Race, Religion & Reconciliation
Reflections on the Present American Moment
by J. Daryl Charles
While cities and states have been struggling to adapt to life amid the coronavirus, it is possible that another pandemic afflicts American society in even greater proportions. For this reason, it is difficult to overstate the timeliness of a recent collection of essays edited by Gerald R. McDermott: Race and Covenant: Recovering the Religious Roots for American Reconciliation (Acton Institute Press, 2020). The essays comprising this volume issue from a February 2019 conference at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, that boldly, yet in a faithfully Christian manner, dared honestly to assess race relations in America.
But where to begin, given our national paralysis on racial matters? And who can presume to speak with any measure of authority on such matters?
A Notable Deviation
Discussions of race in our day, especially in the academy, typically take the form of "affirmative action," enforced "diversity," calls for reparations for past "sins," or reverse discrimination, and they usually proceed on the assumption of universal and systemic institutional racism. The convocation at Samford deviated from this in notable ways. In contrast to the standard secular perspectives on race that inform the culture around us, this gathering was utterly unique in purposing to understand race, race relations, and the racial tensions of our day in light of particular transcending theological commitments—commitments that have a "covenantal" quality about them.
These commitments find expression in both the Old and New Testaments. They are anchored in the acknowledgment that the sovereign Lord of the universe deals both with individuals and with nations. That he deals with individuals can be illustrated by Pauline theology—for example, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). That he deals with nations, blesses and judges entire people groups, and holds nations and kingdoms accountable in various ways is affirmed again and again throughout the entire Old Testament, from the Pentateuch to the Prophets.
One need not be a Puritan to affirm these basic scriptural truths. "Providence" is not providence unless there is a God of the nations who guides human history, which means that he raises up and deposes various kingdoms, nations, and powers for his own redemptive purposes. Scripturally, it is non-controversial that God deals with both individuals and nations.
At least to those contributing to this remarkable volume it is non-controversial. But to suggest that race relations in America might be viewed in the light of a national "covenant" or binding social "contract" or transcendent moral principles would strike most contemporary Americans—whether politically left or right of center—as unfashionable at best and idolatrous or blasphemous at worst. Perhaps in generations past this view of America might have been held. But in the secularized world of the twenty-first century, where the transcendent has been bleached out, such a perspective is regarded as narrow-minded, bigoted, and intolerable. Even if it is true.
A Shared Conviction
That our national dilemmas are moral and spiritual in nature is the fundamental conviction shared by the contributors to Race and Covenant. And that such a volume was conceived and edited by Gerald McDermott, perhaps the most knowledgeable living authority on Jonathan Edwards, is not insignificant. Edwards, it will be remembered, was not only the third president of Princeton University (at the time the College of New Jersey) but arguably America's greatest theologian—one who affirmed in the eighteenth century the idea of a national "covenant."
A century later, Abraham Lincoln would give expression to this conviction and serve in the unenviable role of witnessing to the fact that, because of divine law, "nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this world," as in fact "the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be." Has this form of divine judgment been sent, Lincoln asked, "to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People?"
J. Daryl Charles is the Acton Institute Affiliated Scholar in Theology & Ethics. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including Retrieving the Natural Law (2008), Natural Law and Religious Freedom (2018), and, most recently, Just War and Christian Traditions (forthcoming). He is also co-editor of Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God's Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 3 (2020). He is a contributing editor to Touchstone.
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more on America from the online archives
29.2—March/April 2016
The History of Family Strength in America May Reveal Good News by Allan C. Carlson
30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
The Christian Cure for What Ails Modern Politics by David Bradshaw
29.4—July/August 2016
Russell Kirk: American Conservative by Bradley J. Birzer by Hunter Baker
more from the online archives
26.1—Jan/Feb 2013
Manly Chastity, Hedonism & the Law of Non-contradiction by Anthony Esolen
32.1—January/February 2019
Answers Secular & Religious by Allan C. Carlson
22.3—April 2009
Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by J. Daryl Charles
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