John S Mbiti Quotes

I am because WE are and, since we are, therefore I am.

Thus, when Idowu concludes with such passion that the oriśas are only manifestations of Olódùmare, and that it is a Western misrepresentation to call Yoruba religion polytheistic, the urgency in his voice arises from the fact that he is not making a clinical observation of the sort one might make about Babylonian religion: he is handling dynamite, his own past, his people's present. One can see why a non-Christian African writer such Okot p'Bitek, who glories in pre-Christian Africa, accuses John Mbiti and others so bitterly of continuing the Western missionary misrepresentation of the past (1970). It is as though he were saying, “They are taking from us our own decent paganism, and plastering it over with interpretations from alien sources.” Here speaks the authentic voice of Celsus.

Here is John Mbiti: What then is the individual and where is his place in the community? In traditional life, the individual does not and cannot exist alone except corporately. He owes his existence to other people, including those of past generations and his contemporaries… . The community must therefore make, create or produce the individual. … Whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual can only say: ‘I am, because we are; and since we are, therefore I am.’ (African Religions & Philosophy).

We’re one tiny part of a much larger whole, as the Kenyan philosopher and theologian John S. Mbiti wrote: The individual does not and cannot exist alone.… He owes his existence to other people including those of past generations and his contemporaries. He is simply part of the whole.… Whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual can only say, “I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am.

We’re not alone here on earth. We’re one tiny part of a much larger whole, as the Kenyan philosopher and theologian John S. Mbiti wrote: The individual does not and cannot exist alone.… He owes his existence to other people including those of past generations and his contemporaries. He is simply part of the whole.…

According to John Mbiti, Kiswahili speakers divide the deceased into two categories: sasha and zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live on in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalized ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered…. But they are not living-dead. There is a difference.