Gerald R. McDermott (PhD, University of Iowa) is recently retired from the Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School. He is the author, co-author or editor of more than twenty  books, including A Trinitarian Theology of Religions (with Harold Netland); Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods; The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land; Israel Matters: Why Christians Must Think Differently about the People and the Land; Cancer: A Medical and Spiritual Guide for Patients and their Families; and Famous Stutterers. As a renowned Edwards scholar, McDermott has produced seven books on Edwards; his Theology of Jonathan Edwards (coauthored with Michael McClymond) won Christianity Today’s 2013 award for Top Book in Theology/Ethics.

Dr. McDermott is the editor of the recently published Race and Covenant (Acton Institute, 2020). The book’s 15 contributors address the race conflict which our nation faces and suggest ways for us to go forward. All of them think that religion—and the historic doctrine of the national covenant in particular—are essential to healing our social wounds.

In this podcast from Via Media at The Institute of Anglican Studies, Dr. McDermott hosts a conversation with Carol M. Swain, retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, about her chapter, “Race and Covenant: Recovering the Religious Roots for American Reconciliation.” They discuss white nationalism, the new racism, and identity politics. For generations, Christians have believed that God deals with nations as nations and enters into closer relations with societies that claim him as Lord. This belief in the national covenant to which Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. turned when faced with such questions in their own time. 

The book Race and Covenant explores 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. Below is an interview with Dr. McDermott for the Chapter, and an excerpt from his new book, reprinted here with permission from The Acton Institute. 

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_The United States is wrestling with questions regarding race, the legacy of slavery, and the nature of social justice. Where are people of faith to turn to study further and to engage in these conversations?

Well, in this book we suggest they turn to the God of Israel and his history of covenanting with societies that acknowledge him as Lord. We agree that slavery was a mortal sin against that covenant and that Jim Crow perpetuated the legacy of that sin. The book’s contributors suggest ways that we have repented of those egregious sins and ways that we still need to find reconciliation with one another.

_What inspired this book for you? 

I have been interested in race and the gospel since I dated a black girl in high school in New York City and had a Bermudan roommate in my fraternity at the University of Chicago. Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and I were at a conference together at the end of 2016. We got the idea for a conference on race and covenant then, since race had become a compelling problem by that time. The result was a conference in February 2019 and then this book which resulted in October 2020.

_What are you currently working on?

I am doing another book inspired by Edwards, on the history of redemption. It starts with the counsels of redemption before the creation and ends with the new heavens and new earth. It asks how God was redeeming in Genesis and throughout the rest of the Old Testament - and in places like China before the missionaries arrived. How does it relate to Judaism? And to other world religions? Where do liturgy and sacraments fit into the history of redemption?I’ve promised the publisher (Baker Academic) to do this in fewer than 500 pages and in language that my barber can understand.

_Your specialties are church history, politics, the meaning of Israel, theology of religions, and the theology of Jonathan Edwards. What are some of the ways you introduce terms and subjects to students and fellow church-goers who are unfamiliar with these subjects? Where do you begin?

Of course I take only one subject at a time and try to introduce each by teaching through a book of the Bible or part of a book. In Edwards’ case, I take them through an accessible text such as his spiritual autobiography, Personal Narrative. Or, for the theology of Israel, I try to take them to Israel on a tour. Only there can one see how Jesus’ Jewishness changes the ways we think of the gospel.

_Are you a “natural writer” or do you need lots of time to prepare?

I love to write, but I also have times when it is hard to get started. But once I immerse myself in a subject, after reading and reading and then reading some more, I usually come to a place where I think I have something to say. Then, after writing an outline, I am ready to roll. Once I get started, I love going back to it every day - sometimes too much, as my wife rightly complains.

_Who’s your strongest academic influence right now?

Well, since I am writing more and more on race, I go to some of the best writers on the subject, such as Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele. But for the book I am currently writing, Edwards and Michael Heiser.

_What’s the best book you’ve read this year?

Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher. I recommend it to every orthodox Christian.

_If someone were looking for a book on Patristics/the Church Fathers, what would you hope they would pick up and read first?

I always direct people first to Augustine’s Confessions but insist they get the translation by Henry Chadwick in the cheap paperback from Oxford University Press. An Orthodox Jewish scholar in Israel wanted to get a handle on Christian thought and asked me what to read. I directed her to this book, and she is now an underground believer in the Messiah. 

_What has been your strongest draw to Nashotah House?

I appreciate the orthodoxy of Nashotah House and its world-class worship in liturgy and sacrament. Jean and I have loved its natural beauty and its intimate connection to God’s creation.  

_What would you like all incoming seminarians to know?

That the two greatest heresies today are against the doctrines of creation (on marriage) and redemption (universalism), and that the Anglican theological method is to read the Bible at the feet of the Fathers.

_Five things biblical scholars should know? 

• That the Bible should be read alongside the Great Tradition. Otherwise it is often misunderstood.

• That Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and was not trying to start a new religion called Christianity.

• That Paul did not reject Jewish law but in fact was fully observant.

• That God did not transfer the covenant from Jewish Israel to the gentile church but from the very beginning with Abraham’s slaves and then, with the mixed multitude coming out of Egypt and Ruth and Rahab, admitted gentiles into the family of God called Israel. We gentiles enter the same way as associate members: grafted into the vine through baptism and faith.

• That the Old Testament comprises 77% of the Protestant Bible and 80% of the Catholic (and Anglican!) Bible so our study, preaching, and teaching ought to reflect that.

_ As a corollary, what would you like parishioners to know/what would you recommend they be taught?

Parishioners should be taught what all the great catechisms teach: the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer, and each in detail. They should also be taught in detail the meaning of the parts of the liturgy and each of the seven sacraments.

_Do you have children and if so, what ages? Describe a recent theological discussion you have had with one - or all - of them.

Jean and I have three grown sons and twelve grandchildren. I look forward to helping homeschool all of them. I am taking my 12-year-old granddaughter through a weekly study of two things—the fear of the Lord and love. Last week we talked about fear of God not as terror but fear of hurting our Father who loves us and wants what is best for us.

In closing, let’s look at your recent book on how Christians might think about our racial tensions:

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The following is reprinted with permission from Acton Books.

How are Christians to think about our racial tensions?

In January 1862, Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became America’s greatest sociopolitical prophet of the nineteenth century, declared that America was facing Armageddon. “The fate of the greatest of all Modern Republics trembles in the balance.” God was in control of the nations, and America was particularly a subject of his providence. “We are taught as with the emphasis of an earthquake,” Douglass told his listeners at Philadelphia’s National Hall, “that nations, not less than individuals, are subjects of the moral government of the universe, and that . . . persistent transgressions of the laws of this Divine government will certainly bring national sorrow, shame, suffering and death.” Douglass was describing America during the Civil War. In his mind the war was God’s way of providing atonement for America’s great sin—slavery. If white Americans repented of this great sin, the nation could experience a rebirth. “You and I know that the mission of this war is National regeneration,” he told audiences from city to city across the North in 1864. But the nation had to pass through “fire” for the new birth to begin.

The fire came of course with the death of six hundred thousand Americans and the destruction of much of the South. But the national regeneration which Douglass sought came, if at all, only in its beginning stages. The war brought a forcible end to slavery. But Douglass continued to use his legendary oratorical skills for the next forty years to remind Americans that they were in covenant with God, and that God would hold them accountable for the ways they treated their ex-slaves and their descendants.

According to Douglass’ biographer David Blight, this idea of national covenant was central to Douglass’ long career as America’s principal prophet. “For the story in which to embed the experience of American slaves, [Douglass] reached for the Old Testament Hebrew prophets of the sixth to eighth centuries B.C. . . . Their awesome narratives of destruction and apocalyptic renewal, exile, and return, provided a scriptural basis for his mission to convince Americans they must undergo the same.” In innumerable speeches and extensive writings, Douglass exhorted Americans to recognize that God was treating them as he had treated ancient Israel. Just as Israel was exiled when it broke the covenant by egregious sin, so America was exiled because of her “national sin” of slavery. Exile took the form of war and continued conflict. Return from exile would come in the form of peace and reconciliation between the races, but only if America truly repented and performed works befitting repentance.

Even if national repentance was barely beginning when Douglass died in 1895, the national covenant tradition helped him make sense of America’s tortured history with slavery and its aftermath. National covenant is a trope with a long history stretching back to early Christianity. It is not too much to say that for most of the last two thousand years, most Christians have believed in the national covenant. This is the idea that (a) God deals with whole nations as nations, and (b) he enters into more intimate relationships with societies that claim him as Lord. In other words, God not only deals with individuals during their lives and at the final judgment but also deals providentially with every corporate people and enters into special relationship with certain whole societies. Those who are familiar with the Bible know that God dealt with biblical Israel as a whole society. But most moderns are probably unaware that the God of Israel also suggested that he entered into relationship with other nations: “‘Are you not like the Cushites to me, O people of Israel?’ declares the Lord. ‘Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?’” (Amos 9:7).

Most moderns have lost sight of the national covenant, but most premoderns were familiar with it. They would have acknowledged the first part of the tradition, that God blesses and punishes whole nations according to the ways they have responded to “the work of the law … written on their hearts” (Rom. 2:15). Nations that uphold the general principles of justice revealed in that “work of the law”—often called “natural law”—are blessed over the long run, and those that flout those principles are eventually punished. These principles roughly correspond to what

the Bible calls the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20; Deut. 5).

Here, perhaps, is where the national covenant can help. It says that God can forgive and heal not only an individual but a whole society. The Bible says that God appeared to Solomon in the night and declared to him, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14). This vision in the night from God suggests that whole societies can be forgiven and healed. It also suggests that healing depends on people turning to God in freedom and humility. This is the spiritual dimension to our nation’s division that can never be mandated by a government. There is no room for coercion here—only prayer and humility.

This nation is hurting. 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. The God of Israel is Lord, even of this hurting land. Our racial divisions suggest that we have experienced covenantal judgment and exile. But we can also experience covenantal forgiveness and healing.

Used with Permission from Acton Books.