UPC: 9781531502973 | Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia: Life Under the Baobab Tree: Africana Studies and Religion in a Transitional Age (Paperback)

UPC lookup results for: 9781531502973 | Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia: Life Under the Baobab Tree: Africana Studies and Religion in a Transitional Age (Paperback)

Life Under the Baobab Tree: Africana Studies and Religion in a Transitional Age is a compendium of innovating essays meticulously written by early and later diaspora people of African descent. Their speech arises from the depth of their experiences under the Baobab tree and offers to the world voices of resilience newness/resurrection hope and life. Resolutely journeying on the trails of their ancestors they speak about setbacks and forward-looking movements of liberation social transformation and community formation. The volume is a carefully woven conversation of intel-lectual substance and structure across time space and spirituality that is quintessentially Africana in its centering of methodological theoretical epistemological and hermeneutical complexity that assumes nonlinear and dialogical approaches to developing liberating epistemologies in the face of imperialism colonialism racism and religious intolerance. A critical part of this conversation is a reconceptualization and reconfiguration of the concept of religion in its colonial and imperial forms. Life Under the Baobab Tree examines how Africana peoples understand their corporate experiences of the divine not as religion apart from its inti-mate connections to social realities of communal health economics culture politics environment violence war and dynamic community belonging. To that end Afro-Pessimistic formulations of life placed in dialogic relation Afro-Optimism. Both realities constitute life under the Baobab tree and represent the sturdiness and variation that anchors the deep ruptures that have affected Afri-cana life and the creative responses. The metaphor and substance of the tree resists reductionist essentialist and assured conclusions about the nature of diasporic lived experiences both within the continent of Africa and in the African Diaspora.