Perception and negotiation of christian and traditional spiritual practices among christian women in kenya

Many studies have been conducted on the dichotomy between Christian and African religion (s), to understand why African Christians turn to traditional practices when they encounter everyday life crises like prolonged sickness, pre-mature death, and quarrels amongst couples and also luck of child to point a few. One cannot understand the reason for consulting traditional healers without focusing on how this is negotiated and perceived by the actors themselves. The empirical materials from the study done in 2010 are applied to bring about the idea of understanding spiritualities among the women in the Pentecostal church and Methodist Church in Kenya (MCK). Some priests and traditional healers were interviewed too and their views are employed to unearth the situation. Due to confidentiality and anonymity purposes, names given to informants are not their actual names. It is understood that lack of missionary understanding of the role of African traditional religion to the natives resulted in a split between African traditional spiritual practices and African Christian spiritual practices. This has also brought about the question of syncretism and how Africans theologians can try to contextualize their practices, though African theologians have tried to reinstate the conflicting issues of syncretism by seeking better integration between African traditional practices and African Christian practices. Good elements in African traditional religion need to be accommodated into African Christian practices to promote proper contextualization