Manifesting the Primal Imagination

“It is rare that one comes upon a book that truly breaks new ground, but this is one such. For it brings together bodies of existing knowledge not hitherto associated with one another in a unique pattern of reflection, shedding new light on old stories and opening up new and redemptive perspectives for a whole range of readers.”


—Gillian M. Bediako, editor, Journal of African Christian Thought





“In this work, Joshua Settles revisits the Western hegemony of Christianity from the perspective of the virtual truncation of the primal imagination in the West. He demonstrates how Black American Christianity is primal and thus more biblical than Enlightenment-jaundiced Western Christianity, often informed by white supremacist tendencies. Black American Christianity is thereby freed to make its own legitimate contribution to Christian theology, especially in terms of embodied theology.”


—B. Y. Quarshie, immediate past rector, Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, and Culture