African Religions and Philosophy

The book that put African religious thought on university syllabuses worldwide, by a Kenyan theologian arguing that it was systematic and worth studying. Its account of the person is quoted constantly; its account of time was shown to be wrong.

Date: 1969
Author: John S. Mbiti
Region: Kenya and Uganda
Language: English

Where it stands in the argument

Position: Answered — Drew a named later reply, but was not itself a reply
Form: Treatise
Method: Analytic — Clarification of language and logical form
Transmission: Continuous — Copied and read without a break in its own language
Standing: Superseded — Overtaken by later work rather than defeated
Years to the reply: 8 years

The most widely read book on African religion for a generation, taught across Africa and abroad, and dismantled on its central empirical claim within a decade.

What the book says

A survey of African religious thought written by a Kenyan Anglican theologian to establish that there was something there to survey. Mbiti's opening claim is that religion permeates African life so completely that it cannot be separated out as a department of it - there is no distinction between sacred and secular, and a person's whole existence is religious. From this he works through God, spirits, the ancestors, the human life cycle, initiation, sacrifice and death across a great many societies, arguing that beneath the variety lies a shared structure. Two elements have proved most consequential and most contested. The first is his account of the person: an individual exists only in relation to the community, and he compresses this into a formula that has been quoted ever since - I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am. The second is his theory of time. African languages, he argues, have a rich vocabulary for the present and the past and almost none for a distant future; time is composed of events that have occurred or are occurring, so the future beyond a couple of years is not a dimension people inhabit.

What it argues

That African religions are not a collection of local superstitions but variations on a coherent view of the world, and that a person is constituted by community rather than preceding it. The communal account of personhood is the part that survived: an individual on Mbiti's telling does not exist first and then acquire relations, but comes into being through birth rituals, initiation, marriage and finally through being remembered by the living after death - so that a person's existence has a beginning in the community's recognition and an end when the last person who knew them dies. The account of time is the part that did not. Mbiti divides it into a present-and-recent-past and a vast accumulated past, and argues that with no long future in the language there is no expectation of progress and no future-oriented religion, which he then uses to explain why Christian eschatology was received in Africa as it was.

What answered it

Hountondji on the genre and Kwame Gyekye on the substance. Gyekye's work on Akan thought showed that Mbiti's linguistic claims about the future did not hold for the languages examined, that Akan has the tenses and the concepts he said were absent, and that the argument had generalised from a small sample to a continent. The communal account of personhood has fared better but has been criticised in turn for leaving the individual with no standing against the group - a debate Gyekye entered on the other side, arguing for a moderate communitarianism.

How it argues

By synthesis across an enormous range, drawing on ethnographic literature covering hundreds of societies and arranging it thematically. The method is the book's strength and its central vulnerability: the range is what makes the general claims possible, and the generalisation is what the next generation attacked. Mbiti writes plainly and without technical apparatus, which is why the book reached so far beyond specialists.

The moment

1969, in the first decade of African independence, with new universities being built and their curricula being written. Mbiti was an Anglican priest with a Cambridge doctorate, taught at Makerere in Uganda, and later directed the World Council of Churches' ecumenical institute in Switzerland. The book belongs to a moment when establishing that Africa had a religious and intellectual tradition was itself the argument, and it was written for readers - including African readers - who had been taught otherwise.

How it travelled

Into curricula and stayed there. For two decades this was the book on African religion in universities in Africa, Britain and America, and its formula about the individual and the community entered general circulation, frequently misattributed and frequently detached from anything else Mbiti wrote. Its influence on African theology was greater still, since it supplied a framework in which Christianity could be presented as fulfilling rather than replacing what was already there - which is the same move Tempels had made, from the other side of the colonial relation.

The strongest objection

That the central empirical claim is false and was checkable. Mbiti asserted that African languages lack the resources for a distant future and drew large conclusions from it, and Gyekye and others demonstrated by examining the languages that the resources are there. A generalisation about a continent that fails on the first language tested is not a small error, and it discredits the method rather than just the result - because the same procedure produced the rest of the book. The deeper objection is Hountondji's: a survey of what a continent believes, however sympathetic, treats Africans as informants rather than as thinkers, and the fact that Mbiti was African does not change what the form does.

Why read it

In extract, for the account of personhood and the life cycle, which is where the philosophical content is and which is still argued about. The chapters on time should be read only with the criticism beside them. Anyone wanting African religious thought now has far better single-society studies to go to.

Where to read it

First printed: 1969
First in English: 1969
Digitised: No

The 1990 second edition softens several formulations. Mbiti also compiled Concepts of God in Africa (1970), a survey of names and attributes across hundreds of societies, which is the more durable of the two books.

Written in English and translated into several languages including French and German. In copyright.

Where it stands

Superseded. The time thesis is not defended; the survey method has been replaced by close studies of particular societies; the personhood material remains live and is argued about seriously in African philosophy. The book is now read as a landmark and a period document.

On quoting this book

In copyright. Nothing is quoted.

Contested

Whether the communal account of personhood entails that individuals have no standing apart from the group is argued, and Gyekye's moderate communitarianism is the main alternative. Whether Mbiti's theological purpose - presenting African religion as preparation for Christianity - shapes the description is the same charge made against Tempels and is made against him too. And whether the 1990 revisions go far enough on the time thesis, or merely soften the wording, is disputed.