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Preface Africa has a long and rich religious history. Interesting and significant in its own right, the African continent has also played an important role in shaping world history and continues to influence the rest of the world today. Religion has been a powerful force in defining the varied cultures and civilizations of Africa, and thus knowledge of African religions is fundamental to an understanding of Africa and, in turn, the larger world. Written for high school students, undergraduates, and general readers, this reference work surveys the complex and diverse landscape of African religions across times and societies. In doing so, it helps address the need for a nonspecialist reference on the religious traditions of Africa. The volume begins with an alphabetical list of the reference entries included in the work. This list helps users quickly gain a sense of the breadth of the volume and identify subjects of interest. The alphabetical list of entries is followed by a topical list of entries. This list groups the entries in a host of categories, such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and other religious traditions religious leaders and scholars gods and goddesses and areas such as Central, East, North, South, and West Africa. By perusing this list, users can locate related entries on broad topics of interest to them. These finding aids are followed by an introductory essay on the religious trad- itions of Africa. This essay underscores the difficulty of defining religion, the diver- sity of African religions, and the influence of Eurocentrism and colonialism upon our ideas about the continent and its faiths. It also gives a succinct overview of indigenous African beliefs and some of the major Western faiths that figure in African societies. The introductory essay is followed by the heart of the book, roughly 170 alpha- betically arranged reference entries on topics related to African religions, includ- ing people, groups, deities, particular religions, places, and so forth. While the focus is on religions of the African continent, the book also explores the religions of the African Diaspora as a continuation of the African spiritual tradition. As is appropriate for a reference work, the entries provide objective foundational infor- mation and strive to be synthetic rather than argumentative. Here, the reader will find entries on such topics as the Coptic Orthodox Church, Allah, Sufism, Anansi, Dinka beliefs, Santeria, Vodun/Voodoo, John Mbiti, Desmond Tutu, Ras- tafarianism, and many others. To ensure the authority of the volume, the entries are written by a range of expert contributors from around the world. These con- tributors have backgrounds in history, anthropology, theology, sociology, and other disciplines, and some are among the leading scholars in their fields. Each entry