How Far the Promise Land | 5min snip from The Russell Moore Show

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Esau McCaulley Makes Grace Plausible

The Russell Moore Show

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CHAPTER

How Far the Promise Land

When you set out to write how far the promise land, this is different than the other stuff that you've written. This isn't New Testament scholarship. It's not essays. This is memoir and maybe the hardest kind of memoir because it's a multi generational memoir. And so I think that what it really was is me trying to make sense of my story and tell it a truth about my story.

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What is the most racist thing you’ve ever experienced?

That’s the question that was posed to Esau McCaulley, an author, assistant professor, and contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, as he sat on a panel in front of a mostly white audience. He didn’t answer the question. On a new episode of The Russell Moore Show, he explains why.

Tune in for a rich conversation on suffering, how we tell our stories, and the meaning of empathy. Moore and McCaulley cover systemic injustice, the function of society, and how our personal backgrounds inform everything from our political engagement to the way we read Scripture. Reflecting on the wounds and grace of fatherhood, they discuss how they work to make God’s love plausible. They talk about McCaulley’s forthcoming book, a memoir titled How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. And they talk about addiction, pastoring, and what McCaulley has learned as a military spouse.

Resources discussed during this episode include:

How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South by Esau McCaulley
Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope by Esau McCaulley
All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir by Beth Moore
The works of James Baldwin
The works of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The works of Zora Neale Hurston
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
Confessions by Saint Augustine
The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography of Faith by Thomas Merton
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life by C.S. Lewis
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Pre-order:

Russell Moore's Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America
Esau McCaulley's How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South

Do you have a question for Russell Moore? Send it to questions@russellmoore.com.

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“The Russell Moore Show” is a production of Christianity Today

Executive Producers: Erik Petrik, Russell Moore, and Mike Cosper

Host: Russell Moore

Producer: Ashley Hales

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Audio Engineer: Kevin Duthu