News from Nairobi

Father Michael Kirwen, Maryknoll Institute of African Studies in Nairobi, Kenya, reports on how the institute’s educational method emphasizes and encourages students to use the knowledge gained so that they are able to discuss issues of African religion fluently and freely. The following is a verbatim account (from a student) illustrating this.

“In a recent journey I met a man much older than myself and we struck up a conversation on religions. He said that Christianity was superior to African religion and had come to bring ‘light’ to Africans who were in darkness. I probed further for an elaboration, and he said that Christianity preached one supreme God while African religion had many gods and therefore Africans did not know of one supreme God.

“Using the training I got from MIASMU I asked him if his ethnic community had a name for God. He answered in the affirmative, saying God is referred to as Nyasaye, which means ‘the one whom we beseech.’ I then asked him about his community’s myth of origin and he responded that it attributed the existence of the first man and woman to creation by God. Then I said, ‘If your ethnic group has a name for God and attributes that you have just outlined, then there is evidence that your community knew and still knows that there is one God, unlike what you had earlier stated.’

“Africans therefore were not in darkness before the arrival of Christianity, rather Christianity only came to affirm what they already knew and believed, and this is why so many Africans found Christianity compatible.”