I will never forget the day I stood on the ruins of a third-century synagogue in Capernaum, just a stone’s throw from the beautiful blue waters of the Sea of Galilee. I was leading a tour of Christian pilgrims. Our guide called our attention to Matthew 23:3, a verse I had read hundreds of times but which now suddenly jumped off the page: “You must be careful to do everything [the teachers of the law and Pharisees] tell you.” I... Read more

Mosaic is a Jewish online magazine.  Its editor Jonathan Silverman interviewed Derryck Green and me on race and the Bible.  We told Dr. Silver that the biblical covenant is necessary for racial healing and reconciliation.  Here is the recording of our conversation. Read more

In January 1862 Frederick Douglass, former slave who became America’s greatest socio-political 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... Read more

  by Carl Trueman While working on “Evangelicals and Race Theory,” I was pleased to discover the recent essay collection Race and Covenant: Recovering the Religious Roots of American Reconciliation, edited by Gerald R. McDermott. Written by a group of largely, but not exclusively, Christian thinkers, it is a most welcome volume in a Christian world divided (at least if the soi-disant leaders on Twitter are to be believed) between those who think racism is the only sin that exists and those who... Read more

By Victor Davis Hanson The year 2020 witnessed a long series of writs lodged against an America beset with plague, quarantine, recessions, riot and arson, and the most contested election since 1876. What was strange was not so much the anarchist Left’s efforts in the present to wipe away the past to recalibrate our Animal Farm future. What was odder were both the absurdities of the complaints against American civilization, and the unwillingness or inability of Americans to rebut them and defend... Read more

by Dexter Van Zile A long time ago, I was in a city called Bukavu preparing to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in a country that was then called Zaire and is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On a weekend walk into the city, I walked past a church with some other trainees. It had a statue of Jesus on the cross. It was a memorable statue because of how white Jesus was. The Jesus who hung... Read more

Beatrice Institute, a Pittsburgh-based initiative fostering education and research in the Christian intellectual and cultural traditions, seeks a full-time Associate Director to oversee day-to-day operations, build programming, and execute development initiatives. The Associate Director will work with the Faculty Director, affiliated faculty, and part-time staff to execute the vision of the Institute’s board and Faculty Director. The qualified applicant will take a lively interest in the Christian intellectual life; (more…) Read more

Reconciliation can only happen, when both sides conduct themselves with dignity. Reparations are an easy way out that can prevent giving and receiving that dignity. There are two reasons for this. First, reparations allow the descendants of perpetrators the false comfort of believing that the existential evils of the past are somehow forgivable. Second, they encourage the descendants of victims to see themselves as perpetual victims who would do better to blame the righteous descendants of evil perpetrators than to... Read more

When I was 16 years old, I came across a book in a small, state-owned bookstore in China. I don’t know how it escaped the government’s censors, but I was soon mesmerized by Chatting About America. Here I encountered a world foreign to my experiences but intriguing to my curious soul. It was about a land of freedom, where people were encouraged to think independently and critically and to participate in a market of ideas. This place was America. To read... Read more

Friends: Critical Race Theory is in the atmosphere we breathe.  It is at the heart of our most heated cultural debate–on race and its meaning.  What is it?  What are its chief tenets?  What is its relation to the gospel? Anglican blogger David Virtue asks me these questions in this video.  Click here to watch. Gerry Read more