The United States is consumed with questions regarding race, the legacy of slavery and the nature of social justice. Where are people of faith to turn?
In Race and Covenant: Recovering the Religious Roots of American Reconciliation, an anthology edited by Gerald R. McDermott, the authors explore the theme of national covenant in scripture, history and contemporary American society, as well as the theology and practices of covenant communities. Its authors suggest new strategies for finding racial reconciliation in this troubled time.
“This nation is hurting,” writes McDermott, who is retired from the Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School, in the book’s introduction. “In many ways it is broken, and racial division is a big part of that brokenness. But there is hope. The source is spiritual, not political. It comes from humility and prayer and seeking God’s face.”
McDermott points out that for most of the last two thousand years, Christians have believed that God deals with nations as nations. And God enters into closer relations with societies that claim him as Lord. This belief in the national covenant, only recently out of fashion, is where Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. turned when faced with such questions in their own times.
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