Abstract

This chapter introduces the book. The motivation for exploring panentheism as an alternative way for referring to the nature and relationship of God with the world is articulated here. In the first instance, the chapter bemoans the unfair labelling of anything African as ‘traditional.’ To use the concept to describe the African spirituality and the religious practices of the people is ideologically laden, as it may make it easy to be contrasted with ‘modern.’ This leads to the tendency to use European and Arab-Islamic acculturation agenda as a comparable modern. Unless African scholarship begins to make this important effort without using the qualifier—‘traditional,’ it is possible that some dignity may be restored to Africa’s indigenous knowledge systems. After making this clarification, the rest of the chapter introduces the contentions of the remaining parts of the book and what readers will find amusing.