michelle Eisenbaum, The Jewish Heroes of Christian History: Hebrews 11 in Literary Context (SBLDS, 156; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 143. 304. For “to think with,” see Peter Robert Lamont Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Lectures on the history of religions; new ser. 13; New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 154. 305. Howard-Pitney, Afro-American Jeremiad, 8. 306. Literally, “of what sort he is”. 307. See also the translation by L. Johnson: “You are people who do not know about tomorrow, what your life will be like.” L. Johnson, Letter of James, 291. This contra the nrsv: “Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life?” 308. Jacqueline C. Bacon uses these three descriptors as her definition of signifying, see n.100 above. Bacon, “Taking Liberty,” 272. 309. Ibid. 310. “,” LSJ, 688. 311. L. Johnson, Letter of James, 273. 312. The word  is hapax legomenon in the GNT. It derives from the verb , to judge; thus my translation above. It is to be noted that the kjv translation, “impartial,” is what Douglass knew and quoted. 313. There is some debate as to whether 3:18 should be included in this pericope, as it no longer directly addresses the principal matter of  /. However, the repetition of /, and  between 3:17 and 3:18 argue for the latter's inclusion. In its simplest form, then, 3:17 is a text within a pericope that spans from 3:13-18. Blackman, Epistle of James; Cargal, Restoring the Diaspora; Davids, Epistle of James; Edgar, Has Not God Chosen the Poor; Hartin, James and the Q Saying of Jesus; Laws, Epistle of James; Martin, James; Moo, Letter of James; Penner, Epistle of James and Eschatology; Perkins, First and Second Peter, James and Jude; Ropes, Critical and Exegetical Commentary; Ross, Epistles of James and John; Sidebottom, James, Jude, 2 Peter; and Tasker, General Epistle all choose these verses as the smallest possible boundaries for this pericope. 314. Three aspects of the diatribe can be found in 3:13-18: “rhetorical questions” (3:13), “virtue and vice lists” (3:14-15, 17), and “sharp contrasts” (3:14-17). It is of some significance that the verse Douglass chooses as his opening volley on the “darkness” of slavery is a virtue list. L. Johnson, Letter of James, 268. As will be shown below, by making this choice, Douglass is setting up a sharp contrast between the virtues of true religion and the vices of the religion of slave owners. However, I do not agree with him that the diatribe extends from 3:13–4:10. I do not question the relatedness of the two sections, for I agree that James is a single discourse. However, the rhetoric concerning   and   ends demonstrably at 3:17, with 3:18 as a concluding sentence. L. Johnson, Letter of James, 267–90. 315. The alliteration in the phrase is enhanced by James’s choice of , rather than the more common  as the opening temporal adverb:   

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316. This harmonizes well with James’s overall argument about the inseparability of faith and action. Cf. Jas 2. 317. See the discussion above. 318. Previously, James uses  in describing how mercy interacts with judgment (2:13). However, to describe boasting, James more frequently uses  and its noun . 319. James’s commentary, to be sure, only represents his perspective on the situation. For him, community survival depends on the solidarity of its members, a solidarity placed in jeopardy by factious ambition. As will be noted below, there is a thematic parallel between eschewing “earthly” () wisdom and maintaining enmity with the . 320.  only occurs twice in James’s discourse, however , “work,” occurs some twelve times in his treatise about faith and works in Chapter 2, suggesting the importance that James lends to conduct – as defined by “deeds” ( ). 321. Note the thematic similarity to the second chapter’s admonition against  in James’s use of , and the way that the presence of  echoes its use previously in 2:13 (       ). 322. L. Johnson also notes this parallel. L. Johnson, Letter of James, 270. 323. Here,  must mean humble or abased. If this passage was familiar to James’s community, he might expect them also to remember the discussion that immediately follows Sir 3:17. In 3:18-19, Sirach expounds on the relationship between the deity and  . It is Sirach’s assertion that such a person glorifies the deity. 324.       and     ’  complete the synthetic parallels begun with   in 3:26, 28, and thus are also referents to the “hard-hearted” person. 3:28 completes the parallel, arguing that the arrogant person cannot be healed because a plant of evil takes root in that person (     ). 325. John J. Collins argues that “the instructional character of Sirach is shown especially in his use of the […] intermittent address to ‘my son,’ especially in the early chapters. By the time of Sirach, this form of address is stereotypical, but it signals that Sirach stands in the tradition of Proverbs, and more broadly in the long line of Near Eastern, primarily Egyptian, instructional treatises that stretches back to the third millenium.” John J. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age (OTL; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), 37. 326. L. Johnson, Letter of James, 275. 327. Here the use of , rather than . 328. Patrick Hartin suggests, further, that 3:18 ties James to the makarisms of Matthew, for    may well be a reference to   of Matt 5:9. Matthew claims that these are they who will receive the name  . James sees his community in exactly that light. As noted above, in 1:18, he affirms that his community was given birth to by God; its members are, in essence, children of God. Hartin, James and the Q Sayings, 141–2. 329. Bacon, “Taking Liberty,” 274 330. Cf. especially the personification of   in Prov. 8 and in Sir 3. 331. Douglass, Narrative, 31. 332. Ibid., 31–2. 333. James C. Scott notes that resistance includes disguised, low-profile acts such as “everyday forms of resistance, e.g. poaching, squatting, desertion, evasion, foot-dragging”. Scott, Domination, 198. Further, the spirituals constitute a corpus of resistant “readings” of the Bible that emerged out of a people kept in functional illiteracy by the dominant society. For more on this see Howard Thurman, Deep River and The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1975); James Hal Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpreta-



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tion (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980); Jon Michael Spencer, Protest and Praise: Sacred Music of Black Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Exorcising Evil: A Womanist Perspective on the Spirituals (Bishop Henry McNeal Turner/ Sojourner Truth Series in Black Religion 14; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), and Lawrence W. Levine, “Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness: An Exploration in Neglected Sources,” in African American Religion: Interpretative Essays in History and Culture (ed. Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau; New York: Routledge, 1997), 57–87. The role of religion in slave resistance is discussed in Vincent Harding, “Religion and Resistance among Antebellum Slaves, 1800–1860,” in African American Religion: Interpretative Essays in History and Culture (ed. Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau; New York: Routledge, 1997), 107–30. 334. Thus Wimbush: “A reading of darkness as psychosocial reorientation, as self-possession and critical point of departure, as a higher critical gaze can reorient the agenda of interpretation. A reading of darkness is a type of reading of Scripture that is a form of exiting culture.” Wimbush, “Introduction,” 21. 335. Douglass, Narrative, 32. 336. Note the language of escape, of marronage. Reading here is figured as “the pathway from slavery to freedom”. Ibid., 31–2. 337. Ibid., 34, 37–8. 338. Douglass, My Bondage, 130. 339. Lampe, Frederick Douglass, 9. 340. Ibid., 10. 341. Douglass, My Bondage, 123–4. 342. Brown, Body and Society, 154. 343. Douglass, Narrative, 31. 344. Scott, Domination, 108ff. 345. Ibid., 118. 346. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 235; emphasis added. 347. Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 47–8. 348. Ibid., 50; author’s emphasis. 349. Ibid., 61. 350. Ibid., 53. 351. Ibid., 71; emphasis added. 352. Ibid., 75. 353. Ibid., 82. 354. Smith, What is Scripture?, 18–19. 355. Ibid., 237. 356. Ibid., 18. 357. Ibid; emphasis added. 358. Ibid., 231. 359. Ibid., 232. 360. Charles H. Long, “Civil Rights – Civil Religion: Visible People and Invisible Religion,” in American Civil Religion (ed. Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones; New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 217–18. 361. That is, to “read darkness”. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 21. 362. I do not wish, here, to enter into the debate begun by R. Bellah regarding whether, and the extent to which, there is such a thing as American civil religion. I do not propose that the texts referred to are “ontologically” scriptural in some sense, or that the cultural use of them necessarily constitutes religion. Rather, insofar as Douglass uses them to propose “an-other” reality to

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the “darkness” of slavery, the relationship into which he enters with them is akin to a “scriptural” relationship. For the seminal article on the civil religion debate, see Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” in American Civil Religion (ed. Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones; New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 21–44. For a counter-argument, see Richard John Neuhaus, “From Civil Religion to Public Philosophy,” in Civil Religion and Political Theology (ed. Leroy S. Rouner; Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion 8; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 98–110. For more on the myths of America, see Hughes, Myths America Lives By. 363. Jeffrey D. Mason, Melodrama and the Myth of America (Drama and Performance Studies; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), 10. 364. Howard-Pitney, Afro-American Jeremiad, 5. 365. Ralph Henry Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic Thought (2nd ed.; New York: Ronald, 1956, 1940), 12–25. 366. Ibid., 14. 367. McGraw, Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, 40–41. Locke is sometimes described as a “secular” political philosopher. (See, for example, Cushing Strout, The New Heavens and New Earth: Political Religion in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1973.) However, Barbara McGraw argues convincingly that Locke is better considered a practitioner of “reasonable religion,” religion that empowers the individual conscience over against the power of the institution. McGraw, Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, 23–108. 368. Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic Thought, 15. 369. Ibid., 20. 370. McGraw, Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, 73. 371. Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic Thought, 22. 372. Ibid. 373. Bercovitch, “Biblical Basis,” 221. 374. Howard-Pitney, Afro-American Jeremiad, 5 375. Carl van Doren and Carl Carmer, American Scriptures (New York: Boni and Gaer, 1946), 61. I could not help using this reference, even though the entire “Declaration” is not contained in it. This titular choice by its two authors underlines the sense in which the Declaration and other documents took on a “scriptural” function in the US. The excerpts in this book emerged out of a “series originally broadcast for the radio audience during the intermissions of the Sunday concerts of the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York, from May 1943 through 1944. In that troubled time they were intended to lift the spirits of Americans by recalling to them heroic things done and wise things said in the American past, by men and women who had once lived through other great national emergencies with the faith and fortitude which were now again demanded of the people of this nation.” One source for the full text of the “Declaration of Independence” is Harrison T. Meserole, Walter Sutton, and Brom Weber, eds, Early American Literature (vol. 1 of American Literature: Tradition and Innovation; Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1969), 503–506. 376. McGraw, Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, 323. 377. Frederick Douglass, “Slavery Corrupts American Society and Religion,” Examiner (Cork), 20 October 1845; repr. The Frederick Douglass Papers: 1841–46 (ed. J. W. Blassingame; vol. 1 of The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series 1: Speeches, Debates and Interviews; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 46. 378. Douglass, “England Should Lead,” 475–6. 379. Ibid. 380. Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 82. 381. Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 11; for the impact of Evangelical Christianity on African Americans,



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see Albert J. Raboteau, “The Black Experience in American Evangelicalism: The Meaning of Slavery,” in African American Religion: Interpretative Essays in History and Culture (ed. Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau; New York: Routledge, 1997), 89–106. 382. McGraw, Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, 89. 383. Swift, Religion and the American Experience, 75. 384. Millenarianism is frequently credited to the Mormon and Millerist movements, even though it became a universally accepted construct. Gabriel, Course of American Democratic Thought, 36–7. 385. Ibid., 38. 386. Howard-Pitney, Afro-American Jeremiad, 8. His emphases. 387. Ibid. 388. Douglass, “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland,” 273–4. 389. Douglass, “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country,” 102. Luke 12:47 (kjv). 390. Thomas Jefferson, “To John Holmes,” in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (ed. H. A. Washington; vol. 7; Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1871), 159. 391. Henry Bidleman Bascom, Methodism and Slavery: with Other Matters in Controversy Between the North and the South (Frankfort, KY, 1845), 47; quoted in Lewis M. Purifoy, “The Southern Methodist Church and the Proslavery Argument,” Journal of Southern History 32 (1966), 329; repr. Religion and Slavery (vol. 16 of Articles on American Slavery; ed. Paul Finkleman; New York: Garland, 1989), 579. 392. Douglass, “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country,” 105. 393. Douglass, “I Am Here,” 43. 394. Douglass, “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country,” 99. Cf. Genesis 7–9. 395. McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 31. 396. Ibid., 14. 397. Ibid. 398. Shanks, “The Biblical Antislavery Argument of the Decade, 1830–1840,” 635. 399. McKivigan, War Against Proslavery Religion, 31. According to McKivigan, these were not particularly effective against the arguments raised by the proslavery factions. However, part of the reason for this is not the strength or weakness of the arguments but the specter of darkness that each is “reading,” a “darkness” that the other does not acknowledge as such. 400. And, the kjv translation of  in Jas 1:1 is “servant” rather than “slave”. 401. It is no accident that the three parallel types of rhetoric are consonant with the three movments in the cycle of marronage posited by Wimbush. In fact, Wimbush acknowledges that any single “reading” of darkness may be consonant with any or all of the three movements in the cycle of marronage. As he puts it, “I do not intend for any one phase or moment to cancel out the others; I intend only to indicate that each successive moment represents movement, change, diversification, complexity in orientation…” Wimbush, “Introduction,” 23. By “parallel rhetorics,” I am not suggesting that in each instance Douglass quotes James. Rather, both Douglass and James show similar affinities to these rhetorics, affinities that, I will argue, made James an attractive source of “scripture” for Douglass. 402. L. Johnson, Letter of James, 169. 403. Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 82. 404. L. Johnson, James, 171. 405. My translation. Eisenbaum notes: “With Abraham the Genesis story itself provides the scriptural language of alienation. The heroes are said to have confessed () that they were strangers () and exiles (), the tone of which is an intensification of the expression in Genesis. They declare themselves unrelated to the world in which they live.

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More importantly, they are alienated from the  from which they come as well as the land of divine promise […] their yearning for  is not a nostalgic longing for their own home, but rather for a better one, the heavenly one, as is stated in v. 16.” Eisenbaum, Jewish Heroes, 161. 406. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of examples; rather it is intended to illustrate the prevalence of the theme of “exile” and estrangement from world in the texts of the New Testament. 407. Douglass, “I Am Here,” 40. 408. Douglass, “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country,” 102–3. 409. Douglass, “I Am Here,” 40. 410. L. Johnson, Letter of James, 314. 411. Ibid., 313–14. Cf. T. Jud. 22:2; T. Levi 8:11; T. Ab. 13:4; 2 Bar. 55:6. All of these refer not to the parousia of a messiah but to God. Ibid., 314. 412. Again, this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of examples, but a demonstration of the presence of this world-orientation within the New Testament. 413. See for instance Isa. 65:17-25; Mal. 4; and Joel 2; this last is interpreted by Luke in Acts 2:16-21 414. See Chapter 2, above. 415. Douglass, “American Slavery, American Religion,” 283. 416. Ibid., 282. The references are to the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:29-35) and to the “Golden Rule” (Matt 7:12). 417. With the exception of Titus, Philemon, 1 Peter, 2 John, and Jude,  is the common form of address to the community. It also occurs in reference to the community in Matt 23:8 and in Rev 6:11. 418. For a full discussion of this see Aymer, “Douglass Identifies the Body”. 419. Douglass, “The Bible Opposes Oppression,” 128. 420. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 5. 421. Douglass, “England Should Lead,” 476; emphasis added. 422. Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 82. 423. Schüssler-Fiorenza, “The Ethics of Biblical Interpretation,”13. 424. Long, Significations, 170. 425. Benston, 9. 426. Howard-Pitney, Afro-American Jeremiad, 8. 427. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 23; Long, Significations, 170. Long’s observation about the oppressed, above, mirrors Wimbush’s cycles of marronage. His concept of “second creation” describes an aspect of “darkness” that “darkness readers” must address: that the dominant culture identifies them in a way that perpetuates their experience of “darkness.” In response to that second creation, Long proposes a first creation, a movement toward “autonomy and truth,” both of which are defined over against the dominant culture. That second creation – to reject the definition of the dominant culture, and to come to voice about self-identity and ideal visions of reality – is described in Wimbush’s cycles of marronage. How the oppressed “deal with” the darkness and come to voice about their “autonomy and truth” is, broadly, the study of how “darkness readers” read “darkness.” 428. Howard-Pitney, Afro-American Jeremiad, 8. 429. Long, “Civil Rights,” 217; Wimbush, “Introduction,” 15. 430. Castelli, “Ultimately,” 850. 431. Ibid. 432. Schüssler-Fiorenza, “The Ethics of Biblical Interpretation,” 13. 433. Thus, the motive behind the analysis of James in Chapter 3.



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434. That is, Blount’s pronouncement of the “darkness readings” he analyzed as somehow deficient because of the absence of “serious text-linguistic deficiencies” cannot hold. For, to judge a “darkness reading” as deficient by the standards of the Euro-American academy is to hold up one cultural phenomenon and critique it for not mimicking phenomena that emerged out of a different culture with an entirely different understanding of what “darkness” might mean. Blount, Cultural Criticism, 181. 435. The Haustafeln, for instance, and Lk. 12:47. 436. As noted earlier, African Americans and the Bible contains a significant set of examples of “darkness readings” that emerge out of African American history. 437. Sojourner Truth, “Women’s Rights,” in The Rhetoric of Struggle: Public Address by African American Women (ed. Robbie Jean Walker; New York: Garland, 1992). 438. Marie Case, “It’s Not Just a Black Thing,” Chap. 53 in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 821. And, in the choice of Frederick Douglass as exemplum, this dissertation has done the same thing. 439. Wimbush, “Introduction,” 21. 440. Of course, that limit, alone, would be the source of untold numbers of research projects. A full analysis of just Frederick Douglass’s relationship with the “scriptures” of the Bible would take volumes. To Douglass, as a “subject” for research may be added the 3,000,000 Africans in slavery of which he spoke, their free kin in the north and south, their ancestors, and their descendants over centuries of American history. At the same time, a focus upon “darkness” delimits which African American readings would qualify, as not all African Americans necessarily are “darkness readers”. 441. Hal Taussig, “It’s not Just a Black Thing,” Chap. 55. in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 827. 442. Ibid. Included in these must be the voices of other non-majority ethnic people – Efraim Agosto notes, for instance, the importance of the voice of Latino biblical readers (Efraim Agosto, “It’s Not Just a Black Thing,” Chap. 54 in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 824; the voices of other ‘minority’ groups outside of ethnic categories (the growing GLBT biblical interpretative literature comes to mind); and certainly the voices of women, to name three possible groups. Taussig also mentions the voices of non-majority Christian traditions; and Alfred Muhammad calls to remembrance “the realities and issues outside the dominant Christian ones”. (Taussig, “It’s Not Just a Black Thing,” 827; Alfred Muhammad, “It’s Not Just a Christian Thing,” in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures [ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000], 829). 443. Roderick Belin, “Some Things about It Are Disturbing,” Chap. 60 in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 839. 444. Ibid. 445. For more on the Weberian concept of “ideal type” see “Weber’s Theory of the Ideal Type,” in Susan J. Hekman, Weber, the Ideal Type, and Contemporary Social Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 18–60. 446. Leonard Harris, “Some Things about It Are Disturbing,” Chap. 59 in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush; New York: Continuum, 2000), 837. 447. See the range of interdisciplinary representations in African Americans and the Bible. 448. Castelli, “Ultimately,” 849. 449. Brown, Body and Society, 154.

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450. Cf. 9:6 and, changed to refer only to “men,” 1 Cor 11:7. 451. Abraham’s status as a slave owner is well-documented in Genesis, and can be found here and in 16:2, 3, 5, 8; 17:13, 20:14, and 21:8-14. For convenience, this passage alone will serve to denote this fact. 452. This passage stands as a referent to Ishmael. His complete story is found here and in 17:24-6; 21:9-21; 25:12-18. Cf. Blassingame, 2:170, n.5. 453. Used as evidence of Isaac’s slaveholding status. 454. Used as evidence of Jacob’s slaveholding status. 455. With Ex 1:8-14, this passage tells of the enslavement of the people of Israel. 456. Cf. Acts 7:33. 457. Cf. 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3. 458. Cf. Deut 10:14; Ps 24:1; 1 Cor 10:26, 28. 459. Here Douglass uses the phrase “will not hold...guiltless” to talk about slavery. 460. This is a direct quote of the Exodus Decalogue, using the “thou shalt not” language not found in Deuteronomy. 461. Cf. Matt 19:18 and Rom 13:9. 462. The extant speech lists this incorrectly as Ex 21:15. 463. Cf. Matt 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14; and Jas 2:8. 464. For “mighty works” cf. also Ps 145:4; Jer 32:19; Matt 11:20-21, 23; 13:54, 58; Mark 6:2, 5, 14; Luke 19:37; and Eph 1:19. 465. Although the trope “How long, O Lord” shows up in numerous places, only this reference includes the word “Sabaoth,” which Douglass also quotes (contra Blassingame, 2:25, n.7). This quote presents a problem as all extant versions of the kjv and all other contemporary English translations to Douglass use “hosts” instead of “Sabaoth”. For this information, I am indebted to J. Michael Morgan for the use of his extensive collection of English translations of the Bible dating back to Wycliffe. 466. Cf. 103:17 and 106:48. 467. This referent is to a hymn. 468. Cf. Ezek 3:26. 469. Cf. Rom 12:20. 470. Cf. Matt 9:13;12:27. 471. Cf. Matt 3:3; Mark 1:31; Luke 3:4; John 1:23. 472. Cf. Isa 57:21. 473. This is a conflation of Isa 61:1 (kjv) and Luke 4:18 (kjv). Similarly at 2:178. 474. Cf. Acts 7:43. 475. The “kingdom of heaven” trope occurs some 40 times in the gospels. This, its first canonical quotation, serves to mark Douglass’ use of the phrase. 476. Cf. 12:34; 23:33; Luke 3:7. 477. Cf. Luke 3:8. 478. Cf. Luke 3:8; John 8:39. 479. Cf. Luke 3:9. 480. Cf. Luke 3:16. 481. Cf. Luke 4:4. 482. Here the text is the Matthean exclusively. 483. Cf. Mark 4:21; Luke 11:33. 484. Cf. 18:8-9; Mark 9:43, 47. 485. Cf. Luke 6:27, 35. 486. Cf. Luke 11:34. 487. Cf. Mark 2:21-22; Luke 5:36-37.



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488. Listed are the first citations of Judas as betrayer: the above; Mark 3:19; Luke 6:16; and John 6:71. 489. Cf. Mark 3:25; Luke 11:17. 490. Cf. Mark 4:31; Luke 13:19 491. Cf. Mark 6:38-41; Luke 9:13-16; John 6:9. 492. Cf. Mark 7:3-13. 493. Cf. Mark 8:36. 494. Cf. Mark 10:9. 495. Cf. Mark 9:23; 10:27; 14:36. 496. Contra Blassingame, Douglass’ paraphrase here refers to this passage, its Lukan parallel (14:19), and to Luke 9:62. 497. Cf. Mark 12:27; Luke 20:38. 498. Evidently, Douglass held the “longer ending of Mark” as “scripture”. 499. Blassingame regularly notes Douglass’ use of this text in his footnotes. 500. Specifically, here, note Luke’s use of “Calvary”. 501. Douglass conflates these two texts. 502. Cf. 10:23. 503. The use of the language of “idol’s temple” is transformed into the trope “Idol Temple” by Douglass. 504. Cf. Col 3:11. 505. The shorthand “servants obey” refers directly to this text as it is translated in the kjv. Cf. Eph 6:5; 1 Tim 6:1; Titus 2:9; and 1 Pet 2:18. 506. Commonly used trope to refer to slaveowners and slave traders. Douglass tends toward “man-stealers” over the kjv “menstealers”. At 1:80, Douglass uses the term “man-slaver”. 507. Here Douglass actually notes the biblical citation. 508. “Alpha and Omega” is language peculiar to Rev; cf. 21:6, 22:13. 509. Cf. 21:2. 510. Cf. 19:20. 511. Cf. 21:27.

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Index Index of Ancient Sources

Old Testament Genesis 1:3 7–9 15:6 22:2-9

49 84 60 60

Exodus 2–15 20:1-17

14 60

Leviticus 19 19:18

60 67, 85

Deuteronomy 6:4 60 Joshua 2:1-15 6:17

60 60

1 Kings 18:42-45

60

Psalms 32:9 39:6 68:31

59, 124 n.289 59, 124 n.289 49

124n.289, 124n.293 124n.289 124n.289 124n.289, 124n.293 59, 124 n.289

Malachi 4

59, 124 n.289 124n.289 124n.289 124n.289 124n.289 59, 124 n.289 59, 124 n.289

3:26, 28 5:13, 19

Isaiah 1:13-17 40:6-7 48:22 58:6 65:17-25

48 60 120n.251 45 130n.413

Testament of Levi 8:11

Joel 2

130n.413

78:70 101:5 103:8 105:26 111:14 Proverbs 2:3-6 3:9 3:34 10:12 11:20 15:1 27:1

Apocrypha Sirach 1:10 2:1 3:17

14:1 15:11-20 35:12

130n.413

59, 124n. 289 124n.289 124n.289, 124n.323 126n.324 59, 124 n.289 124n.289 59, 124 n.289 59, 124 n.289

Testament of Judah 22:2

Testament of Abraham 13:4 2 Baruch

55:6

13:6 16:18

40, 45, 47, 89, 120n.248 60 88

New Testament Matthew 5–7 5:12 5:14 5:19

85 60 28 60

6:19 6:24 7:1-5, 7 7:6 7:12

60 27, 37–8 60 120n.250 1, 26, 38,

Index of Ancient Sources

144 Matthew (cont.) 21:21 60 22:34-40 37–8, 45, 60, 85 23 27 23:8 130n.417 24:3ff 88 Mark 4:6 12:28-31

Luke 1:78 6:23 6:31

60 37–8, 45, 60, 85

11:9-13 11:24 12:33 12:47 14:13, 21 16:13 16:17 17:10

88 60 36, 38, 40, 45 60 36–8, 45, 60 27, 36, 38, 44–5, 89–90 60 60 60 84 45 37–8 60 62

John 1:12-13 18:36

29 87

Acts 2:16-21 10:37

130n.413 48

Romans 1:1 2:11, 13 5:3-4 7:15, 23 8:16-17 8:18 8:28

61 61 61 61 89 88 61

6:37 10:27 10:30-37

1 Corinthians 1:26-8 2:9 2:12 2:14 3:3 3:19 4:10-13 7:31 8:3 9:25 11:32 13 14:20 15:23 15:44

61 61 124n.295 61, 123n.282 61 124n.295 124n.295 124n.295 61 61 124n.295 46 61 88 123n.282

2 Corinthians 1:12 124n.295 12:20 61 Galatians 1:10 5:3 5:13 5:20 6:14

61 61 61 61 124n.295

Philippians 1:11 2:14-15 3:20

61 124n.295 29, 87

1 Thessalonians 88 2 Thessalonians 88 1 Timothy 1:10

26

Philemon

24–5

Hebrews 11:13-14, 16 87

James 1:1 1:2-3 1:2-4 1:3 1:3-4 1:5 1:5-8 1:6 1:9-11 1:10 1:11 1:12 1:12-18 1:13-14 1:13-16 1:16 1:17 1:17-18 1:18 1:19 1:19-21 1:20 1:22 1:22-27 1:23 1:23-4 1:25 1:26 1:27 2 2:1 2:1-4 2:1-7 2:1-13 2:4 2:5 2:5-13 2:6-7 2:8 2:8-13

56, 58, 61–2, 66, 86 59, 61–2, 64 122n.272 61 57 56, 59–60 122n.272 63, 65 55, 58–61, 122n.272 64 65 59, 61 122n.272 57, 59 67 62, 66 59, 66, 88 65, 89 59, 61–2, 89 56, 58–9, 62 66, 122 n.272 59 55 122n.272 61 64 59 56 48–9, 56, 58–9, 66 61 59, 61–2 122n.272 66 123n.274 55 62 122n.272 55, 63 59, 67 61

Index of Ancient Sources

2:11 2:12 2:13 2:14 2:14-17 2:15-16 2:17 2:18-19 2:18-26 2:19 2:20 2:21-3 2:25 2:25-26 3:1–4:12 3:1-6 3:1-12 3:1-2 3:3 3:4 3:6 3:10-12 3:13 3:13-16 3:13-18 3:14-16 3:17

60 58–9, 62 59, 63 62–3 122n.272 64 55, 65 64 122n.272 59–60, 67 63, 65 60, 63, 67 63 67 59 65 59, 122n.272 61 56 65 64 65 62–3, 66 122n.272 59, 65, 89, 125n.314 56, 61, 66 1, 17, 27, 29, 34–52, 56, 59,

3:17-18 3:18 4 4:1-2 4:1-10 4:4 4:6 4:6-12 4:7 4:7-10 4:10 4:11 4:11-17 4:12 4:13-14 4:14 4:17 5:1-6 5:4 5:7 5:7-11 5:9

64, 66, 68–73, 88 122n.272 61, 125n.313 61, 63 55–7 122n.272 56, 59. 63, 65, 88, 89 59, 61 59 62 64 62 125n.298 56, 59, 122n.272 63 64 59, 65 63 66, 122n.272 55, 63 57, 65, 88–9, 125n.298 59, 122n.272 56, 58, 125n.298

145 5:10-11 5:11 5:12 5:12-18 5:13-14 5:13-20 5:17 5:17-18 5:19 5:19-20

67 58–9, 63 56, 58–9, 62 122n.272 63, 89 58–9 60, 67 63 62, 89 122n.272

1 Peter 1:1 1: 6, 7 1:17 2:11 4:12-13 5:5 5:6 5:8-9

61, 87 61 61 87 61 61 62 62

2 Peter 1:16 2:9 3:4, 12

88 89 88

1 John 2:28

88

Revelation 18 21

15 88

Index of Authors/Subjects abolitionism  1–2, 10, 21–22, 30–52, 84–6 Adamson, James B.  122n.268, 123n.274 Ambrose, Douglass  84 Bailey, Randall C.  5–6, 108n.22, 108.n25, 124n.288 Bacon, Jacqueline  32, 47, 66, 72, 117n.153 Bascom, Henry Bidleman  83 Belin, Roderick  96–7 Benston, Kimberly  10–11, 92, 116n.142 biblical studies  1–16, 26, 91, 92–8 African American  5–16 and darkness readers  10–11, 14–16, 91, 92–8 as objective  2–3, 91, 94 as historicist  3–4, 6, 93 methods of  2–10, 93 as nonscriptural  4–11 as tempocentric  4–11, 93 Blassingame, John W. 25–6, 106n1, 106n3, 120n.227 Blount, Brian  7–10, 31, 33, 109n.20, 109n.28, 117n.155, 131n.434 Brown, Michael J.  9, 108n.25 Brown, Peter  98, 125n.304 Case, Marie  96 Castelli, Elizabeth  17, 93, 98 Chesebrough, David B.  33–4, 38–9, 62, 113n.111 Collins, John J.  126n.325 Cone, James H.  6, 14 Copher, Charles H.   5–6, 107n.21, 107n.22 darkness  7–8, 10–18 Blount and  8, and dominant ideology  32–3, 78, 83–4, 90 emancipation as  83–4

James, epistle of, as  53–73 as   56–9, 61–3, 66–8, 70, 72–3, 74, 88 and marronage  11–16 deformation  13–16, 30–1, 51–2, 92 formation  13–16, 19–20, 27–9, 30–1, 43, 47, 51–2, 86, 92 reform[ul]ation  13–16, 30, 52, 57–9, 62, 68, 72–3, 86, 92 reading  11–18, 47, 74, 78, 83–91, 92–8, 129n.401 and Bible  12, 14–18, 59, 61, 66–8, 71–3, 83, 90–1, 92–3, 97 and history  92 slavery as  30–1, 33–4, 35–7, 40–2, 44, 47, 52, 53, 74, 76, 83–7, 90 and trauma  11–13, 17, 19, 22–3, 54, 57, 63, 79, 83–6, 96 as world orientation  11–17, 54, 56–9, 61–3, 66–8, 70, 72–3, 76, 78–9, 83–8, 92, 127n.334 Dibelius, Martin  54, 121n.262, 122n.273, 123n.275 Douglass, Frederick biography  1–2, 20–21, 34–5, 74–6, 85–91, 110n.92, 110n.94 as darkness reader  16–17, 19–23, 25, 31–52, 53–4, 57, 73, 85–91 and Declaration of Independence  49, 81–2 and Free Church of Scotland  34–8, 43 and language of religion  1–2, 16–17, 23–5, 59, 82–91, 94–5, 97 and myth of America  26, 81–3, 85–6 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass  21, 74–5, 112n.94 rhetoric of  24–5, 38–45, 47–8, 51–2 anaphora  38–40, 44–5, 47 ethos  38–40 euphemization  51–52, 74



Index of Authors/Subjects

jeremiad  30–1, 47, 49, 82–3 pathos  38, 40–1, 44–5, 48, 64 signification  33, 41–3, 44–5, 47 speeches of The American Constitution and the Slave  24 American Slavery, American Religion and the Free Church of Scotland  27, 34–43 The Bible Opposes Oppression  1, 27, 46–7 England Should Lead  43–4 Free Church Alliance with Slavery  43 I am Here to Spread Light  43 Irish Christians  43, 114n.121 John Brown and the Slaveholders’ Insurrection  50–2 Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country  44–7 Slavery Exists Under the Eaves 43 What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?  47–9 world-orientation of  16–17, 53–4, 57, 73, 86–91, 95 Dube, Musa  107n.8 Edgar, David H. 121n.263, 122–3n.273 Eisenbaum, Pamela  125n.303, 129– 30n.405 Felder, Cain Hope  107n.8, 107n.21, 123n.274 Fitzgerald, Timothy  5, 7, 12 Gabriel, Ralph H  80, 129n.384 Garrison, William Lloyd  21, 34, 37, 43, 52 Gates, Henry Louis  32, 34 Grant, Jacquelyn  7 Hendricks, Obery Osayande  6, 19 Harding, Vincent  126n.333 Hartin, Patrick   124n.291, 126n.328 Harris, Leonard  97–8 Holdredge, Barbara  4, 7 Howard-Pitney, David  30–1, 49, 80, 92 Hughes, Richard T,  114n.123, 116n.134, 127–8n.362

147

James, epistle of  17, 53–73, 86–91 as apologia  34–47 and conduct  55, 58, 70 and   52, 56–9, 70, 86–90, 95 in oratory  34–51 and intertextuality  59–62, 71–2 Hebrew Bible  60 Gospels  60 Paul  60–1 1 Peter  61–2 and speech  56, 58, 70 as reform[ul]ation  54–9, 70–2, 86 rhetoric of as diatribe  69–70 ethos  62–3 jeremiad  63–4 pathos  64–6 rhetorical questions  63 and signification  33, 66–8, 72–3 as symbouleutic  54 Jefferson, Thomas  80, 83 Johnson, Luke Timothy  54, 69, 86, 88, 123n.274, 123n.278, 123n.282, 124n.287, 124n.296, 125n.307, 125n.314 King, Martin Luther, Jr.  15–16 Lampe, Gregory  1, 116n.141 Laws, Sophie  123n.275, 123n.277 Long, Charles H.  33, 79, 92, 130n.427 Lorde, Audre  33 marronage  see also darkness Martin, Ralph P.  122n.273 Martin, Waldo E.  106n3. McFeely, William S.  112n.92, 112n.95, 112n.100, 113n.111 McGraw, Barbara  80–1, 114n.122, 128n.367 McKivigan, John R.   84–5, 113n.109, 129n.399 Moorhead, James  116n.143 Paris, Peter  107n.22 Patte, Daniel  3 Patterson, Orlando  90, 112n.105 proslavery stance  83–5, 113n.109 Raboteau, Albert  14, 128–9n.381 Rastafari  15–16

148

Index of Authors/Subjects

reading  74–91, 92–8 in the academy  2–11, 92–8 and counterideology 77, 86 and Douglass  1–2, 19–29, 33, 38, 53, 94–5, as resistance  11–17, 31–3, 47, 54, 57, 73, 75–8 and social critics  77–8, 86, 98 and scriptures  1–2, 10–11, 53, 59, 67, 71, 73, 79, 92, 94–8 Robertson, A. T.  122n.273 Schüssler-Fiorenza, Elisabeth  2, 94, 107n.8, 108n.29 Scott, James C.  31–3, 50–1, 76–7, 126n.333 scripture Bible as  4, 6, 9–10, 12, 24, 31, 34, 38–9, 45, 49, 53, 59, 61, 63, 66–8, 71–3, 78–86, 92–5, 97–8 Declaration of Independence as  80, 128n.375 James as  27, 94–9 and myth of America  79–89 intertextuality and  53, 59, 61, 63, 66–8, 71–3 ontology of  78–9, 93

reading and  9–10, 12, 17, 79 as relationship  4, 12, 17, 25 and social critics  39, 78, 86 Second Great Awakening  29, 81–2 Segovia, Fernando  106n.8 Simpson, George E.  15, 111n.71 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell  4, 78–9 Stendahl, Krister  4 Stone, Ken  107n.8 Stuckey, Sterling  1 Sugirtarajah, R. S.  106n.8 Swift, Donald C.  114n.122 Taussig, Hal  96, 131n.442 Tolbert, Mary Ann  106n.8 Truth, Sojourner  95 Wachob, W. H.  54, 62, 123n.275 Washington, Booker T.  24 Walzer, Michael  77–8, 81, 83, 90 Weems, Renita  3, 7, 22, 109n.29, 110n.50 West, Gerald O.  107n.8 Wilmore, Gayraud  32 Wimbush, Vincent L.  3, 11–16, 19–20, 27–8, 30, 33, 51, 57. 92, 96, 110n.63, 127n.334, 129n.401, 120n.427