Ok, this is an old post but I just saw it. It’s kind of funny for me because I know some of these people on the Mennonite forum. We are Messianic but we have several Mennonite friends because of where we live. The one group mentioned, Charity Church, is a group that we have a lot of friends in. We even attend church with them many times on sundays. What I find so funny is the Charity Church position on polygamy, which has actually somewhat effected us in the last couple months.
They have a big following in different parts of Africa and they haven’t made a really big deal about polygamy there. I understand that originally they told their African converts that they had to divorce their wives to join church. They didn’t get very many converts so they quickly changed their approach to, African polygamists who were married before they joined church can keep their wives. But they’ve never let a polygamist become a leader. More recently, in the last 6-8 months, they had a huge blow up that they tried to keep secret. A couple leaders in Africa, good Ol' American Mennonites, have taken second wives from among the African converts. :lol: Since then they’ve had a wave of discussion sweep through their churches. There was talk of putting these “wayward brothers” in the ban (excommunication) but I guess one of them was a son of one of the bigwigs in the group
, I never found out what the end decision was.
On top of this recent “situation” in Africa, the local Charity group that we know, over the last few months has been helping this group of refugees move here. Anyway after they got involved they found out that many of the refugees practiced polygamy.
The refugee church pastor even has two wives.
The local church leadership told the refugees they had to disassociate themselves from their other wives, that didn’t go over well either.
These two incidents together started a lot of discussion about polygamy here locally, but most of the discussion was negative.
Even though I’m not a member at the local Charity Church in the past they’ve asked me to come speak in their church and at their tent meetings several times, mostly because they are so interested in Messianic Judaism, I think I’ve spoken there more than most members have in the time that we’ve known them. Anyway through the discussion that was going on about the “situation” in Africa and also because of the polygamist refugees. Everyone that attended the church was asked about their position on polygamy, including me. :roll: Well, they never told us we couldn’t attend there anymore, but they haven’t asked me to share anything or to teach since they found out my views. I was told by the “lead elder” to basically just keep my views to myself and everything will be alright. I haven’t entered into any debates over this, they don’t debate anyways they just ignore you until you go away. There are a few of them at the local group who would accept polygamy but they are afraid they will get put out of the church if they get too vocal about it. :?
