Written by Jonathan S. Tobin |
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Likely today most liberal politicians would say they are opposed to polygamy because it is a vestige of bad ancient patriarchal societies. But so long as American law rejects traditional marriage as a valid definition, they have no leg to stand on to deny it to groups of consenting men and women or persons who define themselves in some other manner. There is little appetite among conservatives to challenge gay marriage since it is now broadly popular.

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges, legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states and the District of Columbia by a 5-4 vote. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion for the case, didn’t seem to believe that the issue of polyamory could possibly be relevant or arise due to the court’s decision. Just eight years later, The New York Times published an article last week that celebrated Somerville, Massachusetts, as a haven for legal polyamory.
A haven for academics and hippies, the Boston suburb adopted an ordinance in 2020 granting domestic partnership rights to people in polyamorous relationships. That was followed up this spring by the passage of two more laws “extending the rights of nonmonogamous residents,” banning discrimination on the basis of “family or relationship structure” in city employment and policing. The Somerville City Council is currently considering extending the reach of that law to housing. And as the Times reports, the “nonmonogamous” are no longer unusual there.
Somerville is, in the words of one of its municipal councilors, “a very queer city.” And as the Times also makes clear, “there is a significant crossover between those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and pansexual and those who practice nonmonogamy, according to multiple studies.”
As the Times also points out, polyamory is a staple of popular entertainment via shows like “Planet Sex with Cara Delevingne” and “Sex Diaries.” The same is true for polygamy, which was the subject of the hit HBO show “Big Love” from 2006 to 2011, and a reality show about an actual polygamous family, “Sister Wives,” which is still running after 13 seasons.
Surely, the widespread introduction of gay characters and couples into popular TV shows and films helped pave the way for Obergefell. Supporters of “nonmonogamous” relationships believe the same process is underway for their cause. But as much as the Times story on Somerville is an indication that the arbiters of fashionable left-wing opinion agree with that conclusion, it is worth remembering that at the time the gay marriage ruling was handed down, both the majority opinion and liberals cheering it sought to assure the nation that its implications were limited.
The decision was based on the claim that marriage “equality” was rooted in the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The right of two people of the same sex to the benefits of government-approved marriage was, according to the five-justice majority and the rest of enlightened opinion, no less compelling than those of two of the opposite sex.
In their view, the traditional conception of marriage as a union of one man and one woman that dates back to the beginnings of civilization was antithetical to the law’s guarantee of equal protection to all. Any objections to this principle were deemed to be rooted in religion and not the secular laws of the United States.
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We would like to report that Evangelical Christians are always perfect in their handling of the word of God, but that is not always the case. Sometimes Scriptures are completely removed from their context. An idea loosely based on the Bible is, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Some will go so far as to quote Jeremiah 29:11 completely out of context: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Here is the context: Israel was in captivity at the time, and they were listening to false prophets who were lying to them about their imminent peace and restoration as a nation. Jeremiah, in contrast, told the Israelites to settle in and to understand they will be there until seventy years of their prophesied judgment is completed.

In Matthew 22:23 – 33, we read of a group of Jewish religious leaders, the Sadducees, whose theology informed their understanding of Scripture rather than allowing Scripture to shed real light on their faulty theology. “This Jewish group apparently based its doctrine on the Pentateuch alone”1
So, when appealing to what Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 25:5-10, they attempted to trip Jesus up, formulating a hypothetical case of a woman that had married seven brothers, one at a time, from the eldest to the youngest as each one died. Sadducees were skeptics, who didn’t believe in the resurrection, which of course Jesus taught, so they used this question to make belief in the resurrection seem ridiculous. “At the resurrection,” they ask,“whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?” Jesus turned their ploy back on them in Matthew 22:28  when He replied from the Pentateuch, Exodus 3:6, to do so:
Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew 25:29-32 KJV)
“Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.” Ignorance of the scriptures does seem to be a popular way of misusing – intentionally (cults for example) or unknowingly – the word of God even today. Many miss, as did the Sadducees, the importance of the main character and theme in the story, God and His power. Many people miss the true teachings in the Bible because of their natural bias against the supernatural. In their thinking, God cannot do things which they deem impossible.
In 1923, J. Gresham Machen’s book, Christianity and Liberalism was published. Liberals of that day were the progressives of Machen’s day. His criticism wasn’t that the Liberals of his era did not claim to be Christian or that they had overtly abandoned the Scriptures. They used the methodology of the Sadducees to deny what seems impossible in human eyes. They held a cynical view of Scripture and created a “theology” which placed their unbelief and their feelings squarely on top of Scripture, vehemently denying what their biased minds could not, therefore did not, believe. Machen describes the premise of his book:
Modern liberalism may be criticized (1) on the ground that it is un-Christian and (2) on the ground that it is unscientific. We shall concern ourselves here chiefly with the former line of criticism; we shall be interested in showing that despite the liberal use of traditional phraseology, modern liberalism not only is a different religion from Christianity but belongs in a totally different class of religions.2
Many of the things Machen said in 1923 can be applied with equal validity to Progressives today. Like the Liberals in Machen’s day, Progressives do use “traditional phraseology” and may quote Scripture, but context is missing. Their understanding is guided by personal feeling and desire, not by the contextual intent of the word of God. In “Who’s More Political: Progressive or Conservative Christians?”3 George Yancy points out :
For progressive Christians, Jesus is primarily the model of inclusion and tolerance. For example, one progressive Christian drew a cartoon of Jesus saying, “The difference between me and you is you use Scripture to determine what love means and I use love to determine what Scripture means.” Progressive Christians focus on the actions and teachings of Jesus that reinforce their values of tolerance and inclusion, which they see as examples of love.
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The church of centuries past had a far more robust and biblical understanding of the church’s corporate self-conception and the need for corporate discipleship and gathering. We can and ought to recapture and promote this past self-conception and ecclesiastically corporate mentality.

[Reformation21] Editor’s Note : This post has been adapted from a longer article set to be published in a forthcoming edition of the Puritan Reformed Journal.
It will come as little surprise to many readers on this site that the state of theology in the contemporary North American church is fraught with weakness. This theological anemia is one that prompts serious concern and demands serious attention. In particular, the way in which the modern evangelical populace in North America regards the church and the church’s corporate identity and the necessity of corporate worship is one that is in dire need of correction.
The trend has been observed for some years that a growing number of self-professing evangelical Protestants have been embracing a lower and lower ecclesiology. The tendency to downplay the necessity for corporate worship and corporate discipleship as a covenanted, local community (local church) has increased, parallel with an accompanying tendency to emphasize personal or private prayer and Bible reading either over against corporate worship/gathering, or that such individual habits of piety are fundamentally more important than any such corporate practices of piety. While this social trend has been observed anecdotally for years and has been the subject of ire within many a sermon introduction or popular magazine article[1], in recent years, there has at last emerged empirical data to substantiate this observation.
In 2020, Ligonier Ministries, in partnership with Lifeway Research, commissioned and performed a survey[2] of three thousand Americans asking a variety of questions about key theological tenets and doctrines: about Jesus Christ, the Bible, truth, ethics, etc. The results are eye-opening. Particular to the concerns of this article, one of the statements to which survey participants were asked to respond was this, “Worshiping alone or with one’s family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church.” Amongst all respondents, 32% “Somewhat agree” with that statement, and 26% “Strongly agree”—thus, 58% of all respondents viewed that statement favorably.[3] Conversely, some 29% of all respondents disagreed with that statement either “strongly” or “somewhat.” Now, these data reflect the views of Americans writ large, not specifically the views espoused by evangelicals. However, the Ligonier Survey does provide a subset of data regarding evangelical responses to that statement—and it does not portend well for evangelicals’ ecclesiology. When faced with the statement “Worshiping alone or with one’s family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church,” 20% of self-identified evangelical respondents strongly agreed with that statement—a full fifth!—and 19% agreed somewhat. Nearly 40% of all evangelical respondents viewed the aforementioned statement favorably. Conversely, some 55% of self-identified evangelicals disagreed with that statement—35% disagreeing strongly, and 20% disagreeing somewhat.[4]
While the higher statistic is heartening, it is at the same time disconcerting: barely over half of self-identified evangelicals take issue with an individualistic Christian mindset. Barely over half of self-identified evangelicals, presumably, object to this statement which downplays a corporate sensibility and obligation to the Christian life—and it is only just over a third which disagrees strongly! Meanwhile, a strong minority (39%) find that congregationally-reductionistic attitude regarding Christianity at least somewhat agreeable.
This is a growing trend in North American Christianity and it betrays the low ecclesiology which continues to plague the church. This is something that must be answered with a strong ecclesiology that recognizes and emphasizes the centrality of the corporate life and identity of the institutional church, her people, and their collective ministry. The current moment demands a resounding “Amen!” to Cyprian’s dictum (which sentiment has been perpetuated in Reformed circles by Calvin in Institutes IV.1.1.)[5] that “No one can have God for his Father, who does not have the Church for his mother.”[6]
Recent Scholarship
In recent years there has been something of a happy resurgence of both popular-level writings as well as more scholarly theological work relevant to ecclesiology, such as much of the fine work that has been produced by 9Marks ministries and other connected writers.[7] Much of this scholarship has come from a credobaptist viewpoint and assumes congregationalism as the standard for church governance. Though this factor is at odds with classically Reformed and Presbyterian ecclesiological commitments, these works are nonetheless useful in emphasizing the necessity for the corporate gathering and a corporate Christian self-conception.[8] While there has been useful ecclesiological work coming from Presbyterian and Reformed authors of late, these have tended to be more popular-level works that focus more narrowly on issues surrounding the sacraments or that of pastoral leadership/church officers.[9]
There are works that deserve frequent reference in ecclesiological studies such as the late Edmund Clowney’s work on the church[10] which, while Reformed in its theological orientation, is not exactly a work of recent scholarship, being published in 1995. Of course, the classic 19th-century ecclesiological tome by James Bannerman[11] is both Reformed and eminently worthy of consideration, but hardly recent. There is also the widely popular work by Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the communal/community aspect of the life of the church,[12] but this work is not recent (being published in 1939) and Bonhoeffer’s theological orientation is not of the classical Reformed sort.[13] One happy exception to this is Michael Horton’s People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology, which was published in 2008.[14] There are also forthcoming scholarly works that promise to contribute to a more robust ecclesiology in our day but, at the time of this article’s writing, have not yet been released and are thus unable to be considered.[15]
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