Mbiti, John S. (Personal Name)

His English-Kamba vocabulary, 1959.

BL AL recd. 27th Oct. 1988 (John Samuel Mbiti, born 30th Nov. 1931)

Info. converted from 678, 2012-10-02 (b. 1931; Rev., B.A., A.B., Th.B.)

New York Times, John Mbiti, 87 dies; punctured myths about African religions, Oct. 24, 2019, viewed October 26, 2019 (John Mbiti, a Christian theologian from Kenya, died Oct. 5 at a nursing home in Burgdorf, Switzerland, age 87; he disputed characterizations of African religions as anti-Christian at best and practiced by savages at worst, saying they were as deeply rooted and as legitimate as Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism; criticized by Okot p'Bitek and others for casting his arguments in intellectual terms established by the West; John Samuel Mbiti, born Nov. 30, 1931, in Mulango, Kenya; studied at University College of Makerere in Kampala, Uganda, in 1953; received bachelor's degree in theology from Barrington College, Rhode Island; taught briefly in Kenya and Britain; earned Ph.D. in theology at Cambridge University, where he met his future wife, Verena Siegenthaler; ordained as an Anglican priest by the Church of England; served as a parish priest in England before returning to Makerere in 1964 as a teacher of traditional African religions; his lack of knowledge about the subject led him to field work, resulting in publication of African Religions and Philosophy; taught at Makerere until 1974, when he was hired as director of the World Council of Churches Bossey Ecumenical Institute, Bogis-Bossey, Switzerland; became known for organizing conferences on intercultural theology; left the council in the early 1980s and was parish minister in Burgdorf for 15 years; also taught theology at the University of Bern 1983-2003; in 2014 he completed translation of the New Testament from the original Greek into his local language, Kamba)