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?
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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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