Black Faith and Black Health: Lessons for Lent and Life – Keep The Faith ® The UK’s Black and multi-ethnic Christian magazine

Dr Selina Stone explores Black Christian spirituality and shares why it’s important to be honest with God and the necessity to match faith with action In my most recent book, Tarry Awhile: Wisdom from Black Spirituality for People of Faith, I do what is rarely done: I speak about how we as Black people encounter God. I wrote this as someone raised as Pentecostal, who has had many opportunities to experience God in different Christian traditions. For me, fasting was familiar – not fasting from social media or TV, but from food and drinks for six to 12 hours. Extended prayer meetings, tarrying services, prophecy and visions, speaking in tongues, morning devotions, and memorising Scripture were all familiar. But silent prayer, contemplation, written liturgies, and seasons like Lent were all unusual. And yet many of our early African church fathers and mothers developed and shaped many of these aspects of Christian spirituality too. Whichever tradition or spiritual practices are familiar to you, one thing is sure: we have often inherited ideas about who God is and how to connect with Him, which do us a disservice as Black people. Toxic theologies tell us our Blackness is opposed to Christianity –...