The Role of the Church in the Transformation of ‘No Sex Before Marriage’ Social Norm in Tanzania: From Shameful to Responsible Sex

Social norms comprise of “the rules and standards that are understood by members of a group, and that guide and/or constrain social behaviour without the force of laws. Social norms are the public rules of action and thought, acting as the backbone of societal habits, routines, and customs, and legal frames. In African settings, influence is organized mostly along with the gender, age, and religious structures. Religious people play the spiritual and advisory roles in the sexual activities of the adolescents. The standing norm drawn from the religious and social beliefs is “no sex before marriage.” In the communities where the research was done, sex was traditionally linked to marriage. Today more than ever, the Church is currently confronted with a divergence of opinion about sexual relationships and marriage. The reality of our society is the question as to whether the traditional understanding of marriage is still relevant as far as facilitating the believers to make meaningful and responsible choices. The intention of this paper is not to dismiss or under-value the institution of marriage, but rather to re-negotiate the structure of sexual matters in our modern society. The paper works with the concept of social norms in order to shed more light on the role of the Church in the transformation of social norms. Using a thematic analysis on a hypothetical case of a pregnancy of an adolescent in a community, data was interrogated with a series of questions for measuring norms, namely: who the reference group is, what is typical in the group, what is approved of in the group, and whether or not the social norm is conjoint or disjoint.