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?
Wasn't it monogamous in the Roman Empire because the Romans (and Greeks) were monogamous?
More so because the Judaism that it grew out of was.
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?![]()
The ideal of that hypothetical God and what Christians actually do are two very different things.However, most people I know teach monogamy as God's ideal,
The OT is full of examples of polygamy, so Biblical precedent cuts both way.Might seem somewhat off-track, but it seems to indicate that Christian theology might not necessarily favour polygamy as a viable option by default...