Josh Steele

“The question isn’t always which account of Christianity uses the Bible. The question is which does justice to as much of the biblical witness as possible. There are uses of Scripture that utter a false testimony about God. This is what we see in Satan’s use of Scripture in the wilderness. The problem isn’t that the Scriptures that Satan quoted were untrue, but when made to do the work that he wanted them to do, they distorted the biblical witness. This is my claim about the slave master exegesis of the antebellum South. The slave master arrangement of biblical material bore false witness about God. This remains true of quotations of the Bible in our own day that challenge our commitment to the refugee, the poor, and the disinherited.”
― Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

“Peacemaking, then, cannot be separated from truth telling. The church’s witness does not involve simply denouncing the excesses of both sides and making moral equivalencies. It involves calling injustice by its name. If the church is going to be on the side of peace in the United States, then there has to be an honest accounting of what this country has done and continues to do to Black and Brown people. Moderation or the middle ground is not always the loci of righteousness.”
― Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

“Publishers that survive, whether they focus on traditional print or on digital media, will need to become indispensable to the communities they serve.”
― Peter Ginna, What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing

“If you focus your time and energy on understanding, you cannot help but learn. But if you focus your time and energy on learning without trying to understand, you will not only not understand, but also probably not learn. And the effects are cumulative.”
― Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes