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Agang said churches should not insist that new converts immediately send away their wives. "We should allow them to grow to know the Lord," he said. "We shouldn't make it a condition for their salvation, or we confuse the message of the gospel."

Kombo agreed. "Confess and begin your walk from where you are," he said. "You accepted Christ in that status. Remain in that status and be faithful to God. That would be faithful to the African situation."

Lessons for same-sex marriages?

U.S. churches may soon feel similar pressures: Eleven states now offer legal recognition to same-sex couples, and 12 allow them to adopt. Congregations will be confronted—if they haven't been already—with new kinds of non-traditional families who want to be part of the church.

Despite the similarities, such as marital vows, legal status as a couple, and sometimes children through the marriage, few African Christians are likely to see parallels between gay marriage and polygamy. This is partly based on Scripture and partly on culture.

Kombo said gay marriage and polygamy are not moral equivalents in Scripture. "They are similar in the sense that you could say they are against biblical norms and practice. But they are not breaking the same rules. I don't think that the same [response] should necessarily apply."

Homosexual relations are specifically condemned in Leviticus and the New Testament. But Mosaic Law seems to set regulations for polygamy among the Israelites without condemning it. Nor did God condemn polygamous men, said Phiri. "In the Old Testament there is polygamy, even [among] those people who were known as men of God," such as Jacob, David, and Gideon.

So, while many Christians believe church leaders must have only one wife (according to 1 Timothy and Titus), they tolerate polygamy on some level among congregants.

Homosexual activity, on the other hand, is illegal in 38 African nations, according to the BBC. In some areas, it is punishable by death or imprisonment. Most Africans "look at gay marriage as something that is completely off," said Phiri.

The comparison also doesn't resonate in that many African cultures hold children and family up very high. Agang said any infertile match, whether homosexual or to a barren woman, will be seen as "against the social structure and the community, because they will not have children."

Azumah said, "I … make the case that apart from everything else, God created us for procreation. How [does] a gay couple fulfill that?"

The uniting factor, African theologians say, is the need for a pastoral response to the families. "The church is the place for them," Azumah said. "There is no other place for them to go to. When we receive them into the church, just like anybody else, we should be prepared to use the gospel as a point of healing. Therefore we should be able to speak to the issues as we discern from the Spirit and read from Scriptures."

Azumah is the child of a polygamous Muslim family. He said when Christians ask him, "Is your mother going to go to hell?" it's not easy for him to answer. In the same way, he said, "I tell my people in Africa, 'We sit in Africa and can be very condemnatory about gay people because we don't have relations who are openly gay. If we did, it would make our theology more complicated.'"

He said the church needs to be "considerate not only [of] the gay people but their relations who might be in church and deeply care for their Christian faith—just as they care for their [homosexual family members]."

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July 2009, Vol. 53, No. 7