It looks like polygamy isn't just for Mormon fundies anymore, they seems to be an increase of polygamists in general.

Couples search online for spare wife

Polygamy gains popularity; About 37,000 people in North America live with multiple marriages

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J. M. - Baptist - Ontario, Canada - Feileadh Mor

"Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience. But nothing is a greater cause of suffering."
The Brothers Karamazov

Barf.

I couldn't live with myself.

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Andrew DeShazo, Deacon
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Memphis, TN
"Send Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey with haste, that they may lack nothing." -Titus 3:13
http://foolish-wisdom.blogspot.com/

You wouldn't have to live with yourself. You would be living with your wife and your other wife.

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Evon Taylor
Okinawa Covenant Church, PCA
Okinawa, Japan

What's wrong with polygamy? O.k. polygamists can't be church elders but other than that. When, as in my location, schooling and employment is not readily available for females and there is no welfare system, for a widow becoming a second wife is the only option beside prostitution. Since the church here was founded by fundamentalists/legalists who believed in salvation by faith plus monogamy, polygamy is outlawed. Widows and their offspring are left to starve. Which is the greater evil--polygamy which, though not ideal, was never outlawed by scripture, or murder?

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Mary Vanderkooi
Kale Heywott Church (KHC)
Soddo, Ethiopia

YIKES! Leslie, no one is comparing polygamy to murder! In your culture I am certain the desperation to consider it is much higher than in ours here in the U.S. and is another issue to discuss.

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http://www.myspace.com/aleavelle
"Speak wisdom to a fool and he'll think you have no sense at all"

Leslie,
Jesus made it pretty plain that "the TWO shall become ONE," referencing Moses, Gen 2:24. That's the normative position. The matter of mandating that the elder has only one simply underlines that fact. He is to be an example of right-living.

Not that some societies have not found ways around the biblical norm. Sometimes there is the plea for welfare, as you mentioned. Leaving widows to starve is an outrage, not against polygamy, but against a church that can't read its own New Testament: Care for widows and orphans is commanded, James 1:27; 1 Tim 5:3-16; Acts 6:1. Who is the "family" of the widow? The church, if no one else is. 1 Tim 5:8 is as clear as anything: if a man, a son, won't take care of his own mother, he is worse than an unbeliever, a denier of the faith.

In the final analysis, the Bible's "welfare program" is preferred to the world's every time.

The Bible doesn't demand that families be broken up, but by banning polygamous elders, it shows its disapproval for the practice. And the legal maxim is applicable here: "Hard cases make bad law," meaning that any "extraordinary" situation one can bring forward to mitigate Scripture's clear teachings has little weight for deciding what should be allowable on a regular basis. Where the Bible reigns, eventually polygamy should die out, where it had become normal. Like slavery.

Let's look at some other Bible facts. The first "polygamist" was Lamech, of Cain's line of descent (Gen 4:19-24). It is as if God inserted the fact of his two wives to emphasize his depravity, even before his murderous boasting.

In all the cases of multiple marriage I can think of, not ONE of them was free of added strife. Far from "glorifying" polygamy (as claimed in the article) the Bible shows repeatedly how disruptive and destructive it is.

And where one man has 500 women, or 1000, all to himself--a harem for his sxual appetite--there are hundreds of men who have none because of it. We need to ask if that is good at all.

Hope this is helpful.

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Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


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You're correct, of course, that polygamy is never explicitly condemned or outlawed. Goodness, David had multiple wives and it says in Kings (both 1 & 2) that David did right in the sight of the LORD, "except in the case of Uriah the Hittite" (1 Kings 15:5).

However....Scripture also shows that possessing multiple wives is inevitably a cause of strife and division. It's nowhere shown in the NT, and when widows in need are mentioned, it's not suggested that they be married to someone already married, but for the church to care for them, if they've no family available to perform the office.

If a church has members in dire and desperate need but isn't striving hard to help them, the answer isn't to go backwards and re-create OT times, but for the people in the church to shoulder the responsibility the LORD gave them.

A significant problem with polygamy is that it's a common practice of the false religions of today, so it is not something the Church should want to engage in, as we're to be set apart from those.

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Anne Ivy
Christ Chapel Bible Church
Fort Worth, Texas

Married to Don, mother of six, grandmother to an ever-increasing brood.

The Ivy Vine (my blog)

That's the normal view of Reformed missionaries who have thought things out. There are practical decisions that come into play, and there's room for debate concerning some of those. The group I was with briefly in PNG never dreamed of breaking up families, but those men with more than one wife couldn't be Elders or Deacons, but in addition if a convert took an additional wife they would be censured by the church. To me that would be wrong because for something leading to excommunication you'd have to show something clearer than not living optimally.

And as an aside, CM has a good point about strife; co-wife fights are the worst.

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Tim Vaughan, 48 years old, member PCA church but currently attending EV Free church. San Luis Obispo County, California.

With the challenges being made to the definition of marriage in the world today, do you folks see polygamy being made legal? Has anyone seen "Big Love?"

If a polygamist family comes to faith in Christ, the door slams shut on additional wives being added, but the existing family should be respected.

I actually don't understand this at all.

Why the distinction "if a polygamist family comes to faith in Christ"?

If they aren't in Christ, you would allow the continued accumulation of wives - that I understand, since all you could really do is give pious advice.

However, if they are in Christ, and if, given your previous statement that polygamy is not a sin, why would the door necessarily slam shut? If it's only "unwise" but not sinful, why would the elders say, categorically, no?

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Todd K. Pedlar
member, First Congregational Church, (CCCC) Cresco, IA
http://semperubi.rtrc.net

"Many men, after a long conversion, see more of the workings of sin in their hearts than ever they did before or at their first conversion. Now, such men have not an increase of sin, but an increase of illumination and light" (Christopher Love)

Polygamists in the U.S.A are a lewd and rebellious bunch.

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~Keon Garraway~ Brooklyn, NY

Love for God demonstrated by the love for our children in giving them a God centered education is the only hope for our country. by David Morrow
Pslam 71:20 [Thou], which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth.

In the OT there are numerious examples of polygamy but in the NT I don't think there are any (apart from Herod whom John the Baptist condemned for taking his brother's wife). Like everything those who don't want to submit to scriptural authority will then find something from scripture and twist it to suit a rebellious and lustful heart. There is a mountain of biblical material in support of monogamy, the purity of marraige whilst marraige as a picture of Christ and the church shows that Christ has one bride: the church (singular)

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Stuart
Elder, Lambeg Baptist, Northern Ireland, UK

In Him the fulness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form and in Him you are complete (Col 2.9-10)

The sacrifice of a broken heart doth please Him but the sacrifice of a broken Christ alone doth satisfy Him (Richard Steele)

I heard somewhere that in Chinese, the symbol for contentment is a house with a man and a woman in it. The symbol for strife is a house with a man and two women in it.

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
http://brahmsgreenglove.blogspot.com
http://accenttranslation.blogspot.com

John was the greatest of the Prophets. His criticism of Herod was not for polygamy. According to Josephus, Herod had ten wives and numerous concubines and John didn't say a word about them.

The question isn't whether it's optimum, good or virtuous because it isn't. But whether it is a sin in a country where it is legal. And if so does it rise to the level of a sin that can and should lead to excommunication.

I can see some cases for church discipline, but only on principles laid down in Biblical law, like ignoring the first wife. Other cases as well, perhaps, like one guy we had who's wife couldn't bear children. He married another woman because of that, and to my mind it was clearly wrong on several levels that could possibly result in church intervention.

The reason why we can, and should say that it would be a sin to take another wife, and so (ordinarily) subject a professing believer to discipline, despite civil laws to the effect of permitting such sin, is that in the case of a man who formerly did wrong then came to faith--to divorce one or more of his wives would add sin to sin. Repent and move forward. Live with the imperfect stuation, and make the best of it. But Jesus said to do things God's way, and for a Christian to go against that is to go against conscience.

Now, the man marries a second wife against the Lord's will. He was advised of the sin. He may have been counseled against his action. He later admits he was wrong, and repents, and the church attempts to deal with the awkwardness that sin creates. But not by adding sin to sin. Once a man is married before the magistrate, he is married. God has instituted the magistrate. The sin-soaked society has still not changed its habits and permissions, and this church has to operate in a world which often does not censure truly bad behavior, even sanctions it. But times and social mores do change.

The mind of the Church has been, from the beginning, in favor of monogamy, and it's always been the standard for Christian marriage.

ISTM the Church has the right to set the standard, so long as it's not mandating that which is only permitted (for instance, making Christmas an obligation).

One-man-one-woman marriage is the norm in Scripture; polygamy is just permitted. That which is Scripturally normative is surely the standard; that which is merely permitted can be legitimately forbidden.

And I suppose the opposite would be true, and the Church could reverse itself on what has in the past been forbidden, though it's Scripturally permissible.

I'd be adamantly against any Christian denomination or church swimming against the tide of tradition by allowing polygamy, however; not unless there was some cataclysmic event that makes human existence dependent upon it.

Which most assuredly isn't the case now.

Still, I'm mostly thinking out loud.

Always possible I'm all wet!

I heard on the news recently that physical fights between females appear to be increasing, and it was observed that when fights happen, girls (or women, I suppose) are almost invariably more vicious. Apparently when guys fight there's a goal in mind, and once the goal is achieved, the fight's over.

But when girls fight the goal is to cause pain and suffering and inflict injury. IOW, that which is a means to an end for guys, is the end for girls.

Sad to say, I believe it. Females can be really nasty to each other.

Wisdom is part of the equation here. I mean this very simply: sometimes a very evident sin in one circumstance is not in another. Sticking a knife in somebody: deadly, painful, but sometimes for the purpose of saving life, not destroying it. So, plural marriage--especially where it grew out of levirate conditions (necessary and outside the norm, remember), where it was even enjoined by God--may at one time be permitted. But God's positive employments and enforcements are subject to his adjustments. But the problems and