| Hannah Wangeci Kinoti | |
| Discipline: | Educationist, Religious Studies Scholar, Theologian |
| Workplaces: | University of Nairobi |
| Birth Date: | 1 August 1941 |
| Occupation: | Lecturer |
| Birth Place: | Nyeri County, Kenya |
| Education: | Alliance Girls High School, Makerere College School, College of the University of East Africa |
| Alma Mater: | College of the University of East Africa |
| Nationality: | Kenyan |
| Spouse: | George Kinoti |
| Children: | Five |
| Notable Works: | African Communitarian Ethics |
Hannah Wangeci Kinoti was a Kenyan African Feminist theologian and a member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.[1] Kinoti was an African Ethicist and Religious Studies Scholar with over fifty publications under her name.[2] She was a founding member of Wajibu Journal,[3] created in 1985, focusing on religion, African values, morality, politics and culture. Kinoti was the first female chairperson in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Nairobi.
Hannah Kinoti was born in August 1, 1941 in Nyeri District (now Nyeri County). She is the lastborn of five siblings. Her parents, Ruben and Ruth Gathii, were among the first to convert to Christianity. Kinoti died on April 30, 2001, aged fifty-nine years.[4]
Hannah Kinoti grew up as a member of her parents' church, the Scottish Presbyterian Church, which later became the Presbyterian Church of East Africa. She became a Christian at the age of 15 years.[5] As a youth, she participated in evangelism, and later on became a lay preacher in the Methodist Church in Kenya. In addition, she was called upon to speak on various spiritual, moral, or social topics.[6] in Nairobi and further afield. Hannah Kinoti married George Kinoti.
After graduating as a teacher, she taught Bible knowledge, English, divinity, and literature at Kenya High School for five years. She became a tutorial fellow in 1974,[7] an assistant Lecture in 1982 at the University of Nairobi where she earned her doctorate in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and became a Lecturer in 1984.[8]
She was an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies until the time of her sudden death in April 2001. She had served as the department's Chairperson for a maximum term of six years. In addition to her university duties, she at different times served as (i) a member of the Board of Governors of Limuru (now Jumuia) Conference Centre,[9] (ii) a member of the Board of Governors, St. Andrew's School, Turi, (iii) a member of the Board of Governors of St. Pauls Theological College Limuru (now St Paul's University), (iv) a member of the Board of Directors of CORAT[10] (Christian Organizations Research Advisory Trust), and (v) Chairman, Joint Urban Community Improvement Program/Scholarship Committee, a department of the National Christian Council of Kenya, (vi) a member of the editorial board/consultant editor of Wajibu.[11]
She taught students at the University of Nairobi. She was an adjunct lecturer at the Jesuit School of Theology Hekima College and Kenyatta University. At the same time, she carried on a fruitful scholarly life, as shown by the selection of her publications below. She was a member of several professional organizations, namely Eastern Africa Ecumenical Symposium, the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians Kenyan Chapter, the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians[12] Kenyan Chapter, the Association of Theological Institutions in Eastern Africa,[13] and the World Conference of Associations of Theological Institutions.[14]
Kinoti experienced a conflict between her Christian identity and her African heritage, a challenge faced by many Africans integrating Christianity with their traditional values. She criticized Western missionaries for imposing their moral and ethical codes, which often overshadowed and marginalized African values due to colonial influence. Kinoti argued that colonization disrupted African systems and promoted neocolonialism, which continued to undermine African norms and portray them negatively. She aimed to reclaim and reconstruct African ethics by merging Christianity with African cultural values, using indigenous knowledge such as language, proverbs, and folklore to develop a moral framework that honored her Gikuyu and African identity.This concern explains her active involvement in the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians and extensive research on African feminism. Primarily, Kinoti sought to construct an African feminist ethic of liberation that extolled indigenous knowledge systems and unique African ways of being. Her work was influenced by the advancement of Liberation Theology and nurtured by her quest to see the full liberation and empowerment of African women and all humanity. Kinoti conceptualized an African communitarian feminist ethics that displayed a consciousness of women's oppression and sought to reclaim their agency and chart a course for the full realization of their rights, empowerment, and liberation.
Kinoti's theorization has three major themes essential in understanding African communal structures and critical towards full liberation of women and humanity. First, she conceived of human values and living a virtuous life as key indicators of the well-being of an individual and African Indigenous community. Second is the fundamental role of indispensable relationships in the structuring and survival of a community's moral order, which shapes individual actions and defines the community's character.[15] Lastly, the centrality of the immaterial world and the recognition, veneration, and reverence of the spiritual realm and ancestral beings are critical to understanding communal life and shaping the moral fabric of African communities.[16] With this, Kinoti critiqued Western colonial and imperial epistemologies of gender and the interaction between men and women. Her methodology advanced the decolonization and indigenization of morals and suggested the possibility of generating a localized liberative epistemology that ensures the full flourishing of African women and their communities. Kinoti's African communitarian feminist ethics centered on African women's identities.