Yawo resistance to Christian marriage? Possibilities of a local theology of marriage.
Creators: name: Kapito, Thomas Peter.
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 1989
Subjects: subject: Anthropology, Cultural.

description: Chapter one describes who the Yawo people are; how they became involved in slave trade and acquired the Arabs' religion, Islam; and how they entered Malawi from their original home. The introduction of Christianity into Malawi is described. While the Protestants were the first to introduce Christianity into Malawi, it was the White Fathers, as far as the Catholicism is concerned, who initiated the work of evangelization there, soon followed by the Montfort Fathers. Chapter two analyses the reality of marriage according to the Yawo's world view. Yawo society is matrilineal, uxorilocal and matrilocal, founded on the most important kinship relationship between the sister and the brother who eventually becomes the maternal uncle to the sister's children. The kinship relationship between maternal uncle and the sister's children is another feature with its own importance in the Yawo society. The sisters and their eldest brother form the nucleus and basis of the Yawo village community, creating a sorority-group under the brother's charge; their marriages come under the brother's guardianship. This function is by no manner of means surrendered to the husband who is accepted into the village merely as a worker in the sense of a begetter of children for the increase of the sorority-group. The Yawo progressive marriage comes into being through a long dynamic process with three main stages. Chapter three assumes the responsibility of identifying one problem area. It is shown that the very progressivity of the Yawo marriage already constitutes a problem, in that the traditional theology regards the first stage or the phase of acceptability as nothing less than concubinage, despite the fact that the people themselves recognize it as a valid procedure for the commencement of marriage. Progressive marriage is believed to go counter to the teaching on the absolute inseparability of the contract and sacrament. This chapter attempts to show that the problem may simply be a cultural rather than an evangelical one, in view of the fact that the separability of contract and sacrament seems to have been taught by a considerable number of theologians in the Church and that the canonical form was employed in the formation of Christian marriage. Chapter four aims at discovering whether the local African magisterium of Malawi and the African local magisterium in general together with their theologians have been able to identify the problem of the progressivity of the African marriage and, if so, what action has been taken to wrestle with the situation. It may be affirmed that the majority of the episcopal conferences seem to indicate that they have been able to identify it and have taken action to address it, albeit only by way of statements and recommendations. In Chapter five, we try to search for the possibility of an African local theology of marriage, at least in one of its aspects. Our first task will be the attempt to identify the gospel core with which culture is supposed to confirm. Then, we will investigate the possible values of which the progressive marriage may be in possession. However, inculturation is also dependent upon the attitudes of the evangelizers who can bring it about. We will therefore try to examine what these attitudes may be. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)