Danté’s Epistle to the Hurting Americans

Danté Stewart, Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle

Young Danté Stewart discovered, in a college ministry, how easy it was to earn White Christians’ approval. Just don’t make waves, don’t tell them anything they don’t already believe, and perhaps most important, don’t ever, ever, talk about race in church. But then Stewart watched his White pew-mates treat highly publicized Black deaths with placid indifference. Soon he realized that, in the face of injustice, the greatest sin was silence.

This isn’t a book about Christians and our history with race, not in a global sense. If you want that, Jemar Tisby and Esau McCaulley have those bases covered. This is Danté Stewart’s autobiography of his journey to discover what being Black and Christian in today’s America really means. He describes the struggles he’s endured, the lies he’s needed to unlearn, and the discoveries he’s made to reach this point.

As an early breakout star on Clemson University’s football team, Stewart had people clamoring for his attention. That included both the school’s Gospel Choir, which reflected his Pentacostal upbringing, and the White ministries associated with suburban megachurches. In his telling, he occupied both worlds simultaneously for a time. He even married a pretty singer he met in Gospel Choir. But the White ministry showered him with surprisingly forthcoming praise.

Stewart adapted himself to ministries that provided him with rewards. He had himself rebaptized into the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition, and even preached to almost entirely White stadium congregations. But then something happened: he, like millions of Americans, watched Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, murdered on camera. Stewart wanted to speak with his fellow congregants about what happened. To his horror, his fellow believers appeared totally nonchalant.

Thus began Stewart’s painful reevaluation of what he’d come to believe. He questioned everything about his history as a Christian, as a Black man, as an American, that led to this moment. His road back to his family’s beliefs, described in his flowing, beautifully conversational prose, wasn’t short or easy. However, he had to admit, he could only walk with Jesus if Jesus walked with those who suffered.

Danté Stewart

Stewart writes with a personal, intimate tone, the language of prayer and trust. His rhythms reflect the poets and critics he quotes generously, especially Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, and the hip-hop and soul music which played large in his introspection. As with his heroes, one feels from Stewart’s writing the intimacy of casual conversation, even as he examines harsh truths his White audiences might prefer to conceal.

True to this book’s secondary title, most of Stewart’s writing resembles a Pauline epistle. He doesn’t use parables, and though he freely references moments in his life as a preacher, teacher, husband and father, these aren’t allegorical; like Paul’s tales, Stewart’s are autobiographical, a confession that reaching this point hasn’t been easy, and there’s still more mountain to climb. Stewart prefers the honest over the universal.

Not to say his “autobiography” hews close to life’s narrative. Like Ta-Nahesi Coates or Maya Angelou, whom he also quotes generously, Stewart (Mr. Stew to his students) organizes his life thematically. Then, within those themes, he flashes rapidly between his narrative of events, often conflicted and subjective, and a form of spontaneous poetry, which coalesces into a statement of the lessons he takes from each situation of blindness and struggle.

We journey with Stewart through the intense but transitory highs of suburban White Christianity. Through the lows of casual violence enforced upon young Black bodies growing up in South Carolina. Through the pain of realizing that the people you called your family in Christ don’t see violence against Black bodies as a Christian concern, and the pain of realizing how easy it would be to succumb to murderous rage.

Finally, we journey with Stewart to his realization that Christ dwells among the suffering, and therefore, there he must dwell too. The praise of well-off White people feels good, Stewart admits. But in the end, it’s more important to stand beside those made in God’s image, who face injustice for their skin tone. That, Stewart believes, makes for the true Christian witness in today’s deeply divided America.

Stewart’s telling ends in triumph, in a Psalm-like shout of praise; but implicit in that exultation, is the recognition that Stewart will face this struggle again, because the Empire isn’t in accord with God’s will. Stewart doesn’t believe the White Christian myth that suffering is ennobling, but he admits it’s probably inevitable. Our triumph against Empire isn’t of this world, Stewart acknowledges; the fight itself is good.