Read the document
“It is the opinion of this Conference that persons living in polygamy be not admitted to baptism, but that they be accepted as candidates and kept under Christian instruction until such time as they shall be in a position to accept the law of Christ. The wives of polygamists may, in the opinion of this Conference, be admitted in some cases to baptism.”
Lambeth Conference of 1888 · Resolution 5
The resolution as recorded in the conference's acts.
Put it in context
Missionaries were no longer discussing an abstract ancient household. They were asking how the church should receive real families in which a husband already had more than one wife.
The resolution calls monogamy the law of Christ and withholds baptism from the husband until he can accept it. It does not cite the passage on which that phrase rests.
What is disputed
What the resolution establishes about the doctrinal status of existing wives and children, as distinct from the discipline of admission to baptism, has to be read from its own conditions rather than inferred from the outcome.
How I read this record
This is my conclusion from the source, not part of the quotation.
In 1888, Anglican bishops applied the inherited one-spouse rule to baptism in existing plural households. The resolution records the disciplinary result, while leaving its biblical case unstated.
Open the sources
- Lambeth Conference resolutions archive ↗ · Search the 1888 conference, Resolution 5.