Spiritual Care in African Religious Cultures

A comprehensive resource on the nature and value of African religious life

Portrayals of African spirituality have been tainted in the past by harmful stereotypes and negative judgments or have altogether ignored African religions. Very few scholarly works have encompassed the depth of how spiritual care is conceptualized and practiced in African and African diasporic communities.

Spiritual Care in African Religious Cultures offers insights into the nature and value of African religious life while also giving persons of different religious persuasions information about African beliefs and practices. This book reveals how practitioners of African traditional religions and people who engage in African spirituality draw on their own spiritual traditions to help them live satisfying and productive lives. Lartey addresses key beliefs about the divine realm, ancestors, evil, health, death, and life, as well as practices such as ceremonies, manifestation of spirit, naming, and healing rites inherent in African and African Heritage religions, which are utilized in providing care for persons amid the challenges of living. He invites us to go beyond maligning and misrepresenting African religions and to enter into the therapeutic and life-giving realities of African life and thought.

Spiritual Care in African Religious Cultures is a comprehensive resource on African understandings of spiritual care and has the potential to enhance communal relationships for multicultural communities.

Emmanuel Y. Lartey is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Pastoral Theology and Spiritual Care at the Candler School of Theology of Emory University. He is the author of Pastoral Theology in an Intercultural World (2006) and Postcolonializing God: An African Practical Theology (2013); and was co-editor of Postcolonial Images of Spiritual Care (2020).