The Jesuit Ethos: A Social and Spiritual History

By analyzing how the Jesuits exploited their diversity of cultures and politics to build a global ethos, and how this global organization was sustained for the last five hundred years, relevant lessons can be learned to address the ongoing challenges of our global community. While speaking to a broader, global-oriented audience, such a history might be the first of such by an African (thus its originality), in a context of shifting demographics in the Church and the Society of Jesus, and questions about the identity of its institution and mission.

The twenty-first-century Jesuits and their partners in mission are no longer just inheritors of a venerable tradition; they are fervent architects of vibrant religious and social tales of peoples, events, and places that matter to the understanding of the Jesuit ethos or ways of proceeding. Strikingly, history told through the lenses of an expanded and inclusive paradigm offers a more honest and sobering account...

Enyegues social and spiritual history of the Jesuits epitomizes this approach that honors the virtue, sanctity, holiness, and flaws of our ancestors and the import of their cultural and religious backgrounds. The outcome of Enyegues tale is both refreshing and surprising, consoling and shocking, personal and authentic.
from the foreword

Jean Luc Enyegue, SJ, holds an STL in theology from Boston College, and PhD in church history and hermeneutics from Boston University. He is currently the director of the Jesuit Historical Institute in Africa (JHIA), and lecturer in church history at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya. His area of research has focused on the history of the society in French and Spanish Africa, and the process of Africanization of Christianity.