Christianity and Widowhood Rites in Africa: An Audit of The Effects of Ababukusu Indigenous Culture on Widows in The Context of Friends Church in Western Kenya

Abstract

Religion, life and death are entwined and the knowledge of one requires the knowledge of the other. Religions have addressed the question of how one should live with awareness of inevitability of death. Consequently, societies have developed systems of belief and practice to help their people cope with the prospect of death and the attendant sorrow and grief. Drawing interest from the complex intertwine surrounding death and religion, the main problem addressed by the study was to examine the extent to which the Interplay between the Ababukusu traditional, and Friends Church cultures with regard to widowhood rituals had subjugated the widows. The study was guided by structural functionalism by Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) and Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) and how it functioned abnormally from a gender perspective. Structural functionalism theory informed the study that the rites and rituals performed after death of husband enhanced solidarity and stability of the society, yet this was at the expense of the female gender. This study found out that the Ababukusu widowhood rites and rituals repositioned widows in society in ways that were generally depriving as the Friends Church watched and even supported tacitly. The study advises in this regard that the widowhood rites and rituals should not be abandoned completely, but instead be infused deliberately with humane values as befits ubuntu and biblical teaching of love and care with regard to widowhood.