Monday, April 21, 2025 - A Pentecostal church in South Africa celebrated Easter Sunday with mass wedding ceremonies for around 1500 couples, with many of them entering into polygamous marriages.
The International Pentecost Holiness Church said mass
weddings are part of its Easter festivities, and the tradition of polygamy,
which is observed in some African cultures, has been incorporated into the
church.
The Sunday ceremonies saw some men marry their sixth or seventh wives.
Other grooms also married multiple brides at the same time.
“Polygamy is not only embraced but held in high regard in the church," the spokesman of the church, Vusi Ndala said.
The International Pentecost Holiness Church was founded in
South Africa in the early 1960s.
It is an African-initiated church, meaning it was founded by Africans rather than foreign missionaries, and blends Pentecostal beliefs with local traditions.
The church has held mass weddings before, including in 2023
when around 400 couples or bridal parties tied the knot. It says this year’s
event was its largest by far.
Ndala said the large number of people being married this year was because of “a large number of men marrying more than one wife at a time. In some cases, grooms brought their current wife/wives or wife/wives-to-be with them for their new marriage. The weddings were held at the church’s headquarters, a huge, dome-shaped building in the town of Heidelberg, near Johannesburg, that can seat 60,000 people.
The congregants who were being married waited in long white tents set up in open fields next to the church building, where they were given bridal flowers, food packs and water.
They then
filed into the church building in long queues, the women wearing white bridal
gowns and many of the men in matching white suits and red ties.
Polygamy is
legal in South Africa if the union is registered as a customary marriage.
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