‘Honest to Jok’ Okot p’Bitek en de de-hellenisering van God

Abstract

In the study of African religion Western discourse has been dominant both to Western and African scholars. Through this Western discourse, ‘African Traditional Religion’ was conceptualised and interpreted in terms of a Western vocabulary and conceptual scheme as a pyramid ranging from an all-pervading power at the base to the supreme being at the top with the spirits as intermediaries. The Ugandan scholar and poet Okot p’Bitek (1931-1982) launched a vehement and bitter attack in 1971 in his African Religion in Western Scholarship on this Western discourse stemming from missionaries and scholars of religion (Edwin W. Smith, Geoffrey Parrinder, Edward Evans-Pritchard). In the articulation of his critique on this Western discourse of ‘African Traditional Religion’ as a ‘Hellenisation’ of African religious deities and concepts, Okot appears to be influenced by yet another Western theological paradigm, i.e. the ‘God-is-dead-theology’, stimulated by the publication of Honest to God by John A.T. Robinson in 1963.