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Thinkers

John Mbiti

African · Africa · 1931 to 2019

Kenyan scholar who wrote on how religion and time are understood in traditional African thought.

What it is

John Mbiti (1931 to 2019) was a Kenyan-born scholar of religion and philosophy and an Anglican priest. His first book, African Religions and Philosophy (1969), challenged the view that the traditional religions of Africa were demonic or opposed to Christianity.

He was born in Mulango, in Kitui County, Kenya. He taught in Uganda, led an ecumenical institute in Switzerland, and later taught at the University of Bern.

The main ideas

  • Against a common prejudice. At the time he wrote, many people held that traditional African religions were demonic or opposed to Christianity. He argued against that view.
  • Learning from the people. When he began to teach African traditional religion at Makerere University in Uganda, he did his own research to gather material for his lectures. His students asked for his notes, and he turned them into the book.
  • Where African and Christian ideas meet. He was a priest as well as a scholar, and one of his books studies the New Testament in an African setting, asking where African and Christian ideas might meet.
  • His own language. He belonged to the Akamba people, and he translated the New Testament into their language, Kikamba.

What it looks like in practice

Imagine a student in a lecture hall who has been told that the beliefs of her grandparents are a set of superstitions. Mbiti's method would be to ask what those beliefs actually say, in the words of the people who hold them, before deciding what to make of them. This is an illustration of the method, not a scene from his life.

Books and moments

  • African Religions and Philosophy (1969) grew out of his lectures at Makerere University.
  • Concepts of God in Africa (1970) and New Testament Eschatology in an African Background (1971) followed.
  • Introduction to African Religion and The Prayers of African Religion (both 1975) came next.
  • From 1974 to 1980 he directed the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, run by the World Council of Churches.
  • In 2016 the Anglican Church of Southern Africa gave him its award for peace and justice.

Questions and criticism

  • Whose standpoint? He studied the religions of Africa as a Christian priest. It is fair to ask how far a study from that position can describe another religion on its own terms.
  • One Africa or many? Africa holds many peoples and many beliefs. It is fair to ask how far a single book can speak for them all.
  • Religion and philosophy. The title joins the two words, and it is fair to ask where one ends and the other begins in traditions that kept their thought in speech and ritual, not in written treatises.

Close neighbours

The pages on Henry Odera Oruka and Kwame Gyekye cover two other African philosophers who asked what counts as philosophy in African thought, and the page on Ubuntu covers a wider African outlook on community.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Alexis Kagame · Mbiti and others read his work on language and being in their own studies of African thought. (scholars disagree about this link)

Reacted against by

  • Kwame Gyekye · He argued against the claim that traditional African thought has no future time.

Other African thinkers

Sources we used

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