Daniel and Sarah Get Married!!
Credit: Zlatko Unger / Flickr, cc by-nc-nd 2.0

“Every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy” wrote philosopher George Santayana, and its power comes from the “special and surprising message and the bias which that revelation gives to life.” He preferred to see religions interact positively, but he also knew the difficulties based on difference. A religion “offers another world to live in,” and “another world to live in. . . is what we mean by having a religion.”

Intense religious groups isolate themselves in cells and can create problems for the health of their members and “the others” to whom they must relate. Americans see the worst of this in inter-faith and intra-faith conflicts the world around.

American citizens have the luxury of conversing, arguing, testing, and experimenting with challenges to our tentative and sometimes tense resolutions. Talking about all this at a distance is a luxury; when it comes close to home, everything is more complicated. In the free ways of citizens in this free society the most “up close” problem area is interfaith marriage, which hits at the most intimate and demanding relations, under one’s roof or over one’s fence or on the other branches of a family tree.

This late spring much discussion is prompted by Naomi Schaefer Riley’s much-noticed book, Till Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage Is Transforming America, and transforming America it is. The Economist's headline on the book admirably condensed the issue; is it “A Welcome Sign of Tolerance, or Dangerous Dilution?” People who care about civility in a civil society have to care about the “tolerance” side and people who care about religion in a religious — not all that, and not only, "secular" — society have to care about the “dilution” side.

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.”

One little e-column cannot begin to canvass such a broad field of inquiry and issues as this; my file of print-outs on the subject bulges, and, in effect, whispers: “Mention me, even if you can’t do me justice.” So here is a mention, and a hope that people rejecting, entering, living with, suffering because of, and setting examples in interfaith marriages will keep telling their stories and the rest of us will keep reading about them, learning from them, and remembering The Economist’s tagline.

Years ago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin introduced himself to a Protestant gathering upon his arrival in Chicago. He told the audience that he read the appeals by couples to enter into interfaith marriages, Catholic rules being tough. He surprised all when he said that he was cheered when couples took the issue seriously, and his spirit sagged when they were casual and un-knowing. For good reason. Bernardin's is not the only reaction or response, but it invites reflection. We reflect.



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With intermarriage rates in the US among non-Orthodox Jews at well over 50%, and Jewish fertility rates at below replacement levels, it's not religious dilution that is the issue but rather religious denominational suicide. At this rate, within three generations the US non-Orthodox Jewish population will all but disappear.

See Ephraim Buchwald's article about this from the late 1990's:

In 1968 I, a Catholic senior in college, met a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy at the high school where I was doing a practice-teaching assignment. Seven weeks later, we were engaged. Forty-five years ago, this news was not well-received! We had not one but three strikes against us: differences in religion, age, and education. We married anyway, and celebrated our 43rd anniversary last month. STAR CROSSED, my memoir of our two-year courtship, will be released this fall through the Headwinds imprint of Hard Press Editions. My fondest hope is that it will inspire other couples who are considering taking the interfaith challenge. http://www.betteisacoff.com

In order to put marriage in the right prospective, my question is; Is marriage a man made institution or God? If the answer is no, then marriage must follow the guidelines set by God who instituted it. A man and a woman who are not redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ can enter into a matrimony. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife:and they shall be one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). In this case, there is no dilution of faith or religious dilution because neither is a Christian and they are equally yoked together! People that have have been redeemed by the blood of Christ are called "believers" and people that have not been redeemed are called "unbelievers." God instituted marriage, hence he sets the rules! Listen to what he said to the believers, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? (II Corinthians 6:14). In verses 15-17, God gives more prohibitions of interfaith marriage. Interfaith marriage is like mixing iron and clay together or oil and water! God has set up boundaries and man will do well in playing within those boundaries. A Christian may get into an interfaith marriage for lack of what Scripture teaches. The Bible sets the standard for all human belief and behavior. If a person does not believe that the Bible is the ultimate authority in the affairs of men, a Christian should not be intolerant about that because that person is yet to be born again. Listen to this, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Corinthians 2:14).

The fact that intermarriage rates are increasing is a positive and beneficial outcome for all that support this idea. I do support it and believe that it is something that encourages the understanding of other religions and their beliefs. What often goes wrong in America is that we don't understand most of the religions that are practiced in the United States, which often causes us to stereotype them.