Work · African & Africana Philosophy
African Religions in Western Scholarship
Polemic against the study of African religions from the missionaries to Placide Tempels and John Mbiti: by describing African gods as omnipotent, omniscient and eternal, scholars have “Hellenised” them; African religions must be described in their own concepts and their study freed from Christian apologetics.
Introduction
Okot p’Bitek wrote “African Religions in Western Scholarship” while teaching in Nairobi; it was published by the East African Literature Bureau in Kampala and Nairobi in 1970. The book examines how African religions had been studied – by early anthropologists, by missionaries and by African Christian theologians – and argues that each group used them for its own ends: to prove African primitiveness, to find preparations for the Gospel, or to show that Africans had always worshipped the Christian God. P’Bitek’s main target is the “Hellenisation” of African deities, which John Mbiti, Bolaji Idowu, J. B. Danquah and Placide Tempels described with the Greek attributes of omnipotence, omniscience and eternity; against this he draws on his own fieldwork among the Acholi and Lango. He calls for the study of African religions to be separated from Christian theology and placed in the social sciences. The book became a classic of the critique of ethnophilosophy.
Connections
Criticizes
- Bantu Philosophy1945 · Placide Tempels
- African Religions and Philosophy1969 · John S. Mbiti
More works by Okot p’Bitek
- 1966Song of Lawino
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