When are a couple married and when are they just living together? The answer usually involves some kind of public ceremony that acknowledges the union. This ceremony could be entirely secular or it could be religious. In either case, in most countries today, this is then officially registered with the authorities. But what if there is a third option? What if there is a traditional set of rituals that doesn’t quite fit in either of those contemporary boxes?

That was the situation I found myself dealing with recently when a Congolese couple, with children, were in disagreement with their church about whether or not they were married. Some said yes and some said no. The differing answers were based on which one of the three options had been fulfilled. The union was not registered so it was definitely not a legal marriage. There had not been a church ceremony or Christian wedding so it was not, in that sense, a Christian marriage. But probably enough of the traditional rituals had happened (a dowry agreed and families consented). So were they married or not?

In trying to work through the issues I realised I needed a better understanding of some of the beliefs and values behind these customs. So I had a fascinating conversation with Leita Ngoy about Congolese marriage rituals. Leita is from the Luba tribe but, as I understood it, I think there are some common threads with other Congolese tribes. This conversation both helped me process the issues but also highlighted some of the cross-cultural issues that we regularly face.

The first big issue I was trying to understand was the dowry or bride-price. The system is highly structured & all the steps need to be followed. There are intricate side ways that the father of the house is informed that his daughter has a suitor. This usually comes through an aunt. Delegations are then sent from the suitor to the woman’s family with gifts & early negotiations are entered into. Then as things get to the serious stage there is a pre-dowry (a bit like a deposit) which could be a suit for the father, for example, along with foods and other presents. 

All this is to honour the parents and is similar to notions of asking the father of the bride for permission to marry. This pre-dowry seals the engagement. Then the full dowry is negotiated (preferably in cattle but if not cash works fine) and the prospective husband then has to come up with at least 2000 US. This is serious cash.

The reason the dowry is expensive is a recognition that the future (and expected) children of the bride-to-be will belong to another’s family. These strong beliefs around future generations & continuing the family line are something that most westerners have lost over the last 100 years or so I guess. The idea of passing on the family business, keeping the line has mostly disappeared etc…but it remains strong here. Children will enrich one family but not the other.

I think in this understanding the dowry functions a bit like a transfer fee between football clubs. The player isn’t owned as an individual by the club but his services are. The woman in this case isn’t owned by the new family but her services in the sense of child-bearing are. I should point out this is my analogy and not Leita’s. 

On the day the dowry is paid in full (or at least enough to gain the bride’s family’s consent) then the husband comes to the bride’s house and she is sent away with him and from that point on they are considered by all to be married. No church or government certificate necessary. 

Leita argued that not paying the dowry diminishes her as a woman. That it is more powerful than an engagement ring. As humans we always deal with symbols & in this case the dowry symbolizes that what the family are releasing & what the husband is getting is not free but valuable because, very simply, women are supposed to bear children. Their greatest value (it would seem in this telling) is that they are, hopefully, going to give the family lots of children. And by lots they mean lots. They don’t mean two. 

The biblical story she referenced that most resonated with their traditions was Isaac & Rebekah (Genesis 24) where the giving of valuable gifts & the leaving of the daughter to join her husband is on full display. Leita insisted (several times) that this was NOT buying a wife. Instead it was showing the woman value. “You don’t get anything in the shops for free, how can you expect to have me for nothing!” 

There are strong identity issues here that are ingrained into women from a very early age. They’re not going to any old man for NOTHING. Outrageous suggestion!! No Disney-fied notions here of love being free & above such things. Pay your dowry young man!! 

But…it was a struggle to communicate this. Leita admitted some men DO think they’ve bought a wife. They assert control & insist on the wife doing what he wants precisely because he thinks he has paid (often dearly) for that ‘right’. 

The language Leita used was of payment, deposit, worth, value & status, price. So I think as much as Leita tried to insist that it’s not a purchase, most of the language & actions (such as dowry negotiations) – are very hard to separate from notions of ownership. I struggle to see how making a monetary transaction on a daughter and not a son in the end communicates worth while also not making some kind of statement of purchase. If someone gets confused on this point, I wouldn’t blame them!

Interestingly I was recently talking to a friend to Nigeria about their traditions and he said his tribe was phasing out dowries (becoming something notional as a nod to tradition) because it was understood as ‘buying a wife’. Which, as an aside, reminded me not to think of Africa as some sort of unity. There are thousands of languages, tribes and culture and each one is unique.

It’s also worth noting that it is the paying of the dowry (or at least enough of it) that determines whether a couple is then considered married or not. Not a government licence (civil) and not a church service (religious). A Christian Congolese couple may end up doing all 3 of these things but the one thing they cannot miss is the dowry (tradition). 

However to complicate things a bit more, many African couples like the glitz and glamour of the western wedding & receptions. They are much more glamorous, YouTube friendly but this kind of wedding party is paired with the church bit and not the tradition. And this is far more optional when it comes to the question of being seen as married or not. 

Adding to the confusion is that as Christians some of them are convinced that without the church bit the marriage may be traditional but it is not yet blessed (and almost certainly not legal).

The challenge for us is that in our context (Europe, Sweden, Church) these tribal traditions are not what we use to recognise marriage and they are not at all portable (recognizable from one place to another). So working out if someone is married, or not, is complicated. They have done rituals we can’t see while we’re looking for proofs they don’t have. Added to that not everyone in their own community is clear about whether it needs to be ‘blessed’ or not to be recognized by the church. 

Lastly, as inflation plays into the dowry negotiations (especially if a family has moved to Europe & is now considered wealthy) some couples are realising that marriage of any kind is some way off so they just start having kids and will work out the negotiations later. And THAT definitely is not on. Not in the traditional culture or the church that is. The government of Sweden or Swedish culture definitely doesn’t care. 

Figuring all that out and trying to understand firstly what is happening and then pastorally what should happen next, took me about a dozen hours!

If you’re interested, where we landed was the couple in question should register their marriage in Sweden, so they could have the new ‘tribes’ community recognition (as well as the legal protection) which would both satisfy the church as a recognizable marriage. We would however not require a church ceremony which would in their accounting be years away because they struggled conceptually to separate that from the reception which they couldn’t afford. This way everyone would agree that they were indeed married, and no longer be seen as living together even though the church ‘wedding’ might still happen several years from now.