Africa's Social and Religious Quest : A Comprehensive Survey and Analysis of the African Situation

A new conversation on Africa, for a new century! This book probes key dimensions of Africa's existential predicament. It constitutes an intellectual response to a gnawing "African situation," the starting-point for grasping Africa's social and religious quest. Beyond split explanations of external (colonization/slavery) vs. internal (leadership/cultural values) factors, this study comprehensively accounts for emergent issues shaping this situation, reflecting a gamut of problems in (traditional) African religion and material culture. In turn, this defines communality/polities and destinies vis-à-vis the cosmos/nature. African religion and communal values operate via adaptation rather than critical engagement with larger issues of society and civilization, especially those shaped by the advent of (post-) modernity. The communal drive for natural/social harmony inevitably produces a preservationist view of culture. This study's integrative approach to religion, society, and civilization, eschews dichotomies, broadly defines, and resignifies life and wholeness as a true end of Africans' quest today.