Christian Marriage In Africa

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.

Originally published in 1953, this study examines the effect of social change on African domestic organization and marriage. Changes to African social organization due to increased contact with the West are analyzed and accounts given as to how these changes were handled by various administrations and missionaries. The volume is contributed to by lawyers, missionaries, anthropologists and sociologists from Africa, Europe and the USA.

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?

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.