| dc.description.abstract | Christians know that marriage is not an accident of
history. Marriage is a gift from God and a key
building block of human civilization. God instituted marriage as a concrete expression of his covenant
love for
humanity (oneness), as an expression of God’s own nature (life-giving and nurturing creativity) and me
ans it to
be a source of happiness and fulfillment (sexual and relational intimacy). In God’s wisdom and creative power,
God gave humanity the capacity for a relationship between a man and a woman as intimate as any on earth can
be.
This article will focus on polygamy, a form of marriage where several wives share one man.
The
practice of polygamy is an issue across Africa. While the encroachment of Western values and styles o
f living
increasingly make polygamy seem out of place and a
relic of Africa’s past, many Africans continue to practice
polygamy and to defend it vigorously. In January o
f 2010, the marriage of Jacob Zuma, President of South
Africa to a third wife and the announcement of yet
another fiancé and the recognition a 20th
child by yet another
woman not his wife nor his fiancée made international headlines and provoked lively debate across Africa.
Not to be out done, in neighboring Swaziland, King
Mswati III created as much controversy through the
taking
of a 17 year old school girl as his thirteenth wife
at the annual Reed Dance Ceremony in 2005.
3
King Mswati,
himself is one of 67 sons of his father King Sobuhu
za II who died at the age of 82 with 70 wives and 2
10
children.
4
The Christian church has not been left out of the
controversy over polygamy. Almost uniformly, the
Christian church has officially opposed polygamy, b
ut has taken widely divergent stands on how that op
position
should be implemented. This, in turn, has helped t
o fuel the controversy. All this raises the questi
on of what
should the attitude of the African church be toward
the practicing polygamist and his family. | en_US |
