The Spirituality of African Peoples
The Search for a Common Moral Discourse
- World Religions
- Publisher: Fortress Press (Augsburg Fortress)
- Published: 1994
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Publisher's Description
Current interest in Afrocentricity is but one moment in the longstanding post-colonial search by African peoples, both on the continent and in the diaspora, for cultural beacons. Preeminent black social ethicist Peter Paris here sharpens and focuses that quest on African "spirituality"—that is, the religious and moral values embodied in African experience and pervading traditional African religious worldviews. From extensive comparative research and personal travel, Paris shows how such values were retained and modified in the diaspora, most notably in African American religious and moral thought and its practice. Traditional understandings of God, ancestral spirits, tribal community, family belonging, reciprocity, personal destiny, and agency have not only survived great cultural upheavals but remarkably even been enriched and enlivened. Paris's pan-African focus, careful scholarship, and eye for ultimate values in varying cultural milieus combine here to model comparative cultural analysis and to clarify the cultural foundations of black ethical life.
Endorsements (2)
“Dr. Paris returns in this book to an old question….of African survivals and continuities in African American religious life and culture, and brings to his reformation a fresh ethical sensitivity concerning the condition of black people in the contemporary age. His book is a valuable statement on the enduring traditions of Africa in the hostile setting of transplantation, suppression and discrimination and on their positive effects on black political and religious life. In this context "spirituality" partakes of the material and historical conditions of black people rather than being only a flaky, subjective retreat into utopia. I welcome this book.”
“Through Paris' characteristic sharp scholarly eye, we are given work that combines a pan-African focus with an enduring quest for values and meanings. This search for a usable African past is a productive one that provides a wider context to explore how the spirituality of the generations of the African diaspora shaped and continue to shape a moral discourse of collective radical social change.”
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