African Spirituality: On Becoming Ancestors

by Anthony Ephirim-Donkor

Overview

Using the Akan in Ghana as a paradigmatic African representative group, African Spirituality: On Becoming Ancestors, Third Edition offers a unique African developmental praxis to eternal life immortality. Indeed, this way of life is predicated on the awareness and application of certain intrinsic values, which, if followed, lead to eternal life. As a way of living, African spirituality begins when an individual becomes morally and ethically responsible for one’s own actions while engaged on an ethical path (Ɔbra Bↄ) in pursuance of one’s unique career endeavor (Nkrabea). Though an individual quest, society is, however, the arbiter of one’s ethical and moral life, when society confers on the person adjudged a success the stage title of Nana. At old age, Ɔbra Bↄ ends as an active endeavor. However, as repositories of wisdom, senior elders continue to inculcate in succeeding generations the principles, art, and mastery of ideal life (Ɔbra pa). Then upon death, senior elders are transformed into deities, bequeathing to living descendants names worthy of evocation and worship. Indeed, this book is the first study of its kind to draw on the experiences of an entire people, their psychological dispositions and effects on the Akan during adulthood. Thus, this book brings a unique perspective to the study of spirituality, religion, developmental psychological theory, what it means to achieve perfection as an elder on earth, and upon death join the esteemed company of the Nananom Nsamanfo (Ancestors).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761872603
Publisher:	Hamilton Books
Publication date:	03/24/2021
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 8.62(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Anthony Ephirim-Donkor is professor and former chair of the department of Africana Studies at Binghamton University and State University of New York.

Table of Contents

Preface

Guide to Third Edition Pronunciation

Notes on Third Edition

Part I: Personality Formation

Chapter 1: The First People

Chapter 2: Theoretical Perspectives

Chapter 3: Abosom in Flesh

Chapter 4: Ɔkra

Part II: Stages of African Spirituality

Chapter 5: Twim

Chapter 6: Ɔsaman

Chapter 7: Ntsitsi

Chapter 8: Ɔbra Bͻ

Chapter 9: Nananom Mpānyinfo

Chapter 10: Owu

Chapter 11: Nananom Nsamanfo

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

As a traditional African ruler and Western educated scholar, Dr. Ephirim-Donkor draws on his

personal experience growing up in Africa, key informant interviews, his research, and

scholarship to weave together a tapestry of personality development as practiced and

understood in West Africa. His weaving of personal stories with philosophical and theological

understanding plus scholarly references creates a complex cosmology with ancient roots and

modern interpretations. Often, he examines the roots of key Akan words to offer a deeper

understanding of their true and more spiritual meaning. Although he makes comparisons to

Western concepts of human personality development, he expands them to include the non-

corporeal phases of development—before conception and after death—and interweaves those

phases with a person’s physical existence. He lays to bed any notions of “primitive” about

African notions of spiritual development and theological understandings, pointing out ways that

missionaries have denounced and sought to deny Africans their traditional beliefs and ways of

life in order to impose Western values.

In his role as a traditional African ruler, he is privy to rituals and rites reserved for royalty, which give him greater insights into the full import of theological concepts and implications for living. He also expresses the imperative to document traditional practices and their meanings and purposes before they are lost completely to a “modernizing” influence in Africa. This book provides such documentation and should be a valuable resource for those wanting a better understanding of traditional west African spiritual practices, of the origins of many African American practices, and of the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds as embodied in the human experience. This entirely revised third edition presents new insights and addresses some criticisms of earlier editions, as well as introduces a new chapter that extends the discussion of human development to an additional phase.

Susan F. Goekler

As a scholar, Anthony Ephirim-Donkor’s métier is African religious life. The critically-

acclaimed African Spirituality: On Becoming Ancestors, now in its third edition, is among his

best-known and well-thumped books, for very good reasons. For an accessible window onto the

rigor and depth of Ephirim-Donkor’s scholarship, its deep learning and immersion in the

subject matter, its observer-participant panache and engaging ethnography, one needn’t look

any further than African Spirituality. Grounded in empirical data from the Akan peoples of

Ghana, the book offers a spirited meditation on African indigenous religious life, at the core of

which are two interrelated quests: to attain eldership in this world, including through veneration

of the ancestors, and to attain ancestorhood in the world to come.

It remains the case that discourses on African life, not least African spiritual life, often must include a vindicationist affirmation—that is, a defense of African belief systems and ways of doing and thinking, the integrity and rationality of which continue to be questioned by non-

African observers, and even by African ones. In this regard, African Spirituality doubles as an

exercise in African vindication. For mastery of the topic and moral commitment to the cause, to

say nothing of his insider knowledge as a traditional ruler, there are few scholars, in or out of

Africa, capable of matching Ephirim-Donkor’s authority and credibility on the question of

Akan spiritual and cultural life. By dint of its deep interdisciplinarity—its seamless crossing of

the boundaries that separate the social sciences from the humanities, religion from philosophy,

the sacred from the secular—the book also lends itself to comparative cosmological and

cultural studies, which is yet another example of its vindicationism. Seasoned scholars of

African spirituality no less than those new to the subject, such as undergraduate students, have

much to learn from Ephirim-Donkor’s book. African Spirituality is a work that has already

endured many seasons. It has many more still to go.

Michael O. West