Shifting Perspectives in African Philosophy of Religion

The field of African philosophy of religion, like its parent discipline African philosophy, is making its presence felt globally rather late in the day for reasons familiar to the scholar and student of postcolonial studies. With the West comprehensively dominating knowledge production and dissemination processes, it has positioned, and continues to position, itself as the centre of academic life. Western intellectual dominance has translated plainly into academic hegemony. Western philosophers hardly consider African philosophy a worthy intellectual horizon with which they can engage for the good of global philosophy. The field of African philosophy of religion is hardly referenced in Western scholarship despite Kwasi Wiredu’s (2013) loud invitation to Western philosophers of religion to a philosophical dialogue with African philosophers in his chapter ‘African Religions’, which appeared in Chad Meister and Paul Copan’s (2013) edited volume The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Low African philosophy of religion research output combined with global neglect to keep the field in the doldrums for decades. Recently, however, research activities in the field have dramatically increased, thanks in no small measure to the John Templeton Foundation and partner organizations like the Global Philosophy of Religion Project hosted by the University of Birmingham. A series of research grants from the two organizations have enabled a number of African philosophers to organize workshops and publish important articles that convince sceptics that the field of African philosophy of religion has roared back to life and is ready to offer the twenty-first century compelling alternative views of God, the problem of evil, the question of death, the possibility of immortality, and the meaning of life. This current Religious Studies special issue, ‘Shifting Perspectives in African Philosophy of Religion’, continues the trend of the expansion of the horizon of engagement in global (no longer Western) philosophy of religion. The special issue boasts five excellent and potentially field-defining articles by some of the finest African philosophers writing actively today. In ‘Rethinking the Concept Of God and the Problem of Evil from the Perspective of African Thought’ Ada Agada sets out to show that a cultural antinomy revolving around the conception of God in African Traditional Religion (ATR) and traditional African thought exists and will have far-reaching implications for the field of African philosophy of religion as the field emerges fully within the broad African philosophy tradition. He identifies the antinomy in two theses: (1) There exists a Supreme Being that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. (2) There is no transcendent God but only a limited deity that cannot eliminate evil in the world. Agada argues that both theses are grounded