A Church for all Peoples: Making a Case via the Notion of Christian Marriage in Africa

Abstract

This paper attempts to highlight a few insights that might add a voice to calls by many African Christians, as well as the challenge of Pope Paul VI to African bishops in Kampala in 1969, to create a genuinely African Christian Church. This paper utilizes the notion of African Christian marriage to provide the context for the discussion. As Hastings would say, “The battle over marriage today in Africa is at the very centre of the battle for an African Christianity …”.1 The crux of the matter here is that the incarnate Word, Jesus our Lord, the head of the Church, decided to be bornamong people, to be part of their fallen state and raise them to his glory. Through his
Church, Jesus continues to manifest himself today, in people’s specific experiences/ cultures, so as to bring salvation to them in concrete ways. In this way, for the Church to be a true instrument of God’s salvific presence today, it would have to discern God’s
work in people’s specific contexts, enhance the understandings and practices that are according to God’s work in their lives, and challenge suppositions and practices that are at variance with God’s redemptive work. This understanding resonates with Lumen
Gentium, nos. 48-51. In other words, “How can Africans relate to the God of Jesus in prayer and worship, indeed, in the whole orientation of their existence, in a way that is affirming of their humanity as Africans?”