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Poly Practised Elsewhere

https://www.hoover.org/research/africa-2050-demographic-truth-and-consequences

In sum, Africa is different. In other developing regions, a cluster of modernizing changes work in tandem, reinforcing changes that stretch out birth intervals and thus reduce fertility. Most important is getting women into the workplace. Women’s education, however, has only a minor impact on birth intervals and none on desired family size. In sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast, women’s education is absolutely central, as it is the most important driver of changes in birth intervals and a strong direct factor in reducing desired family size. By contrast, women’s employment has no significant effect at all on fertility, not through family size nor through birth intervals.

How is this possible? In most developing countries, as women move into paid work outside the home—including young women with modest education—fertility is reduced as they have to choose between spending more time working and earning income and staying home to take care of their children. Women’s employment thus has a strong impact on fertility. However, in Africa, extended family child-care systems have developed that allow women to avoid this trade-off. The basic commitment enabling this pattern is the cultural expectation that aunts, uncles, siblings, grandparents, cousins, and even co-wives (where polygyny occurs) will take care of children while their mothers work. As Korotayev et al. note:

As long as extended families provide working women (not only agricultural workers, but ones in urban areas having paid employment as well) with relatives who are willing to come and assist with household tasks and child care, paid female employment may not only make a far smaller contribution to fertility decline in tropical Africa than that observed in other regions, but it may also actually delay fertility reduction in Africa by slowing the trend toward the nuclear family system.
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Frank S said:
https://www.ucanews.com/story-archi...-sumbanese-tradition-of-polygamy&post_id=7952
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The catholics...

"Many umbus want to be baptized Catholics but withdraw when priests ask them to live with one wife and divorce others," Father Luli said.....
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The protestants...

Leaders of Gereja Kristen Sumba (GKS, Protestant Church in Sumba), while rejecting polygamy, have found a partial solution to the dilemma.
Reverend Nicolas He, a GKS official, told UCA News that the Protestant Church had decided to accept the umbus into the Church without asking them to live with one wife and to divorce others.
"However, GKS bans a baptized umbu from taking a new wife. If this rule is violated, he could be excommunicated or banned from taking part in the Holy Supper," Reverend He said.
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but not all protestants are happy with that...

leaders who insist that umbus should have only one wife argue that the Church´s tolerance of polygamous umbus implies that the Church accepts the inequality of men and women.
"Polygamy treats women as properties of the husband. The Church´s tolerance to polygamy could be a hurdle to efforts to raise women´s status
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All about the Gospel of Equality.
 
Frank S said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-tren...news/world&link_location=live-reporting-story
BBC News 24/09/2019
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Well now we have confirmation the Russian Orthodox church is converged by feminism...

For us monogamy is associated with respect for the roles of man and woman and the recognition of their equal dignity in marriage, the special gifts given by the creator to each of the spouses," a spokesman told RIA Novosti.
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Of course, the statement is pure nonsense. How does having more than one wife affect the dignity of any of them? Or their 'special gifts'? It's a complete non-statement statement.

Frank S said:
http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/royal women.htm
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Following the horrors of World War II the United States ended its self imposed isolation and decided to play a major role in world affairs. Egypt seems to have done the same thing at the beginning of the New Kingdom. For the first time it established a full time army for service in peace time and in war and for the first time it sought to establish control over lands that contained people who were not Egyptian. A simple way to demonstrate friendship between two countries was to arrange a marriage between the king of one country and the king's daughter of another. Royal polygamy made this feasible but increased the need to distinguish between the "real" wife and the ceremonial wives.
Egyptian kings had always had secondary wives, probably to increase the odds of having the all important son to inherit the throne, but the royal harem was small and discrete and kept very much in the background. The number of secondary wives increased in the New Kingdom and for the first time we see the use of the expression "King's Great Wife" to differentiate between the primary wife and the lesser wives.
Egyptians used the terms "King's Great Wife", "King's Wife" and "King's Mother" where we would use the term Queen. Their phrasing was much more explicit than ours and clearly identified the queen's place in the scheme of things.
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That is interesting as what I'd found in my research was that Ancient Egypt was monogamous. But it's not uncommon for rules/royalty to be polygamous while most of society isn't. That's probably whey the royal harem was "small and discrete and kept very much in the background".

Although I'm curious how they could even know that level of detail.
 
King Mswati of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) claims to be a Christian.
The first link below is a video of interviews with several of his wives.
The video and audio are poor quality as well as quite out of sync.
Still interesting nonetheless.
About 18:07 mins or so into the video, one of his wives tells how she wants to instill the fear of God in her children:


An interview with another, one of the King's more recent wives:


The king's 3rd wife:

https://www.voanews.com/archive/swazi-queen-kings-3rd-wife-and-legal-advisor-2002-11-25

More info on Eswatini (formerly Swaziland):

https://qz.com/africa/966741/swaziland-will-become-the-first-african-country-to-ban-divorce/
 
A testimony from South Africa of approximately 100 years ago...

http://www.the-new-way.org/testimonies/conv_pred_21_conversion_of_david_du_plessis.html

An except from the above link...

"These were peaceful and kind people; life as a child among them was very good. The kindness and concern for one another were greater than in more advanced societies I have since known.

The polygamy among them was difficult for many of us to adjust to. Indeed, the missionaries began to educate them and agitate for them to drop all of their wives but one and then to officially marry only that one. It seemed only right, but it wreaked havoc among the natives. The wives that were dropped inevitably became prostitutes. A polygamous society in which there was happiness and virtually no divorce was transformed into a monogamous one filled with meanness and immorality.

Even in later years I never agreed with the missionaries on this."
 
For now, the links I have posted today are the last ones I will post in this tread for the foreseeable future. I have enjoyed doing this, but other projects and responsibilities are requiring my time. I began posting links back in the earlier part of May. On most days it has been at least two links, but occasionally more. This has resulted in over 300 posted links so far. In one way it seems like a lot, but actually it is a small number compared with what is out there that could be posted. I have to agree with @Jackofall82 commenting back on September 10th about polygamy being underreported.

My observation is that polygamy is underreported mainly in a few but influential parts of the world where ungodly culture and willful blindness to the Bible are now rampant. In reality, polygyny historically was and still currently is pervasive in most of the world. An undertone I have observed in some posts in this forum seems to have the perspective that there are only a few of us who see polygyny as righteous. My postings have been an endeavor to dispel that sentiment and to instead encourage all who know Biblical polygyny is righteous that – YOU ARE NOT ALONE! In reality, there are millions who see and know the truth regardless of how seldom or even negatively it is reported in our own little part of the world.

I want to thank those who made comments to various posts along the way – many of them were really good and appreciated.

May God add His blessing to the use and spreading of knowledge about Biblical polygyny. May it be both for the good of God’s people and especially to the honor and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
 
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