Black, British, Christian

"there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb" - Rev. 7:9

We long to reflect this biblical vision of diversity in our publishing at IVP, but we recognise that we have a long way to go. As part of the process of learning to listen and live better, this year we are observing Black History Month by putting to the foreground Black British Christian voices. We have a long way to go before our publishing reflects the biblical call to true diversity, and we would appreciate your prayers as we take our next steps on this path and attempt to engage in the hard work.

In the preface to their 2007 book, Black Voices: The shaping of our Christian experience, published to mark the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade, David Killingray and Joel Edwards explain their vision behind writing this book.

Christianity is firmly rooted in history. The Bible is a historical document that tells of God at work in the lives of people in the past, and supremely of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the most important event in human history. For many Christian believers, including some whose conversion narratives appear in this book, the defining point in their lives is when they acknowledge Jesus’ death on the cross, experience pardon from the guilt of sin, and then live with God’s Holy Spirit within them. It is good for Christians to know how the faith was received by fellow believers in the past, and also to be encouraged by their life and witness.

This anthology looks at the lives and struggles, triumphs and failures, hopes and ambitions of black British Christians over the past 250 years. A few of the figures included are well known; others are not. Our hope is that a wide range of Britons will read this book and discover more about the rich history of the diverse peoples who have populated these islands. At the same time we would like black Christians to find a source of spiritual encouragement, as well as a further dimension to their own history within Britain, in many of these personal accounts. And this history should also be of interest to white Christians who would find in it a new dimension to British and to Christian history rarely mentioned.

What do we mean by ‘black’ and ‘British’? For the purposes of this anthology our definition of ‘black’ is restricted to people of African origin and descent. However, what constitutes, or how to define, ‘British’ identity is a much discussed issue today. For us, and historically, this term embraces those black people who were British subjects and citizens within the changing boundaries of the British Empire, in the Americas, in Africa, and of course within Britain itself. Another qualification for inclusion in the anthology is that the black people arrived in Britain at some time. We have bent the rules a little in a few cases, by according British identity to one or two black people who came from the United States in the nineteenth century but lived in Britain for a number of years. They have become, in our eyes, ‘honorary’ Britons, as they often thought of Britain as a more welcoming, kindly and hospitable ‘home’ than their country of birth, where they were either slaves or treated as second-class citizens. Sadly this cannot be said to be the experience of many black people who came to Britain and daily faced prejudice and discrimination.

Where possible we have kept the language and spelling of the original texts. As the writers quoted used different terms and forms to describe their own identity and that of others, we have chosen to spell both ‘black’ and ‘white’ in lower case, not privileging one over the other.

This October, IVP is observing Black History Month by re-presenting a book written by two black Christians about British Black Christianity. We are also running promotional prices on some of the titles written by black authors. Your purchase of these resources at this price does not impact the royalties paid to authors - any promotions through the IVP website are the financial responsibility of the publisher, not the author.