The current volume is the culmination of discussions that Ed Keller and former colleague Donald Rothchild had been having from 2000 until they were able to organize a conference entitled: Religious ideas and institutions and transitions to democracy in Africa, in May 2007. However, because of his untimely death in January 2007, Don was not around to see the actual conference take place. Therefore, the actual conference and this resulting volume are dedicated to his memory. Ruth Iyob, a mutual colleague, has been kind enough to assist Ed Keller in putting the volume together.

In the early years of the 21st century, Keller and Rothchild took note of the growing confluence between religious ideas, institutions and politics on the African continent. At that time, for just over a decade and a half, many countries in the developing world, including in Africa, had been undergoing dramatic and profound economic, political, cultural and social changes. In Africa, issues of individual and group security, cultural pluralism and democratization, economic liberalization, and conflict management and rehabilitation, have increasingly and uniquely interconnected. There have been numerous explanations offered by observers for these trends. Some suggest that the most important impetus for these changes was the ending of the Cold War and subsequent shifts in international power relations. Certainly, we no longer live in a bipolar world in which the superpowers are locked in potentially deadly confrontation. The world is now moving, with some exceptions, toward greater political, social and cultural pluralism, while at the same time there is increasing acceptance of market capitalism as the guiding principle of economic and political development.

The central questions addressed in this project had to do mainly with the emerging role of religious ideas and institutions in the processes of Africa's political liberalization and democratization. No matter what their origins, pressures for political, economic and social change in many parts of Africa are leading to the creation of new institutions and the adaptation of others. People naturally attempt to construct mechanisms that bring order to their lives and provide them with security. The building up of new institutions for social peace and political security requires an understanding of the factors that have shaped and are shaping African societies in this time of transition.