Integrating African, Eastern and Western Spirituality

 In the past African, Eastern and Western spirituality have been seperate. Times have changed. We live during an interesting time, during the convergence of these three along with their peoples, histories, religions, spiritualities and wisdoms for living. The postmodernist outlook critiques these worldviews, these ways of being in and explaining the world as experienced by people. It is now clear that none of these worldviews fully capture human experience. Within each lies wisdom for living. This wisdom relates both to this world and to truths, both perceived through human effort and communicated by persons from beyond our world, extending beyond the confines of our living. These truths are available to us along with a rich variety of practices for living healthily within while being succesfully integrated with what lies beyond the confines of our world.

We’re living during the emergence of a new worldview, of a meta-culture integrating African, Eastern and Western contributions. The roots of this new worldview lie in part with modernity and in part with postmodernity. Modernisation shattered our delusions and superstitions and opened us up to each other. When the West modernised, we abandoned Western spirituality. We threw the baby out with the bathwater and our faith (along with the environment and its’ people) became the casuality. Similarly, as Africa and the East modernise their religions, spiritualities and wisdoms for living are threatened. Fortunately along came postmodernism, which shattered the pretensiousness of the West and opened us up to the heart and mystery within each religion. It is from here that the problem of Godde emerges for our generation – who and what is Godde and how can S/He be known. Now people want to be spiritual, open to Godde and mystery, but not religious, boxed in by outdated worldviews and dogmatism.

It is in light of this that I suggest that we distinguish between the human side and the divine side to religion and spirituality. The human side is everything we practice and do when we talk about religion and spirituality. The divine side is who and what we connect with when we speak about the focus or object or objective of our religion and everything that thing or person or philosophy or experience brings to the table. Though religions differ in terms of who and what Godde is and how S/He may be known the variety of practices available add to the menu available through which people may experience Godde. It is my proposal that Africa, the East and the West all serve as significant storehouses for the intrepid spiritual adventurer.

I believe not only that Christianity can integrate foreign spiritual practices but also that we should proactively and responsibly do so. Christianity, at least the bit I’m speaking to and about, is Western and Westernised. Contributions from Africa will critique and enrich our relationship with the environment and each other. Contributions from the East will critique our relationship with our essential self. Each of the great continents – Africa, the East and the West – contains a wealth of wisdom and truth that we can benefit from. Similarly, the West contributes to and critiques Africa and the East. As all religion and spirituality is partial and limited there is a lot of scope in each for further development within each broad category. We can set our mind on healthily integrating spiritual practices from a wide variety of religions and spiritualities and wisdoms for living across the African, Eastern and Western continents.