Panentheism and Afro-Religious Cultures in the Global Space of Philosophic-Religious Discourses
摘要
That panentheism is the most appropriate term for ATRs may sound unfamiliar or strange to many ears. What I have done in this book is to explore at least six Afro-religious cultures to dissect the element of panentheism that is redolent in each of them. The task of this chapter, then, is to situate ATRs, within the context of the various criticisms that bedevil a truly global philosophy of religion. Of the three objections of narrowness, intellectualism, and disciplinary insularity that mainstream philosophy of religion suffers from, none of them applies to ATRs because, of course, they have not been accorded the relevant attention due to the bias emanating from the research focus of mainstream philosophy of religion. Whereas I show that ATRs are paradigms for how the three challenges to ATRs can be addressed, given their panentheistic underpinnings, I explore, using four themes to indicate how thick descriptions with the embodied paradigm are helpful in this guise.