Icon (Close Menu)

A Story of God’s Transforming Power

How Far to the Promised Land
One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South
By Esau McCaulley
Convergent Books, 240 pages, $27

Esau McCaulley’s memoir How Far to the Promised Land is a testimony to God’s goodness. McCaulley’s stories and openness shed light on the experience of being Black in America, specifically in the South. His narrative tells of how God, despite the evil and prejudice we encounter, can redeem time and bring order from chaos. The key to such redemption, to use McCaulley’s words, requires a faith in God that gives us courage to never believe the lies or accept the limits others place on our abilities.

“A good narrative—a Black one, at least—is not owned by any individual; it is, instead, the story of a people,” McCaulley writes. He begins with the story of his often-absent father, Esau McCaulley Sr., a truck driver, having a heart attack and swerving off a highway down to the empty street below in late August 2017. The duty fell to McCaulley, by then an ordained Anglican priest living in Rochester, New York, to preach his father’s eulogy.

Paul says that we are all sinners and fall short of God’s glory (cf. Rom. 3:23). Sin forms the stumbling blocks we have placed in front of others and those put in our way to cause trip ups. Though McCaulley does not make excuses for sins, he helps us recognize how contextual circumstances can lead an individual to commit sins. The account of his father’s drug addiction rooted in his rearing in a family plagued with addiction contextualizes the sins he committed against others.

But just as God freely offers his grace to all, we are presented the choice of either accepting or rejecting it. We do not have to participate in the destruction. Full submission to God’s sovereignty is the first step to loosening the chains of sin’s dominion over us. Change can happen if we trust in the power of God’s grace.

We see God’s grace at work in McCaulley’s accounts of his great-grandmother, Sophia, and his mother, Laurie Ann. Sophia, living in Jim Crow Alabama in the 1920s and 1930s — with money she earned from tenant farming during the daytime, house cleaning at night, and practicing midwifery — bought a one-and-a-half-acre parcel of land 20 minutes outside of Huntsville. For Sophia, the land “felt like paradise … [S]he had her own ‘vine and fig tree,’ a little bit of happiness,’” he writes.

Laurie Ann, despite stigmas against single mothers, raised her four children, including Esau Jr., to be confident adults. Young Esau felt a call to preach, which prompted his pastor, Oscar Montgomery of Union Hill Primitive Baptist Church, to tell him: “I know that your family life is hard, but if you stick with God, he’ll stick with you.

And that is just what God has done. McCaulley was once a promising football player for Northwest Huntsville’s James Oliver Johnson High School, but a knee injury upended his hopes of playing college football. He still pursued higher education, winning an academic scholarship to Sewanee, where he met his wife, Mandy. He then earned a Master of Divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a Master of Sacred Theology from Nashotah House, and a Ph.D. in New Testament from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

By the grace of God, the two Esaus were reconciled. The way McCaulley ends his memoir’s last chapter is a testament to the grace of God at work: “For a long time, all I could see were the sad parts. It took me a long time to see where God was in any of it. But I found him in my story, and the good news is that my father did, too.”

Not only does How Far to the Promised Land tell the story of a fellow native black Alabamian’s journey to where he now is through the mercy and grace of God. It also calls readers to reflect on their stories, upon all its characters, light, and darkness and how God has been present in it all.

My own father was born during the Great Depression and came of age in the early post-World War II years. He suffered instances of racism and hypocritical acts that led to him leaving the church for almost four decades. His departure from God caused him to not be the kind of husband or father he should have been to my three half-siblings. He had an affair of several years with my mother, 23 years his junior, producing me.

Mom, absent of any other options, moved in with my grandmother, who insisted that I have little to no contact with my father. Yet God, with time and the softening of hearts, made things right. My father had prayed for forgiveness and reconciliation in 1990, and it happened seven years later.

Through the reception and practice of grace comes the realization that the greater grace of God has the power to tear down the walls that separate us, allowing us to forgive and be drawn closer to the Promised Land. Many thanks to Esau McCaulley for his vulnerability in this book. It is a testimony to God’s power, love, and redemption of time that we all need to hear in these troubled times.

The Rev. Dr. Brandt Montgomery is the Chaplain of Saint James School in Hagerstown, Maryland and Vicar of St. Mark's Episcopal Church (Lappans Road) in Boonsboro, Maryland.

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Top headlines. Every Friday.

MOST READ

CLASSIFIEDS

Most Recent

Primates of Africa Unite on Congolese Crisis

The 700-word statement calls Congo’s situation “a profound humanitarian tragedy, marked by violence, displacement, and suffering that affects millions of innocent lives.”

Church’s Retiring CFO Honored for Service

Kurt Barnes, who has overseen the church's finances for 21 years, was honored for his leadership, and Executive Council was briefed about the complicated role of the Executive Officer of General Convention and challenges faced by immigrants.

Help for Dioceses Tops Realignment Plans

Major goals include practical assistance with crisis communication, Title IV, and faster bishop searches, as well as a “reinvention” of General Convention.

Episcopal Migration Ministries: The Work Continues

Sarah Shipman: “The end of federal funding for Episcopal Migration Ministries does not mean an end for EMM — or to the Episcopal Church’s commitment to stand with migrants.”