have identified other correspondences in the reli-
gious and philosophical traditions of Africa.
The fact that Western or Islamic categories,
which come much later than African religion, have
often been employed in the discourse on African
religion means that we have not yet established
enough concrete data for asserting the African reli-
gion. Because of this reality, much of African reli-
gious thought has been distorted and confused as
authors have tried to force newly discovered or
uncovered or different concepts into old and famil-
iar classes. Therefore, as editors, we have avoided
ironclad classificatory schemes and sought entries
that revealed as closely as possible the actualities of
African societies. What we wanted the entries to
reveal was the thinking of African people about
religion from the earliest of times.
The 20th-Century Rediscovery
of African ReligionThe extraordinary attention and widespread inter-
est aroused by the publication of John Mbiti’s
African Religions and Philosophythrust African
religion into the modern discourse about ways
that humans have experienced the sacred.
Subsequent African authors such as Bolaji Idowu,
Kofi Opoku Asare, Emeka Nwadiora, Ifa Karade,
Wande Abimbola, and Laurent Magesa engaged
the discussion on African religion with the idea of
expanding and clarifying much of what was writ-
ten by Mbiti in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course,
in most cases, these writers were, like Mbiti,
Christians or newly reconverted Africans who
were attempting to explain African religion in the
context of Christian theology. Mbiti, for example,
had been an ordained Anglican priest who was
eventually elevated to canon in 2005.
Born in Kenya, Mbiti studied in Uganda and
the United States before finally completing his
doctorate at Cambridge. During his career, he
taught religion in Africa and Europe and was the
director of the World Council of Churches’
Ecumenical Institute. Although it was his inten-
tion to challenge Western assumptions that
African religion was demonic and anti-Christian,
Mbiti’s work, written from a Christian perspec-
tive, had the impact of catering to Western ideas
about Africa. As a parish minister in Burgdorf,
Switzerland, Mbiti continued to advance the idea
that Christianity was more significant than
African religion and never returned to the religion
of his ancestors. Although this is not meant as a
condemnation, it is nonetheless an awareness of
the complexity and contradictions of Mbiti’s
approach to traditional African religion.
Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy
remains a classic text in the historical sense, but it
further complicates the discourse on African reli-
gion by insisting on a plurality of religions in
Africa. A number of writers have contested this
reading of African culture, claiming that the unity
of African religion is uncontested by philosophy,
practice, and ritual. Actually, Mbiti’s original title
to his book, African Religions and Philosophy,
suggests his own ambivalence about the nature of
this unity. “African religions” in his title is prob-
lematic, but “African philosophy” is not. One is an
insistence on plurality, and the other is a statement
of unity. In theEncyclopedia of African Religion,
we have taken as a starting point the unity of
African religion, although we are quite aware of
the diversity of expressions of that religion, much
like one would see in Christianity, Judaism,
Buddhism, Islam, or other human religions.
African religion dramatizes its unity in the uni-
versal appeal to the spirits that animate all of
nature. Humans, stones, trees, animals, lakes,
rivers, and mountains are conjoined in one grand
movement toward the continuation of life.
However, the entries that are included in our
Encyclopediahave convinced us that the ideas of
reciprocity, circularity, and continuity of the
human community are essential elements in the
discourse on African religion. At the core of this
continuity is the belief that ancestors remain
active in the community of the living. Almost all
other actions on Earth are dependent on the eter-
nal community that encompasses the unborn, the
living, and the deceased.
The Encyclopedia of African Religionarticu-
lates a philosophical approach to this topic that
situates African transcendent expressions in a uni-
tary sense. Fractured by numerous cultural and
spiritual intrusions, African religion has with-
stood the worst of human brutality and cruelty
against other humans with solemn resilience.
There are some beliefs and aspects of life and
knowledge that are consistent across the conti-
nent. For example, human beings originated onxxii Introduction