Polygamy: an enduring problem

Church leaders have taken two basic approaches to dealing with polygamy.

Josephat R. Siron pastors the Kabokyek Seventh-day Adventist Church, Kericho, Kenya.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen.1:27).* The Scriptures state that God created a couple, male and female; and that these two, not three or four, became the parents of the human race. It was a monogamous family that was first settled on this planet. There is every reason to believe that this was the ideal arrangement, because "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (verse 31).

The New Testament confirms this ideal. Jesus asked, "Haven't you read, . . . 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh' ? So they are no longer two, but one" (Matt. 19:4-6). Undoubtedly God in tended that the first marriage serve as a model for every succeeding family in every generation. The original form of marriage is integral to society; it is, in fact, the basis on which society exists.

That in marriage a man and woman become one flesh also makes it evident that marriage is a lifelong union between those who covenant together in this way. The solemnity of marriage does not lie in the signing of a marriage certificate, but in the agreement, with God's approval, between those who make up the marriage and who yield one to the other physically, mentally, and spiritually.

With the entrance of sin on this planet and after some few generations people began to practice polygamy. "The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose" (Gen. 6:2).

It must be noted that in societies where polygamy is legal, it is regarded as accept able and even desirable. In many communities of East and West Africa, it is the first wife who looks for a co-wife for her husband. I met a man whose wife had persuaded him to take on a second wife. Later the family members were converted and wanted to be baptized and to be admitted as church members while still in their polygamous state. The husband argued that he considered both women his legal wives and that the women also recognized each other as co-wife.

Problems having to do with marriage are among the most complex and taxing of any of the problems pastors must deal with. Marriage problems are complex because they affect the most basic of human institutions, and they tax pastors because regarding many of them the Bible gives no clear-cut statements of aye or nay. So pastors must employ exegetical approaches and must place themselves in the right positions and look at the problems from God's perspective. If Jesus were walking the streets of our cities or villages and He met and converted a polygamous family as He might have done 2,000 years ago in Palestine what would He do with that family?

Stance N

Today's theologians have reached varied stances of nays and ayes regarding polygamy. I see two basic positions. One I call stance N, and the other, stance A.

Stance N requires polygamists to make a complete change before baptism and admission into the church as members.

Proponents of this stance appeal to Genesis 1:27; 2:22, 24; and Mark 10:7. They also apply the symbol of one church as the bride and Christ as the bridegroom (seeHosea2:19).

Those who hold this position are divided into two camps: N1 and N2. The members of stance N1 say that when a polygamist is converted he has to choose only one wife among those he has. He must put the rest aside and maintain a marital relationship only with the one he has chosen. This stance says that the man continues to have the responsibility of supplying the material needs of his former wives. In other words, all the wives have an equal claim to the man's property.

The difficulty with this approach is that, human nature being what it is, the man tends to choose to keep the youngest or the prettiest wife and separate from the older ones, while biblically, the one the man married first may have more right in the family.1 The cases in which some of the wives are not persuaded to the faith of the husband (or vice versa) and may not see the reason for separation also pose problems.

Those who favor stance N2 recognize only the first marriage--whether solemnized in a law court or in a commissioner's office or according to a traditional customary wedding. They do not recognize any of the rest regardless of where solemnized. They find support for their position in Proverbs 5:18. In their view, when a man in a polygamous marriage is converted, he has to separate from all his wives other than the one with whom he first entered into a marriage relationship. Those who favor this stance agree with the proponents of stance N1 that the man should supply the material needs of the separated wives.

The proponents of both N1 and N2 suggest that since, in their view, there was no valid marriage in the case of the wives from whom the husband separated, these wives are free to marry other men. But this is unpracticable in many societies because the social environment holds marriage in high esteem, even to the point of regarding a wife as still married to someone who has died.2 When the church suggests that these wives may marry others, while the community regards them as still married to the first man, the church's image can be greatly marred--as a promoter of immorality and a destroyer of home and family.

Both sections of stance N may encourage a very serious problem to arise, a problem that may be perpetuated to the following generations. Many of the separated wives may not be able to remarry, yet they still desire the love of a man. Often they end up in immoral relation ships and bear illegitimate children.

Stance A

Stance A is more liberal. Those who hold this stance believe that what affects people socially will also affect them spiritually, so they seek a solution that deals with both the sociological and spiritual aspects of the problem of polygamy. They carry the spade in one hand and the hoe in the other. Pull the weeds and cultivate the seedling is their unwritten motto.

They see two categories of cases: those who were already in polygamous marriages when reached by the gospel and those who had professed Christianity and then backslidden into polygamous practice. Stance A proponents argue that those whose present conversion to Christianity is their first experience, who had not confessed Christian faith before and then lapsed from it, should be fully accepted into church membership through baptism without necessarily separating from any of the wives. In this group's view, separation is not a prerequisite for baptism and acceptance into the church.

Those who hold this view believe that those welcomed into the church in a polygamous state should not be elected to any leadership office in the church (see 1 Tim. 3:2). Like those in Stance N, they also hold that in those cases where there is separation, the welfare of the children must be looked into.

The main problem that this stance poses is that it is sometimes difficult to determine whether those desiring baptism are really experiencing their first conversion to Christian faith. This is particularly true in the case of mass responses during crusades. The desire to be baptized may so move some of the converts that the testimony they give of their life history may not be very reliable. Opposers of this view argue that it is not backed by Scripture, and that since the Bible makes no clear-cut statement allowing the baptizing of those in polygamous situations, we must not accept this practice.

Polygamy is a real issue, especially in Africa, so we must deal with the problem. But how do we answer questions the Bible does not directly deal with?

First, we must realize that our primary objective here on earth is to preach the gospel of salvation, and not to settle social issues.

Second, we must study how God dealt with similar situations, searching for the guiding principle that will enable us to deal with the issue we face. Here we must be ware of appealing to man's example, even as recorded in Scripture, unless the behavior received God's commendation. We know that not every action or practice in the Bible received God's stamp of approval.

Third, when an issue is not directly addressed in the Bible, we must apply reason, making sure that our conclusions harmonize with general biblical practice and with doctrinal orthodoxy.

In certain environments and in our dealing with some social issues, our solutions may suggest that we are endorsing unorthodox practices when we actually are not. We as a church must be willing to allow the gospel we preach to fulfill its function of transforming human beings and their society without the aid of human hands. When the gospel is presented in its purity, we shall see society itself rising against the evils within it. When, on the other hand, some evil is perpetuated in society, it may be be cause we have failed in our responsibility to take the true message to the people. In the case of polygamy, we have the opportunity to do this; the church must show the lapsed members that this gospel transforms sinners and that if they go back to sin, their situation is worse than before they received knowledge of the truth.

There can be no genuine reason that we should deny people the privilege of salvation simply because they were polygamists when they heard the gospel. If we do this, we become mere methodologists who formulate many rules and regulations without biblical principle; we be come no less than judges in the church. The major concern of the minister is not to devise ways and means of admitting and/or screening out polygamists, but to save by preaching the gospel of salvation as it relates to the marriage institution.


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Josephat R. Siron pastors the Kabokyek Seventh-day Adventist Church, Kericho, Kenya.

April 1991

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