Q. Do you believe that the Christian Church has always been ready for polygamy? Or is interest in it now purely providential?
A difficult question. Human nature is the same now as it always was so I would say that on an individual human basis the Church (Messianic Community) has always been ready for polygamy. In terms of politics and the spiritual state of the Church (Messianic Community) worldwide I think now is the time for the re-introduction of the principle.
If you go back just 50 years the thought of polygamy in the Western (Catholic/Protestant) and Eastern (Orthodox) Churches would have been unthinkable. The mind-set was simply too crystalised and inflexible, backed as it was (and still is) by nearly 2,000 years of Greek-Roman tradition. Though this is not a nice thing to admit, the greater acceptance of polygamy today has more to do with New Age influences than Christian/Messianic. By that I mean the introduction of Hinduism/New Age teaching to the West has eroded Greco-Roman ideals somewhat - for good and for evil - good, in the sense that the West is open to other than exclusively monogamous lifestyles, and evil in the sense that the good in the Greco-Roman tradition is being swept away too. So what we, as polygamists, have gained on the roundabout, society in general has lost on the swing.
Could Yahweh have opened the doors to polygamy in any other way - that is, without polygamy riding in on the crest of immorality and false religion? Sadly, I do not think so. However, you must not assume that we, as polygamists, condone immorality or false religion even though we happen to have indirectly exploited this. We would rather have seen the Reformation continue beyond the necessary work of Luther, Calvin, Knox and others, with Greco-Roman traditions being eluted out by Hebrew ones. Sadly, it has not happened. That is the price of free agency. Instead, the Greco-Roman churches have (a) stubbornly held on to their traditions; or (b) turned to the New Age.
We find ourselves being heard today not just because the laxity in morals generally permits all voices to be heard but because traditional Christianity is starving. The Greco-Roman model, built as it is upon autocracy, is not answering the spiritual needs of Protestant churches seeking for true spiritual freedom and the primitive New Testament Church (Assembly). The practice by the Mormon Church of polygamy - based at it was on the autocratic model and (worse) on a false spiritual paradigm - set the polygamy cause back by at least a century. Polygamy has earned itself a bad name because of the Mormons' biblical unorthodoxy. It has taken time for people to realise that there is 'Christian polygamy without Mormonism'. To this day my relatives unjustly accuse me of being 'Mormon' because of my belief in, and practice of, patriarchal marriage. But that is to be expected - the possibility of evangelical or messianic polygamy is just too uncomfortable for most Protestants and Messianics: better to shift the blame on a non-biblical group like the Mormons.
As to your question: Is the Christian Church ready for polygamy? I would have to answer strongly, NO, if by 'Church' you mean organised denominational religion generally. But were you to have asked, 'Is the BODY OF CHRIST' - the invisible congregation of true born-again believers (the Messianic Community) - ready for polygamy? I would have to answer, YES - and increasingly so. And numerically Christians/Messianics are ready for it too because in most evangelical Churches and Messianic synagogues there is on average a 7:1 female:male ratio of converts - women are far outnumbering men. It is just a matter of time before all genuine Bible-believing Christians/Messianics see the truth and practical necessity of patriarchal marriage. We are the pioneers, showing the way forward.
Author: SBSK
