Building African Christian Marriages

Written for families and pastoral caregivers in Africa, this research-based study offers insights on topics such as lobolo (where a man pays the family of his fiancee for her hand in marriage), infertility, and the role of intervention in a marriage by the extended family. The book demonstrates how unjustly and unfairly certain African practices and traditions have been criticized, and it discusses some of the undesirable outcomes due to the ignorance behind the criticism. Based on years of pastoral counselling, the book brings together valuable information comparing Biblical truths with traditional African wisdom. This will be an invaluable guide to families seeking a balanced approach to African Christian marriage, and it offers solutions to various issues around the preparation for marriage.

The book Challenges of Christian Marriage in Africa Culture is a reflection of Fr. Sylvester on the challenges encountered by Christian marriage in a communitarian African culture of kinship. While Christian marriage is a free decision of the couple involved, African marriage is a communitarian task, and thus, the decision of the community must take precedence. The contrast between Christian marriage and African marriage becomes a challenge to the Christian ideology of marriage. However, this book aims at a reconciliation between these marriages, where the moral values found in either marriage could be adopted for a sustainable marriage.

Over the last decades, an ever-growing gap has developed between traditional marriage and the officiation of it as a church wedding, because of the expenses involved in a "proper" church wedding. These are not demanded by the churches, but by common social expectations. Irrespective of whether a church sees marriage as a sacrament or as a civil order, much emphasis is put on it, by the churches and by society. Many churches exclude those "not properly married" from the sacraments. But why should the churches put so much emphasis on their church wed-dings, a ritual not found in the New Testament, and which came into the church only almost a thousand years later?

This book delves into a critical and comprehensive analysis of Mtukudzi’s legacy, as an outstanding musician who anchored his music on cultural identity specifically through the artistic manipulation of language. As a cultural worker, his remit extended beyond performance. This raised his stature to the levels of such African music icons as Fela Kuti of Nigeria, Salif Keita of Mali and Miriam Makeba/Hugh Masekela of South Africa, all towering giants in African musical performance. This volume examines how Mtukudzi artistically manipulated language to convey a timeless message of cultural identity, fighting for the respect of rights for women, children and all. It unpacks how Mtukudzi subtly uses language to put across political views that speak truth to power, harnessing Zimbabwean language to articulate and promote the nation’s cultural heritage and to advocate for societal development and the promotion of rights of vulnerable groups. The chapters in this volume are a mix of interdisciplinary Zimbabwean scholars of linguistics, performance studies, religion, history, communication and media studies, unravelling Mtukudzi as a fighter for human rights and justice who subtly critiqued political systems and practices. It concludes that Mtukudzi strove to be a cultural worker who used the power of language through music to contribute towards the rehabilitation of a battered African identity. ​