Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha

Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha

Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha, PhD., is Professor at California State University Northridge, in Los Angeles, where he teaches among others, “Religion, Logic, and Media,” “American Religious Diversity,” “World Religions,” “African Traditional Religions in Africa and the American Diaspora,” “Liberation theology,” and “Religion, Violence and Peace” since 2003.

Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Professor Mutombo was trained in Philosophy and Theology by the Jesuits in Africa and at the Gregorian University in Rome where he also worked for a year at the Vatican Radio.

He later studied in Philadelphia where he obtained his doctorate at Temple University with a dissertation on the “Philosophical and Theological Foundations of Human Rights doctrine in Post-colonial Central Africa.”

Professor Mutombo has written abundantly on human rights and interreligious dialogue and on the African notion of humanism and authentic Personhood he has been articulating over the last twenty years in the “Bumuntu Paradigm.” Beside three entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica on “Bantu Philosophy,” “Bubi” or the African ethics of good and evil, and the African-Luba traditional culture and religion, his publications include

  • “Donna e Madonna in Africa: saggio di mariologia Africana” ( In Gentes, N°5, Maggio,  Roma, 1990),
  • “Bumuntu Paradigm and Gender Justice: Sexist and Antisexist Trends in African Traditional Religions,” in What Men Owe to Women: Men’s Voices in World Religions (Edited by John C. Raines and Daniel C. Maguire (Albany: State university of New York Press, 2001),
  • “Muntu, Kintu and the pursuit of Bumuntu: Rethinking violence against women in African traditional religions,” a chapter in World Religions and Violence against Women (edited by Daniel Maguire and Sa’diyya Shaikh (Cleveland, Ohio, Pilgrim Press Press, 2007).
  • “The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: An African Contribution to the Global Ethic Project “ in For All Life: Toward a Universal Declaration of a Global Ethic. (Book edited by Leonard Swidler (Ashland: White Cloud Press, 1998),
  • “Interreligious Dialogue in Black Africa among Christianity, Islam, and African Traditional Religion” (In Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Volume 33, Number 4, Fall 1996).
  • It takes the Global Village to Protect a Child: Religion, Spirituality and the R2P Norm of the United Nations, in Responsibility to Protect: Cultural Perspectives in the Global South. Book edited by Rama Mani and Thomas G. Weiss (New York: Routledge, 2011), United Nations Project.
  • Bumuntu Memory and Authentic Personhood: An African Art of Becoming Humane, in Memory and the Narrative Imagination in Africa and the Diaspora Experience (Edited by Tom Spencer-Walters; Bedford Publishers, 2011)
  • War, Environmental Crisis, and “Mining Terrorism,” in the Congo: Prolegomenon for an African Philosophy of Sustainability. 2 in Sustainable Development in Sub-Sahara Africa: Problems, Perspectives, and Prospects, edited by Jennifer De Maio, Suzanne Scheld and Mintesnot Woldeamanuel (London: Lexington Books, 2018)

 “African Epistemology” in the Encyclopedia of Black Studies (Sage publishing house, 2005,  edited by Molefi Asante)

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