Covenant or Contract? Rethinking Christian Marriage in Contemporary Nigeria

Abstract

Marriage remains one of the most valued institutions in Nigeria, binding not only two people but two families and their wider communities. Within Nigerian Christianity, it is commonly framed through a single formula: marriage is a covenant, not a contract. This study questions that formula and contends that the opposition on which it rests is both exegetically weak and, when pressed to its logical end, damaging to the people it claims to protect. Drawing on biblical and empirical sources, African marriage theology, and current literature on Nigerian Christian families, the paper argues that covenant and contract have always overlapped. Scriptural covenants carried conditions and sanctions, and customary marriage in Nigeria has long treated bridewealth as a negotiable, dissoluble bond that is nonetheless sacred. The paper shows that an uncompromising prohibition of divorce does not reliably produce stable homes; instead, it is associated with concealed abandonment, prolonged intimate-partner violence, and a measurable increase in spousal killing. The paper therefore advances a revised understanding of marriage as a covenant that is conditional, protective and attentive to mutual obligation. It closes by outlining what this reframing means for premarital counselling, clergy training and the teaching of marriage in Nigerian churches.