Join us to hear from Esau McCaulley about his latest book: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South.
Professor Esau McCaulley is Academic Visiting Scholar at Wycliffe Hall and he will be sharing with the audience 'a story that sets you free'.
Event details
Date: Monday 27 May
Time: 5:00 pm
Venue: Wycliffe Hall, 52-54 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PW
The event includes:
- A Welcome from Revd Dr Michael Lloyd, Principal of Wycliffe Hall
- An talk and readings by Esau McCaulley from his book
- Opportunity for questions to Professor McCaulley from the audience
- Refreshments
- Book signing and sales
Getting here: Wycliffe Hall is on major bus routes. Limited parking may be available on site (please contact us by email if you have any special access requirements) and pay-and-display on-street parking is available close by in Norham Gardens.
All are welcome: booking is not required.
About Esau McCaulley
Esau McCaulley is Associate Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College (Illinois, USA) and contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. His research and writing focus on New Testament theology, African American Biblical interpretation and articulating Christian public theology.
Professor McCaulley is the author of many academic works, alongside which he publishes more popular writings - How Far to the Promised Land being among these.
His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post and Christianity Today.
Redeemer University named McCaulley the emerging Public Intellectual of 2020. In 2021, the House of Representatives in his home state of Alabama issued a public commendation “for his influential work and achievements in the faith community.”
In 2023, Wheaton College honoured him with the Junior Faculty Achievement award “In recognition of outstanding Academic Achievement and promise.”
Find out more: https://esaumccaulley.com/
About How Far to the Promised Land
For much of his life, Esau McCaulley was taught to see himself as an exception: someone who, through hard work, faith, and determination, overcame childhood poverty, anti-Black racism, and an absent father to earn a job as a university professor and a life in the middle class.
But that narrative was called into question one night, when McCaulley answered the phone and learned that his father—whose absence defined his upbringing—died in a car crash. McCaulley was being asked to deliver his father’s eulogy, to make sense of his complicated legacy in a country that only accepts Black men on the condition that they are exceptional, hardworking, perfect.
The resulting effort sent McCaulley back through his family history, seeking to understand the community that shaped him. In these pages, we meet a cast of family, friends, and neighbours who won small victories in a world built to swallow Black lives.
With profound honesty and compassion, he raises questions that implicate us all: What does each person’s struggle to build a life teach us about what we owe each other? About what it means to be human?
How Far to the Promised Land is a thrilling and tender epic about being Black in America. It’s a book that questions our too-simple narratives about poverty and upward mobility; a book in which the people normally written out of the American Dream are given voice.
Find out more: How Far to the Promised Land (Amazon.co.uk)