When the ‘Pastor’ Marries Four Men: Germany’s Truce with Polygamy

Instead of discipling this anti-Christian rogue, the church is threatening legal action against anyone attacking her online! I say "bring it on"! This is an attack on her actions!

From The European Conservative

By Jonathon Van Maren

How long until progressive polyamorists and Islamist polygamists align?

It is a snapshot of cultural collapse: A young German woman with pink hair in clergyman’s robes, facing four men, bestowing her approval on their bizarre sexual arrangement, the details of which we are blessedly unaware. The pro-LGBT pastor is now under fire for blessing the ‘marriage’ of four men who showed up at a pop-up wedding fair at Berlin’s St. Paul the Apostle Church recently. Lena Müller, the 33-year-old clergyperson in question, posted a photo of the ceremony to Instagram. 

According to the Times, Müller said that the relationship “consisted of two Latvians, a Thai citizen and a fourth man who she believed was Spanish.” This group of men, which I regret to inform you is referred to as a ‘polycule,’ was pronounced a “marriage in the eyes of God,” according to Müller. The wedding fair was “part of a programme offering free blessing for couples who wish to avoid ‘lengthy formalities,’” which in this case would probably include a Constitutional Court case and new legislation. 

“Four young men said ‘yes’ to each other, celebrated love with us and placed themselves under G*d’s colourful blessing … What an honour, that these four asked for a blessing with so much trust,” Müller wrote in her Instagram post, which she has since deleted. I can’t help but suspect that upon arriving at the fair, the polyamorous polycule swiftly identified her as the likeliest pink-haired purveyor of the moral approval they sought.

In response to the online backlash, the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg rushed to defend Müller with the sort of enthusiasm one wishes they still held for their own violated orthodoxies. “We are appalled by the hate waged against her,” they announced, relieved to have finally found a sin worth denouncing. “We stand with them and condemn these attacks to the utmost. We stand with those who are experiencing hostility.” (‘Them,’ in this case, appears to refer to the polycule, rather than an unspecified they/them.)

I am old enough to remember traditional Christians being damned as bigots for pointing out that recognising same-sex relationships as ‘marriage’ (legal in Germany since 2017) would inevitably result in the endorsement of all sorts of sexual arrangements, including polygamy. Having gotten over their horror at such claims, progressives are now happily embracing them. “You could see right away that here was so much love between [the four men],” Müller gushed to the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper. “Why should God have anything against there being four of them rather than two?”

Presumably, Müller’s theological instructors should have answered that question; they might even have lent her a Bible. Incidentally, polygamy is still illegal in Germany, but Müller insisted that this doesn’t really matter. “We couldn’t write it down in the church register, because for that you need to have gone through a civil marriage, and in this configuration that would of course not have been possible,” she said. “But I am at any rate convinced that they really did marry in the eyes of God.”

Her church has done nothing to correct this publicly stated conviction; in fact, in their defense of her, they purported to be “shocked” at the opposition she was facing, while expressing no surprise at the action taken by her and her “team.” Christian Stäblein, the bishop of Berlin, stated that because Müller’s blessing had not been a formal marriage, “allegations of polygamy are baseless.” The church also stated that they are willing to take legal action against those attacking her online. 

My first thought upon reading this story is that the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg may have some strange allies in defending their pastor’s belief that polygamous relationships might have standing in the eyes of God. While polygamy is still illegal in principle, in practice, exceptions have been made for Muslim immigrants. In 2018, for example, a German media outlet revealed that an Iraqi immigrant with two wives and thirteen children had both of his marriages recognized.

Another outlet described polygamy as “illegal, but tolerated,” citing the example of a Syrian’s second wife being permitted to join him in Schleswig-Holstein in 2018—one of at least two such cases. A 2023 report noted that two Afghan refugees were permitted to bring their second wives to Germany to join them. The Times noted that German columnist Harald Martenstein, who writes for the Welt newspaper, “satirically suggested that the church was ‘building bridges’ to Islam through polygamy and that by the same logic it should endorse marriages between people and their pets.”

Müller’s Instagram post is thus an unfortunately significant cultural artifact. One can easily imagine a scenario in which a pink-haired feminist pastor’s defense of polyamory and a stern-faced imam’s demand for polygamy could create a brief political marriage of convenience, with the utterly compromised Evangelical Church of Germany helpless to summon the moral clarity or courage to oppose either. 

Pictured "Pastor" Lena Müller