The Anomaly of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries A New Testament-based Call for Christian Polygamy Spencer L. Allen ABSTRACT: Currently serving a 175-year prison sentence for transport- ing underage girls across state lines for sexual purposes, new religious movement leader Tony Alamo (b. 1934) of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries contends not only that Christian men should be polygamous but that they actually are commanded to be by Old Testament polygamy laws. Alamo bases this interpretation primarily upon Jesus’ statement in Matthew 5:17 that he came to fulfill the law, not abolish it. Numerous other New Testament passages regarding marriage and the law are like- wise reinterpreted through a polygamous lens, and the Old Testament’s ‘‘Holy Men of God’’ (e.g., Abraham, Jacob and David) are provided as role models. This article examines Alamo’s unique exegetical approach to justify Christian polygamy in twenty-first-century America; further, it compares his methods of maintaining his legitimacy among his followers with those of another modern American proponent of polygamy, the also-imprisoned leader of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, Warren Jeffs. KEYWORDS: polygamy/polygyny, Tony Alamo (Bernie LaZar Hoffman), Old Testament Laws, Fouke (Arkansas), Warren Jeffs, Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, Yearning for Zion 61 Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Volume 17, Issue 4, pages 61–82. ISSN 1092-6690 (print), 1541-8480. (electronic).  2014 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/nr.2014.17.4.61.