Who Decided It Was African Religion

One influential 1969 book, by the Kenyan theologian John Mbiti, proposed a shared African religious philosophy. The Ugandan scholar Okot p'Bitek accused Mbiti and other Christian-trained African scholars of dressing African deities in Greek philosophical robes to prove Africa as civilised as Europe: an African critique of African scholarship shaped by Western theology.

John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (1969); Okot p'Bitek, African Religions in Western Scholarship (1971)

The scholarly debate over whether there is one coherent 'African traditional religion' or whether that framing itself was imposed from outside.

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