Marriage And Family In African Christianity

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.

There is no papal document that has generated as much interest, controversy, and debate in recent times as Pope Francis's Amoris Laetitia. This document, which came out of two very divisive synods of Catholic bishops and leaders in Rome in 2014 and 2015, will probably be the most discussed document ever produced by a pope in modern Catholicism on marriage and family life. This volume has gathered seminal commentaries on Amoris Laetitia by African Catholic theologians, social scientists, and pastoral workers. They offer African theological and pastoral responses to the principles and practices proposed by Pope Francis and the Synod on the family on such contested issues as same-sex relations, divorce and remarriage, and reception and denial of Holy Communion in the church, among other divisive issues. These important essays and commentaries show the strengths and weaknesses of this papal commentary and point out the missing link in the global conversation on marriage, family, and same-sex relations. Their argument for the inclusion of African perspectives and moral traditions in the search for a third way in finding an inclusive and integrated pastoral art of accompaniment is very compelling. The authors here also call for the inclusion of Africa's own unique challenges--like polygamy, childless marriages, and the impact of migration, civil conflict, diseases, ecological and population crises, and the rights of African women--in the global discussion on marriage and family life. They also challenge uncritical cliches in world Christianity that Africa's opposition to same-sex marriages (or Western propaganda about population or birth control and contraception) are conservative, while showing diverse African conversations on these topics in the search for abundant life on this beautiful continent.

The Family in Africa is a valuable source book. It introduces the reader to the effect of industrialisation, urbanization and modernization on African society and consequent changes in family structure, marriage institution, kith relationship, sex role and lifestyle in third world countries- especially in Nigeria, somalia, tanzania, Swaizland and Libya.