John Samuel Mbiti was a Kenyan-born Christian philosopher and writer.
28 Facts About John Mbiti
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John Mbiti was an ordained Anglican priest, and is considered "the father of modern African theology".
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John Mbiti was born on 30 November 1931 in Mulango, Kitui County, eastern Kenya.
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John Mbiti's parents were two farmers, Samuel Mutuvi Ngaangi and Valesi Mbandi Kiimba.
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John Mbiti was one of six children and was raised in a strong Christian environment.
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John Mbiti's Christian upbringing encouraged his educational journey through the African Inland Church.
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John Mbiti attended Alliance High School in Nairobi and continued his education at University College of Makerere where he graduated in 1953.
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Okot p'Bitek 8.
John Mbiti then earned his Doctor of Philosophy in theology at the University of Cambridge, from where he graduated in 1963.
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John Mbiti taught religion and theology in Makerere University, Uganda, from 1964 to 1974 and was director of the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Institute in Bogis-Bossey, Switzerland.
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John Mbiti held visiting professorships at universities across the world and published extensively on philosophy, theology and African oral traditions.
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John Mbiti was clear that his interpretation of these religions was from a firmly Christian perspective, and this aspect of his work was sometimes severely criticized.
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John Mbiti collaborated on a book of African proverbs, collected from across the continent.
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From 2005 up until his death in 2019, John Mbiti was an emeritus professor at the University of Bern and a retired parish minister to the town of Burgdorf, Switzerland.
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John Mbiti was married to Verena Mbiti-Siegenthaler and had four children and five grand-children.
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John Mbiti served as a parish priest in England until he returned to Makerere in 1964 to teach traditional African religions.
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From 1980 to 1996 John Mbiti was a parish minister in Burgdorf, Switzerland and taught at the same time from 1983 onwards at the University of Bern.
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John Mbiti returned to Makerere University, where he taught African traditional religion from 1964 to 1974.
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John Mbiti's primary focus in his first book was to challenge the widely held views that African traditional religions were rooted in demonic anti-Christian values and to stress that traditional African religions deserve the same respect as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism.
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John Mbiti based his claim on his knowledge that in the Bible, God is the creator of all things, therefore meaning that God has revealed himself to all things.
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John Mbiti had little knowledge of African Traditional religion, as he was unaware of previous lectures regarding its foundations due to the deep oral traditions of such religions.
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John Mbiti sought out his own personal research to teach the class.
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John Mbiti gathered ideas from over 300 African peoples or tribes while conducting field research.
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From 1974 to 1980 John Mbiti was the director of the World Council of Churches Bossey Ecumenical Institute.
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John Mbiti held a series of influential conferences that focused on intercultural theology.
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John Mbiti's goal was to bring together African, Asian and other theologians for ecumenical encounter and dialogue.
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Okot p'Bitek 26.
The Igbo religion is one of the traditional African religions that John Mbiti researched; their tradition was rooted in their culture.
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John Mbiti discovered that the Igbo religion considers that when an individual dies, their soul or spirit wanders until the body is given a proper burial.
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John Mbiti faced criticism from the Ugandan writer Okot p'Bitek for casting his arguments in intellectual terms that had been established by the west.