Martin Marty ponders the gritty realities of interfaith marriage. He finds Naomi Schaefer Riley’s recent book, Till Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage Is Transforming America, a welcome exploration of the issues involved:
Ms. Riley herself and many reviewers are in “interfaith” marriages, and find much to affirm in many of them, but they are also aware of what social scientific data says about the causes of changes in marriage trends. Some data suggests that, among large communities, Mormons and Muslims are the most successful at holding off marriage “across the aisles,” to use The Economist’s terms.
Ask, in polls, which religion “other than your own” you view most positively, and the largest set of respondents lists Mormon and Muslim as problematic. Years ago Jews and Catholics were most feared and despised, but today they are most readily accepted by others! One reason for the change is interfaith marriage, and, alongside it, many other means of getting to know “the other.”
In an interview, Schaefer Riley describes what’s surprised her about her own interfaith marriage:
I told my husband on our first date that I plan to raise my children Jewish. In my survey, though, apparently, about less than half of interfaith couples actually talk about how they’re going to raise their children before they get married. So that wasn’t a big surprise. But I will say one of the interesting things is that I think most people getting into interfaith unions seem to think it’s kind of one discussion happens, somebody wins, and then you sort of move forward from there.
But I think it’s been a much more dynamic process. And, you know, you don’t really realize until you get to these various milestones in life, you know, how you’re going to feel about them. And little things can really affect the compromises that you’ve reached, you know. So you used to go to so-and-so’s for, you know, an Easter egg hunt, and it was completely an, you know, irreligious experience. You know, that person no longer hosted, and then you go to Uncle So-and-So’s, and he’s much more into talking about the real reason behind Easter. And suddenly, I think an interfaith family can get very uncomfortable.
The Dish 