Genesis Scholar: I Grew Up Believing the Bible Enslaved Us | Hakeem Bradley

Hakeem Bradley was raised in Philadelphia to believe the Bible was nothing more than a tool to oppress the black man. Today he is pursuing a PhD in the text he was trained to distrust.

In this episode, Hakeem joins Colby F. Maier to trace that journey and to teach the method behind it.

Raised in the Five Percent Nation, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, Hakeem recited the Supreme Alphabet and Mathematics daily. He describes a dream he had at seven, and the man he spoke with in it whose face he cannot recall and whose identity he still does not know. He describes his growing discomfort with the doctrines he was given, and his decision at twelve to leave. Years later, a Young Life area director named Phil Zahn walked up to him at a soccer game and invited him in. Hakeem credits him with changing the trajectory of his life.

Colby raises the harder question directly. Scripture has been used historically to justify slavery and oppression, so how does Hakeem hold it now? He begins where he says the honest answer has to begin: two things can be true at once. Scripture has been used against people from the lands he comes from, and it is also, in his words, a means of liberation, full stop. He points to those among his own ancestors who chose to follow the way while enslaved, and he will not characterize them as naive. They understood, he says, what the true story was. He is equally candid about nearly leaving the faith in his early twenties, when the theologians, the scholars, and the depictions of the church fathers in front of him all appeared to be European, and he began asking what Africans, Asians, Latinos, and indigenous peoples had contributed. He speaks directly to anyone sitting in that tension now, not as someone who has arrived, but as someone traveling alongside them.

The second half of the conversation turns to method. Hakeem walks through Genesis 1 as he teaches it, examining what is absent on the second day, why the seventh day never closes, and how the third day recurs throughout the biblical narrative. He demonstrates how the Epistle of James draws on Cain and Abel to confront the wealthy. And he makes a claim he acknowledges may get him into trouble: that it is impossible to fully understand Jesus apart from the scriptures Jesus said he came to bring to fullness.

A conversation for anyone who suspects there is far more in Scripture than they have been able to see.

Scripture in this episode: Genesis 1, Genesis 2:1-3, Genesis 4, Genesis 22, Exodus 20, Psalm 8, Psalm 23, Jonah, Amos, Matthew, James 5

Follow Hakeem on Instagram: https://instagram.com/hakeembradley1

Learn about his nonprofit building biblical literacy curriculum for children: https://sacredpatterns.org

Go deeper with the Academy of the Bible — courses, lectures, and weekly community around the Word of God: www.academyofthebible.org

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Hakeem Bradley is pursuing a PhD, and his doctoral work traces the influence of Genesis 1 through 11 in the Epistle of James. His nonprofit, Sacred Patterns, builds biblical literacy curriculum for children, and he writes Roots and Streams on Substack. He previously worked with BibleProject.