ABSTRACT
Opposition to polygamy involved the missions in problems concerning, not only the polygamist himself, but his wives and children as well. In 1856 Henry Venn of the Church Missionary Society wrote his Memorandum on the subject of polygamy. The official history of Venn’s Society describes his Memorandum as ‘a review of the Scriptural argument against polygamy’. Callaway states that polygamy in itself is admitted on all hands to be both unnatural and opposed to God’s expressed will. At the 1886 Church Congress a motion was made to bring the subject of the relationship of polygamy to Church membership before the Lambeth Conference. The reluctance to fix definite rules is reflected in the variant attitudes taken by contemporary Protestant writers on the subject of polygamy and the Christian convert. Polygamy was described as ‘simply one of the gross evils of heathen society which, like habitual murder and slavery, must at all costs be ended’.
