The illustration of the woman that was married to seven husbands and the answer Jesus provided counters, I think, the popular stance on polygamy when Christianity began taking roots in parts of Yorubaland. If Paul listed being a monogamist as part of the requirements of being an elder in the early church, and a precedence for today's church, it simply has an implication: there were people in the Ephesian church who had more than one wife. It was the case in the church at Conrith, too. It was in the Corinthian church that a young man took to wife or simply put, had a sexual relationship with the wife of his father. Without mincing words: the young man had a sexual affair with his stepmom!
To my mind, Paul didn't command what the white man practised, separating wives from their husbands and commanding them only to be married to the first wife. The major proposition, I learnt, in defence of this practice is that, in the event that a man separates from his wives and cleaves to just one, such a man is under obligation to take care of the wives and the children. This defence, being narrow, excludes in its consideration the woman. The picture can be clearer with this illustration. If one of the wives is her twenties and she is asked to be taken care of by the man, excuse me, are physical needs all that she has? He only has to cater for just her physical needs at the expense of her emotional, social and more importantly, her sexual needs? How is this gap to be filled? Did I hear someone say, "What if the husband dies?" Death you said, not imposed separation by misinterpreters of the Holy Writ. Come to think of it, death secures a wife's release from the obligations she should have had to her deceased husband.
The major question, however, is: "How did these women, victims of a suspicious tenet of Christianity, view the religion? The religion will be perceived as one with some strange doctrine that sent them packing from their matrimonial home. What an unfortunate situation. Misconstrued truths will always come with damaging consequences.
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