Welcome to the Church & Culture podcast, a weekly discussion with James Emery White on the latest trends happening in culture, and where and how the church should respond.
In this week’s conversation between Dr. James Emery White and co-host Alexis Drye, they discuss the culturally hot topic of polygamy. A new series on Netflix has been gaining a lot of attention. It’s called The Polygamist, and it follows the story of a woman named Joyce Gomora whose husband had three other wives and a mistress. While globally only ~2% of the population lives in a polygamous household, it’s most widely practiced in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, here in the U.S., we seem to have a fascination with this lifestyle, and there’s even been an increase in the number of people who view polygamy as morally acceptable.
Episode Links
As Alexis mentioned at the top of the podcast, we took a break the past two weeks to release two of the interviews from last year’s Church & Culture Conference. We hope that you enjoyed them, and we’d love to invite you to join us this year. You can get all the details and register HERE.
Dr. White noted early in the conversation that it’s difficult to have a conversation about polygamy without also discussing Mormonism. For a deeper dive into this topic, we’d suggest you check out a past podcast episode: CCP18: On Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Another past episode that may be of interest on a related subject is: CCP93: On Polyamory.
Finally, there are several articles that are relevant to today’s conversation that we’d encourage you to take the time to read if you’re interested:
Emmanuel Nwachukwu, “Christians Debate Polygamy After Netflix Show Hits No. 1,” Christianity Today.
“Psychological impact of polygamous marriage on women and children: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” PubMedCentral of the National Library of Medicine.
Stephanie Kramer, “Polygamy is rare around the world and mostly confined to a few regions,” Pew Research Center.
Lindsay Whitehurst, “Utah lawmakers get tough on porn, ease up on polygamy,” Religion News Service.
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