ABSTRACT
The ruling is illustrative of the lack of precise direction in some Protestant missions as to the significance for their own members of the solemnization of marriage in church. The incomplete character in non-episcopal regulations of directions concerning the marriage of people of differing status in relation to the Church is to be accounted for by the non-acceptance by many Protestant missions of any practical distinction of status. Missions in Africa have had to be concerned more with questions of ecclesiastical status, whether technically or implicitly, than with questions of affinal relationship. The internal disciplines of the missions reflect the variant emphases of doctrine held by the respective churches of which the missions form a part. In Anglican missions the observance of Archbishop Parker’s Table of Prohibited Degrees was at first insisted upon. Protestant missions do, however, emphasize the matter of status, but within the Church and in a different connexion.
