The Spirituality of African Peoples

by Paris, Peter J.

• ISBN13: 9780800628543
• ISBN10: 0800628543
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-11-01
• Publisher: Fortress Pr

Summary

Preeminent black social ethicist Peter Paris sharpens the Afrocentric quest. He focuses on African "spirituality" - 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 practice. Traditional understandings of God, ancestral spirits, tribal community, family belonging, reciprocity, personal destiny and agency, he shows, 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.

Author Biography

Peter J. Paris is Elmer G. Homrighausen Professor of Social Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Africa: Revolution in Understanding	p. 1
Moral Challenges to Scholarship	p. 1
African Challenges to Colonial Scholarship	p. 5
African American Challenges to Racist Scholarship	p. 11
African and African American Challenges to Social Ethics	p. 18
God: The Source and Ground of All Life	p. 27
African Understandings of God	p. 27
African American Theological Syncretism	p. 33
African and African American Moral Syncretism	p. 41
African and African American Survival Theologies	p. 44
Community: The Goal of the Moral Life	p. 51
African and African American Understandings of Ancestral Life	p. 51
African and African American Understandings of Leadership	p. 58
African and African American Understandings of Slavery	p. 61
African and African American Views of Pluralism and Unity	p. 68
Family: The Locus of Moral Development	p. 77
The African Family: Typical Features of Moral Significance	p. 77
The African American Family: Typical Features of Moral Significance	p. 89
Person: The Embodiment of Moral Virtue	p. 101
The African View of Personhood	p. 101
African Views of Personal Destiny	p. 105
Conflicting Views of Liberty and Authority	p. 114
African American Views of Personhood	p. 117
Ethics: African and African American Social Ethics	p. 129
The African Factor in the African American Experience	p. 129
Virtue Theory	p. 130
Some African and African American Moral Virtues	p. 136
The Christian Factor in African and African American Social Ethics	p. 156
Postscript	p. 161
Notes	p. 165
Index	p. 185
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