What Do World Religions Teach On Polygamy, Pro And Con?

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(OPINION) THE QUESTION:

What do world religions believe on polygamy, pro and con?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

With religion, age-old issues such as polygamy versus monogamy never disappear, and a recent Jerusalem Post article discussed Jewish practices, which we’ll examine below.

First, some terminology: What’s called “polygamy” occurs in two ways. “Polyandry” means one woman with more than one husband, a rare form found among, for instance, some Buddhists in Tibet, where the husbands are commonly brothers. The familiar form technically named “polygyny” is one man with more than one wife. “Bigamy” applies when civil law makes plural marriages a crime.

All of that needs to be distinguished from modern “polyamory,” namely multiple and consensual sexual ties with various gender configurations minus marriage (see this recent GetReligion podcast and post). These range from “free love” to “open” relationships to formalized temporary or permanent sexual groupings. Notably, this movement is now acceptable within one U.S. religion. Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness is officially recognized as a “related” organization of that denomination serving members who support and promote such a sexual identity.

Polygamy has been opposed by Christianity throughout history but exists without dispute in lands dominated by the world’s second-largest religion, Islam. Most other nations make it a criminal offense. The United Nations Human Rights Commission expresses moral abhorrence and urges abolition, arguing that legal polygamy violates “the dignity of women.”

Indigenous religions that involve polygamy continue in some sectors of Africa. South Africa allows it not only for the Muslim minority but for those who maintain their traditional cultures — for example former President Jacob Zuma of the Zulu people, who has four wives. Modern India forbids polygamy even though it was part of Hindu tradition but similarly allows it for Muslims.

In U.S. history, hostility was such that in 1856 the major pronouncement by the first convention of the newborn Republican Party declared that Congress must “prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery.” Within years, of course, opposition to slavery ended in unimaginable Civil War slaughter.

Decades later, after the U.S. Supreme Court spurned religious-liberty claims by the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an unprecedented federal crackdown forced the faith to suspend the polygamy teaching of founding Prophet Joseph Smith Jr. and his successors. The church’s monogamy rule remains strictly in force to this day, even where secular law allows polygamy, while small breakaway sects still preserve Smith’s original doctrine.

Multiple marriages were as ancient as monogamy, according to the online dating site Modern Polygamy, and particularly for men with power and wealth. Surviving inscriptions showing the existence of the practice in mideastern Mesopotamia and Assyria date back to around 2000 B.C.

That’s the same general time frame for Abraham, the spiritual forefather of Judaism, Christianity and Islam who took three wives (see Genesis 16:1, 16:3, 25:1). Jacob, Moses and King David were among subsequent biblical polygamists. King Solomon overdid things, taking 700 wives (1 Kings 11:3). With “Levirate marriage” cases (see Deuteronomy 25:5-10), an already married man was directed to also marry his sister-in-law if the brother died and the widow had no son to support her.

In subsequent Jewish history, polygamy was tolerated but never widespread, waned and then flatly prohibited 1,000 years ago by the great medieval sage Gershom ben Judah, also known as Rabbeinu Gershom. His policy thereafter governed Europe’s Ashkenazi branch while polygamy persisted among mideastern Sephardic Jews.

The aforementioned Post article reports that modern Israel forbids polygamy but usually does not enforce the law among Bedouins. Also, Judaism’s ancient “heter meah rabbonim” (permission by one hundred rabbis) practice still allows a husband whose first wife refuses a “get” (divorce decree) to seek approval from 100 rabbis to live separately from her and take a second wife. Celebrity actor Shuli Rand did this last year. Some 15 out of 80 such applications are granted each year, the Post says. Controversially, wives cannot exercise this privilege.

Islam’s teaching comes from the Quran 4:3: “Marry such of the women as appeal to you, two, three or four, but if you fear that you cannot be equitable, then only one, or what your right hands own. That is more likely to enable you to avoid unfairness.”

Though equity is a divine command, the Encyclopedia of Religion (1987) states that “conflict between wives is very common in Islamic lands.” It’s interesting that a limit of four had been a previous recommendation in ancient Judaism. Muslim commentators say limiting to four — though the Prophet Muhammad had 11 wives — overcame the marital excesses in pre-Islamic Arabia. The scriptural “right hands” referred to taking slave wives who had lesser financial rights.

Why polygamy? Read on.

Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for The Associated Press and former correspondent for TIME Magazine. This piece first appeared at Get Religion.