Polygyny

po·lyg·y·ny (pə-lĭj’ə-nē) n.

  1. The con­di­tion or prac­tice of hav­ing more than one wife at one time.
  2. Zool­ogy. A mat­ing pat­tern in which a male mates with more than one female in a sin­gle breed­ing season.

I believe that the major­ity of Chris­tians today mis­un­der­stand the Scrip­tures’ teach­ings regard­ing mar­riage. Oh, cer­tainly, they right­fully pro­claim that homo­sex­u­al­ity is a repug­nant sin. They’ll also pro­claim loudly that mar­riage ought to last a life­time, their own track record notwith­stand­ing.

And many will plainly state that polygamy in all its many forms is a sin. There was a time when I did. I argued furi­ously for what surely added up to scores of hours in offense on polygyny.

After a cer­tain point, I real­ized I was repeat­ing myself. The so-called bib­li­cal argu­ments against polyg­yny which I was devis­ing and/or find­ing else­where were sys­tem­at­i­cally dis­man­tled by the defend­ers of the practice.

For months, I abstained from the debate, with the sim­ple con­ces­sion that I believed that polyg­yny was wrong… but I had no idea why it was. It was only a mat­ter of time before my own pride would be bro­ken regard­ing the matter.

I now stand in defense of polyg­yny just as I have always stood in defense of monogamy. I defend my broth­ers in the faith who have cho­sen to wed mul­ti­ple women, and I defend the honor of those men whose polyg­y­nous prac­tices were recorded for us forever­more in the Scriptures.

How­ever, I am not a polyg­y­nous man; in fact, I’m hap­pily mar­ried to one wife. My defense of the prac­tice has absolutely no per­sonal bear­ing on my own life. (Of course, that doesn’t stop those who would oppose polyg­yny from call­ing into ques­tion every aspect of my marriage.)

[loop query=“tag=polygyny&numberposts=-1″]

Ref­er­ences

  • Def­i­n­i­tion credit: “polyg­yny.” The Amer­i­can Her­itage® Dic­tio­nary of the Eng­lish Lan­guage, Fourth Edi­tion. Houghton Mif­flin Com­pany, 2004. Answers.com 10 Aug. 2010. http://www.answers.com/topic/polygyny

  • Fea­tured image credit: Ros­setti, Dante Gabriel. Dante’s Vision of Rachel and Leah. 1855. Water­colour on paper. Tate Gallery, London.