WI: Christianity a polygamous religion

What if Christianity since the beginning endorsed polygamy ala the Mormon church for the same reasons. How would this change the Christian world, would there be more Christians on the planet or less?
 
Where I live-Uganda-it is a polygamous religion. And I've heard that a lot of the early Christian groups were as well, but I don't know if that's true or just Dan Brown-ian propaganda.

The primary reason that Western society is monogamous has less to due with religion than, I suspect, the economics of inheritance among the land-owning classes. But I haven't studied the subject or anything.

As to specifically endorsing maximal breeding? I don't think it would make much difference. In an agrarian society, kids are an economic asset because they help you in the fields and they're the only kind of pension you've got. That's why people in agrarian societies have so many of them. My suspicion is that the change would make the world be very different, because of butterflies, but that there would be few differences you could specifically attribute to the change.
 
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Possibly the Gnostics become the dominant sect. I'm not too sure if thry can be fully defined as polygamous, but they were into mytiscism a lot and it may have coincided with a certain merging of European Pagan Religions.
 

ninebucks

Banned
More so because the Judaism that it grew out of was.

I disagree. Marriage is perhaps the perfect example of an area where Christianity simply adapts to the local culture, pre-Christian Europe was monogamous, and so European Christianity is monogamous, conversely, according to Asnys, Christianity in Uganda tolerates polygamy, presumably because the pre-Christian society there was polygamous.

So if we want a polygamous Christianity, we first need to get a polygamous Rome.

This would have course have many repurcussions later on. Consider Charlemagne's Empire, in OTL, he was obliged to divide all his lands evenly between his sons, essentially dismantling the closest thing Western Europe came to re-establishing the Roman Empire - imagine if Charlemagne had fifty sons by a dozen wives! By the third generation you'd have a mass of Counts ruling over Counties the size of beer-mats.
 
This would have course have many repurcussions later on. Consider Charlemagne's Empire, in OTL, he was obliged to divide all his lands evenly between his sons, essentially dismantling the closest thing Western Europe came to re-establishing the Roman Empire - imagine if Charlemagne had fifty sons by a dozen wives! By the third generation you'd have a mass of Counts ruling over Counties the size of beer-mats.

Mega-HRE anyone? :D
 

Sachyriel

Banned
Lutherans become a large amounts of different sects and become so semi-prosperous in relation to the church, that a slippery slope becomes the norm, and all anti-theocratic complaints become mainstream.

Europe, is split into giant states based upon a single notion of how to bring the realms back together, based upon secret texts brought from the Vatican on how each sect's ideology can overcome the ones next to it. no one bothers to look past the first victory over another sect, and a balance of power is maintained through most of the Lutherans points, each vying for supremacy as the largest point of argument. then, as each kingdom splits from the other, the pope it sacrificed upon a cross, signifying the ritualistic human sacrifice.

This will either impede or embolden sending out young people out into the ocean.
 
I guess it's possible- the OT seems to tolerate polygamy, and there's nothing outright against it. Cultural forces may prevail as has been mentioned. However, most people I know teach monogamy as God's ideal, and I can see some possible reasons why:

1. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Gen. 2:24, KJV) -not wives.

2. In Genesis 4:19 we find the first recorded instance of polygamy, featuring Lamech, descendant of Cain, and his wives Adah and Zillah.
It seems this Lamech wasn't exactly a nice guy: "And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold." (Gen. 4:23-24, KJV) So is he really a good example? (Also bring in 'law of first mention' here?)

3. And there's Jacob with Leah and Rachel- who had their rivalries...

Might seem somewhat off-track, but it seems to indicate that Christian theology might not necessarily favour polygamy as a viable option by default...
 
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