Marrying in a single moment: Zimbabwean Baptist ethics and the management of kin relations

Abstract Scholarship about Southern Africa registers a persistent tension between the prospect of relations created in processual manner over time and role discrete ritual or lifecycle events. Marriage is one sites where this becomes particularly evident, not only bridewealth transactions but also an increasing prominence given to European-style ‘white weddings’. For Baptist Christians living urban Zimbabwe, raises host ethical considerations. This group seeks establish maintain social that they value for cultural religious reasons, while facing task moderating degree obligation these can exert them. They do so order moral autonomy necessary live lives, attempt achieve goal by creating marriages according model immediate transformation, rather than gradual unfolding. I suggest drawing from recent discussions anthropological study ethics offers way discuss choice evaluation marriage practice ways reducible class interest material expediency alone.