Is Legalized Polygamy Next?

The Bible reading at the first church service June and I attended in Tucson last month (at Shalom Mennonite Fellowship) was Genesis 32:22-32. That passage begins, “Jacob got up during the night, took his two wives, his two women servants, and his eleven sons, and crossed the Jabbok River’s shallow water.”

Those verses go on to tell how Jacob had his name changed to Israel. Thus, he became the patriarch of “the children of Israel” in the Old Testament—and the progenitor of the modern nation of Israel.

Conservative Christians, among others, are strong supporters and defenders of modern Israel, for they are considered the people uniquely chosen by God.

But what about Jacob’s (Israel’s) two wives and two “women servants” who also bore him children?

Since, as is claimed, Jacob/Israel was especially chosen by God, along with the twelve tribes of Israel (descendants of Jacob’s/Israel’s sons born by his four wives/servants), is this not ample biblical justification for polygamy?

So, can’t the Old Testament be legitimately used to support legalization of polygamy?

Moreover, doesn’t the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage suggest that the legalization of polygamy may be coming down the pike?

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler has just authored a new book, published late last month. Under the title “We Cannot Be Silent,” Mohler writes how it is imperative for Christians to speak out against same-sex marriage and other related LBGT issues.

In the second chapter of his book Mohler writes:

Once marriage can mean anything other than a heterosexual union, it can and must eventually mean everything—from polygamy to any number of other deviations from traditional marriage (p. 31).

In commenting on observations made by Chief Justice Roberts concerning the recent legalizing of same-sex marriage by the SCOTUS, Mohler contends that that decision “opens wide a door that basically invites looming demands for the legalization of polygamy and polyamory” (p. 181).

He also avers, “You can count on the fact that advocates for legalized polygamy found great encouragement in this decision” (ibid.).

It seems a bit odd, however, for someone who because of his literal interpretation of the Bible takes such a strong stance against same-sex marriage and full acceptance of LGBT to be so strongly opposed to polygamy.

At the top of the home page of their website, BiblicalPolygamy.com says that they are, “A resource for proving that Polygamy really IS Biblical.” And Jacob, “father of the twelve patriarchs of the tribes of Israel,” is given as one of the prime examples of “polygamists in the Bible.”

The Old Testament argument for polygamy is far stronger than the argument of Mohler and others against same-sex marriage. Other than being related to sex, there is little similarity between being a gay/lesbian and choosing to be in a polygamist relationship.

Homosexuality (in distinction from some homosexual activity) seems clearly to be an innate orientation, a way some people are “hardwired.”

But while there may be strong sexual drives toward having multiple wives (or husbands, in some cases)—just as there are such drives for some, evidently, toward engaging in adultery or pedophilia—there is no way polygamy can be considered an innate orientation.

As I wrote a year and a half ago in a prior article about this subject (here), I am not in the least advocating polygamy. But I do think there is far more biblical support for polygamy than there is for opposition to sexual relations between same-sex adults.

And the legalization of the latter in no way leads logically to the legalization of polygamy.

Another Good Candidate for the New $10 Bill

A couple of months ago I suggested (here) that Jane Addams would be a good choice for the new $10 bill, which will have a woman’s picture on it. This article is about another woman who is also a strong candidate for the proposed new bill to be released in 2020.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an outstanding 19th-century woman who perhaps is not widely known today. But she was a woman of considerable ability and significance, so she certainly would not be a bad choice for the woman to appear on the new $10 bill.

Elizabeth Cady was born 200 years ago this week, on November 12, 1815. She died in 1902, less than three weeks before her 87^th birthday. Her autobiography, Eighty Years and More, was published five years before her death and tells much about her remarkable life.

At the time of her birth, Elizabeth’s father, a lawyer in New York, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. As a young woman, discussing legal matters with her father and reading his law books caused Elizabeth to realize how disproportionately the law favored men over women—and particularly over married women.

Seeking to change such laws became one of her main goals in life.

In 1840, Elizabeth married Henry Stanton, a journalist who later studied law under his father-in-law and who also became a lawyer. The Stantons became the parents of seven children between 1842 and 1859.

In spite of having a large family—and she seems to have been a good mother—Elizabeth Stanton spent much of her life working for social causes. She was an abolitionist and also a very active member of the temperance movement, working against what she saw as the evils of alcohol.

But she became best known as a leader in the women’s suffrage movement.

Elizabeth’s first involvement in the women’s movement was in 1848. The Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention, was held in July of that year. It was organized by Quaker women in Seneca Falls, New York, and by Elizabeth who was not a Quaker. (She and Henry had moved to Seneca Falls, New York, in 1847.)

She was the main author of “Declaration of Sentiments,” a document presented to that convention. It includes these words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal” (emphasis added).

Elizabeth met Susan B. Anthony in 1851, and they became lifelong friends and staunch colleagues in the women’s movement. (Anthony might be even a stronger candidate than Stanton for the new $10 bill, but her image already appears on the little-used one dollar coin, first minted in 1979.)

The Woman’s Bible is a two-part book written by Elizabeth and a committee of 26 women. The first volume was published in 1895, the year Elizabeth turned 80, and the second volume in 1898. It was written mainly to challenge the traditional position of religious orthodoxy that women should be subservient to men.

Elizabeth wrote the first essay, which was about Genesis 1:26-28. Her conclusion: “The above texts plainly show the simultaneous creation of man and woman, and their equal importance in the development of the race” (p. 8).

To this day most people seem to emphasize the second chapter of Genesis, where Eve is created from Adam’s rib and considered his “helpmeet” (from a misunderstanding of Genesis 2:20).

What a shame that so many today do not have as good an understanding of the Bible as Elizabeth Cady Stanton had 120 years ago!

Celebrating FOR’s 100th Anniversary

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) is celebrating its 100^th anniversary this week in New York City.

FOR was launched as the result of a pact made by two Christians in August 1914, at the outset of the First World War. The two men, an English Quaker and a German Lutheran, had just arrived for a conference of Christian pacifists when hostilities broke out. 

Needing to return home immediately, as they were parting on a platform of the railway station in Cologne, Germany, they made this pledge to each other: “We are one in Christ and can never be at war.”

What a difference it would have made in world history if all the Christians in Europe had made that same pledge!

In late December of that year the Englishman, Henry Hodgkin, organized a conference in Cambridge at which 130 Christians of various denominations joined in the founding of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in England.

About a year later, in November 1915, FOR was begun in the United States by sixty-eight pacifists, including Jane Addams, the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, about whom I wrote a few weeks ago.

Another of the organizers in the U.S. was Congregationalist minister A.J. Muste, who later became a Quaker and who served as executive secretary (now titled executive director) of FOR from 1940 to 1953.

One of Muste’s most cited statements is, “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”
John Swomley served from 1953 to 1960 as FOR’s next executive secretary. In 1960 Swomley became a professor of social ethics at St. Paul’s School of Theology in Kansas City, where he taught until his retirement in 1984.

During those years he was the leader of the local branch of FOR, and in 1976-77 when we were back from Japan for a year and living in Liberty, I attended a few FOR meetings in Kansas City and became acquainted with Swomley and gained a greater appreciation for FOR.

Since 2013 the Executive Director of FOR-USA has been Kristin Stoneking, an ordained United Methodist Church minister. 

(Kristin’s father, John Stoneking, was once pastor of Rosedale United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Kansas; the same church building is now the home of Rainbow Mennonite Church where June and I are members.)

From 3 p.m. to 9:30 on Saturday there will be activities at Riverside Church in New York celebrating the 100th anniversary of FOR-USA.

The 75th anniversary in 1990 was also celebrated at Riverside Church with an interfaith service. (Adherents of non-Christian religions have been active participants in FOR for many years.)
Ten years ago, Paul R. Dekar, a seminary professor, authored Creating the Beloved Community: A Journey with the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

In Part I, Dekar describes six ways FOR challenges “the nexus of evil,” including “challenging the making of enemies.”

Dekar writes that FOR members “have sought to see so-called enemies as potential friends.” That statement reminded me of the well-known story about President Lincoln.

During the Civil War, Lincoln was criticized for speaking of benevolent treatment for the Southern rebels. The critic chided Lincoln, reminding him that there was a war going on, that the Confederates were the enemy and so they should be destroyed.

Lincoln’s wise response: “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
FOR has not succeeded in bringing about reconciliation among all people. There is much yet to do. Still, the world is doubtlessly much better off because of FOR’s meritorious work over the past 100 years.

Happy Birthday, FOR—and best wishes for your next 100 years.

"Jesus Medicine"

For years I have had a small jar of Mentholatum beside my bed each night. Previously, I used Vicks VapoRub to ease nasal congestion and to help relieve more serious problems such as a sore throat or a nagging cough.

After hearing about Mentholatum in Japan, though, I began to use it rather than Vicks and have continued to do so.

“Mentholatum Ointment” was first marketed in 1894 by A. A. Hyde and the manufacturing company he founded five years earlier in Wichita, Kansas. (A book titled Amazing Mentholatum by Alex Taylor, the great-grandson of Hyde, was published in 2006.)

A young American man who was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, introduced Mentholatum to Japan. His name was William Merrell Vories, and he was born 135 years ago, on October 28, 1880.

As a young man, William sailed for Japan as a lay missionary. That was in 1905, the year the Russo-Japanese War ended, as I wrote about recently.

Probably his hearing talk about that war is reflected in “Let There Be Light,” a hymn that he wrote in 1908. The last stanza of that hymn is a prayer:

Let woe and waste of warfare cease, / That useful labor yet may build / Its homes with love and laughter filled / God give thy wayward children peace.

(I was surprised, and happy, when Vories’s hymn was sung in a worship service this month at the Shalom Mennonite Fellowship here in Tucson, Ariz., where June and I are spending a couple of months.)

Vories first got a job teaching English in a prefectural school (in Shiga Prefecture in central Japan). The new American teacher became very popular with his students.

Soon after arriving in Omihachiman (in Shiga), he met a Japanese Christian and together they started Bible classes after school, meeting at the house provided for Vories. There were from 40 to 100 students who attended each class.

But at that time there was strong prejudice against Christians in this region of Japan. Consequently, in 1907 the school refused to renew Vories’s teaching contract because of the success of his Bible classes.

“I was shocked as if my head was knocked by an iron bar,” Vories wrote after losing his teaching job.

But the next year, in 1908, he established an architectural office, Vories & Co. which over the next 35 years designed around 1600 buildings including churches, schools, hotels and private houses.

(The first permanent building on the campus of Seinan Gakuin (pictured), where I taught from 1968 to 2004, was designed by the Vories Company.)

In 1919 Vories married Hitotsuyanagi Mariko (family name first as is customary in Japan). Many years later, early in 1941, he became a naturalized Japanese citizen, taking the name Hitotsuyanagi Mereru.

Perhaps needing more money to support his new wife as well as his missionary activity, in 1920 Vories acquired the rights to sell Mentholatum products in Japan. A special label was placed on every jar of the ointment inviting users to participate in a Bible correspondence course.

So it was that many Japanese began to call Mentholatum the “Jesus medicine.”

Mentholatum was widely sold in Japan up to the time of Vories’s death in 1964 at the age of 83—and since. In 1988 Rohto, the giant Japanese pharmaceutical company based in Osaka, acquired the management rights to the Mentholatum Company.

While the appeal for enrolling in Bible classes was dropped from Mentholatum jars long ago, there are still many who remember the story of when the ointment was popularly known as ‘Jesus medicine” in Japan.