The Troubled Knot: Tying Church Discipline to ‘Christian Marriage’ in African Contexts

Abstract

This article examines the historic discourse on public discipline around sexuality in the African context and its ascendancy, through missionary emphasis on Christian marriage, across multiple denominations and cultural locations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Foreign missionaries and African leaders struggled with abuses of discipline and were aware of the inequity of discipline globally. Public discipline was extremely uncommon at this time in North Atlantic contexts, but became a foundational aspect of African Christian life.