Black History Month has just drawn to a close on the American civic calendar, and Lent is set to begin on the Christian liturgical calendar. Most years, these two observances partially overlap. Easter has to fall after April 15 for Ash Wednesday to fall in March rather than February.

Yet, little is typically done to recognize or explore the implications of this concurrence, and we are spiritually poorer for it.

Lent likewise offers an intentional pathway deeper into Black history: confronting the gravity of systemic bias and historical prejudice in this country — a gravity that has shaped and continues to influence the life trajectories of Black Americans — while honoring the contributions of Black people to the artistic, intellectual and cultural life of our nation.

When we intentionally enter into the depths of the Black American experience, one of the things that immediately becomes clear is that we cannot confine the cancer of American chattel slavery to specific regions of the country or particular decades of history.

The economic heritage of oppression

America’s slave society is the offspring of colonialism and capitalism, the twin interests that first brought Europeans to this continent. It’s a corrupt gene in the social DNA of the New World. Slavery infected this land constitutionally, politically, economically and even theologically. The legacies of slavery therefore must be understood and combated on all these fronts.

“It’s a corrupt gene in the social DNA of the...

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