| | ROAPE has never published an issue on religion in Africa. We have carried several articles on the subject in the past - but they are as likely to have been entitled 'ideology' as 'religion' and to have mainly addressed the second theme of this issue's sub-title: Politics. We approach this new theme with some caution and quite a lot of heart-searching! We are unfamiliar with the idea of taking beliefs seriously. In preparing this issue, we have become more familiar with a literature which does; literature which is, on the one hand sectarian or partisan or, on the other, blatantly and sometimes horrifyingly proselytising. And it is clear that the intellectual pigeon-holes into which we previously pushed belief (the pigeon-holes of 'imperialism' , 'ideology' and 'the personal' ) are no longer satisfactory - even to us - as depositories of explanations of the phenomena of religious resurgence, conversion and belief, on a grand scale, which is occurring in Africa and, we emphasise, throughout the world. |
