The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse

For some time now, the religious life of the disparate peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora have been studied by scholars in several of the humanistic, social scientific, and theological disciplines. To date, however, the number of treatments devoted exclusively to African and Afro-Diasporan spirituality has been limited. Given the End Page 134 significant place that this phenomenon--however its essential parameters are delimited--occupies in the lives of people of color in Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere, the need for serious studies of a historical, comparative, and synthetic nature is obvious. It is for this, and many other reasons that will be outlined below, that Paris's examination of the foundations and moral implications of the spirituality of the peoples of Africa, on the continent and in the worldwide Diaspora, is both timely and vital.