FAMILY AS THE CHURCH IN MINIATURE: A PANACEA TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN FAMILIES IN AFRICA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbto.2022.1.05Keywords:
violence, women, family, Africa, spirituality.Abstract
Observably, many African Christians, on church-going days, put on reverend moods and are kind towards one another, both at home and at the Church premises. It is not uncommon that these same Christians are violent the rest of the week, treating members of their families unkindly. This shows how much the church is revered as a holy institution. This is the problem of sacred-secular dichotomy; between the church and worshipping days versus away from the church and non-worshipping days. Therefore, we argue that if the human institution –the family, is understood as God’s own instituted basic unit of the church and therefore holy, peace will prevail among its members. The approach applies the principle of analogia entis to argue that the human family is God’s family in the same manner we speak of the church as the Family of God since both are prefigured in God’s eternal plan. In this research, the anthropological data is gathered by non-probability sampling.
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