Marrying Out of the Faith

[rug]

By STANLEY FISH
April 1, 2013, 9:00 pm

Back in 1963, my brother Ron was going out with (that was the phrase then) an Irish Catholic girl named Ann who was attending the University of Rhode Island. One day, she was sitting in class and suddenly through the window she saw my father, who, it turned out, had tracked her down by finding out from the university administration what classes she was taking and at what times. He took her to dinner and then proceeded to tell her that it would ruin his son’s life is he were to marry a non-Jewish girl. He then asked if she would be willing to have no contact with Ron for a year; in return, he offered to pay all her expenses during that time. She refused.

Meanwhile I had been asked if I could get Ron into the University of California at Berkeley, where I was then teaching. (My father, as I recall, was for this plan, and may even have initiated it.) I went to the head of the admissions office and said, “My brother has to get out of Rhode Island. Can you admit him here?”

“Sure,” he said, and it was done. (Those were the days; if I tried that in 2013, I would be run out of town.)

If the idea was to separate the two young people, it didn’t work. Shortly after Ron got to California, he sent Ann a plane ticket. When she arrived, they got married and have remained married to this day. She got a job at the university, took a class in Judaism and, much to my brother’s surprise, converted, although it took her a while to find a rabbi willing to give her the required course of instruction. Just the other day she remarked, “It was a hard club to get into.”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/marrying-out-of-the-faith/

[cbayer]

1. 42% of all US marriages are interfaith?

Wow, that's a significant number.

We are going through some of this right now. Our daughter married a Muslim, and his family is insisting on a conversion. Unlike Catholicism or Judaism, converting to Islam is really, really easy - you just have to repeat a phrase three times. But the catch is that you really have to mean it, which presents a bit of a problem.

This phrase in particular speaks rather directly about this young and lovely couple who we adore:

“Interfaith couples tend to marry without thinking through the practical implications of their religious differences. They assume that because they are decent and tolerant people … they will not encounter difficulties being married to someone of another faith.”

[rug]

2. It kind of gives a new meaning to the word interfaith.

[cbayer]

3. It has become harder over time to correctly racially identify people in the US.

Perhaps it will also become harder to correctly religiously identify them.

Not such a bad way to go, imo.

[MADem]

10. Your daughter shouldn't be pushed--it's easy in, not so easy out.

Also, to convert with the "magic phrase" and not know the rules is not informed conversion. Some religious scholars would take issue with that.

There is no "conversion rule" in Islam, either, no matter what the Imam says. Most regard faith as being inherited through the father (part of why some political enemies of POTUS took such great pains to play the Muslim card w/Obama), but if a child isn't raised in the faith, they don't generally say "Too bad, you're an apostate" unless they're really out of the mainstream.

The in-laws can get pretty involved in the lives of newlyweds and the grandkids. I'd recommend the happy couple live far away from both sets of grandparents, talk on the phone often, skype often enough, and make those (not too long, but meaningful) visits count.

My family is chock-a-block full of interfaith marriages, and atheist/agnostic-religious unions. The trick is for the in-laws to stay the hell out of it. Everyone associated with the happy couple needs to learn how to just bite their tongue and live their own lives!

Easier said than done, I know....

[cbayer]

11. She can't and won't be pushed, that I know.

They are a very bright and well educated couple, and I will defer to whatever they decide.

I don't feel comfortable revealing too much of their private information here, but I do think everyone involved, including in-laws, want to find a way to make this work.

But it is much more complicated than this relatively young couple anticipated and that's not surprising to others involved.

[MADem]

13. If there's goodwill on all sides, they'll be OK.

Even if it doesn't work out, they'll learn something. And if it does work out, everyone will learn something!

I think the hardest thing in the world is, after giving the young ones the best possible advice based on hard, brutal experience that we can muster, letting them go on ahead and make the decisions they are bound and determined to make, our advice be damned!

Kudos to you for stepping back and letting them do what they're gonna do anyway. Keeping lines of communication open while 'staying out of it' is no small trick!

[cbayer]

14. Agree with your take on child raising.

It was difficult to let them go, but it sure is great to not be responsible for them.

I have great respect for all 4 of our kids. They are not necessarily doing what I would have or even what I would have hoped, but they are all remarkable and adult. I feel very thankful.

I have another child who is most likely going to *convert* to Catholicism. He has no affiliation to any religion and never has, but he is marrying into a family that is highly tied to their catholic traditions, community, etc. Sometimes it means a great deal more than just the religion part and he is cool with it.

[Shadowflash]

4. Not quite 'inter-faith'

But I'm an atheist and my wife of thirteen years is Methodist.

[cbayer]

5. I would definitely consider that interfaith, and more and more common, imo.

[Jim__]

6. The only point in the article that I have a problem with is that ...

... I think it downplays the difficulties of inter-racial marriage. The difficulties that it raises about interfaith marriage are largely due to the loss of community and tradition. Those apply at least as strongly in an inter-racial marriage.

[cbayer]

7. I think the point may be that in inter-racial marriages, the potential problems are more

likely to be confronted, discussed and dealt with early on. But in interfaith marriages there may be more of an inclination to just dismiss potential conflicts.

[okasha]

9. My parents' marriage

was both interracial and interfaith, and the racial aspect was by far the more difficult problem. (Interracial marriage wasn't even legal in Texas at the time.) Both families reacted with «You want to marry a what?» If my maternal grandmother hadn't taken a liking to my dad, they probably would not have married. They dealt with the continuing difficulties by moving out of the country for several years.

[cbayer]

12. Do you think it would be the same today - that the racial aspects would outweigh the

religious ones?

It may depend on where you live and what religion you ascribe to and how important that religion is to one personally and to the family.

I dated a jewish man in my earlier days, and he and I became seriously concerned that his mother was going to literally die if we decided to marry. But, come to think of it, that may fall both into the religious and racial categories.

[kwassa]

15. I am in an interracial marriage

I am white, my wife is black. I actually don't think that either racial or interfaith issues are very great for many people today. I have honestly never heard of an interfaith issue in the modern era in anyone that I have met. If it was an issue, the relationship would have never happened to begin with. It would be a deal breaker.

My wife and I are both Episcopalians, but we are very eclectically interested in many different spiritual traditions that have nothing to do with Christianity, and we developed these interests before meeting each other.

My sister was brought up Unitarian, and her husband is Jewish, but neither observe anything so there is no conflict. I have dated Jewish women myself in earlier years, and there was no issue there, either.

Many of the Christian denominations are losing the boundaries that separated them from each other, based on theological points that many don't care at all about anymore.

[cbayer]

16. I don't know if you saw my other post, but our daughter is in a marriage that is

fraught with interfaith issues. She was raised evangelical, is now atheist and has married a Muslim. While her husband is only marginally religious, religion is extremely important to his family and his community. In addition, my daughter's birth mother and grandmother remain deeply tied to their evangelical beliefs and were opposed to this from the beginning.

While the couple themselves really did not feel that it would be an issue for them, I sense that it is going to be much more conflictual than they anticipated.

Unless you marry a clone, things like this are going to come up. It's how a couple deals with them that is the most important and most telling for the future.

As I said before, I think color lines are fading due to inter-racial couples, and that's a good thing. I would also love to see the religion lines fading, and inter-faith marriages may accomplish that goal.

Thanks for sharing your personal history. I read elsewhere that you have a daughter, but you identify her as a black child. I am curious as to why that is.

[kwassa]

17. Two reasons we identify her as a black child ...

Any child that has any visible African ancestry will be identified as African-American. That is how American culture is set up. The old one-drop rule. Many if not most African-Americans have racially-mixed backgrounds. My wife has considerable white and Native American ancestry judging by the appearance of relatives, but we have no facts on the subject.

Secondly, and more importantly, our daughter is adopted. We know enough about the birth mother and family to know that there is a German grandmother in the mix someplace. Our daughter gets blond highlights in her hair in the summer. She and my wife, through sheer coincidence, have identical middle-brown skin tones, considered light by some, though my wife's hair is black and my daughter's is a much lighter brown, though with a very tight curl. My wife's hair has a much looser curl.

Almost everyone who sees us as a family believes our daughter to be our biological child.

[cbayer]

18. I heard someone speaking to this issue a couple of years ago, but I can't remember who.

She made the case for identifying her child as black because she felt it was imperative to preserve the cultural and historical context. She felt that if she did not do this, her child would be sure to lose her identity as an African-American and that the entire culture could be lost.

I felt she made a good case.

An interesting place to see how the color lines break down is New Orleans. There is a distinct class of people who identify as African American but are fairly light skinned and shun (read: are prejudiced against) darker skinned blacks. They use to have what they called the paper bag test. This class system still exists to some extent.

[kwassa]

19. I don't think the culture is in any danger of disappearing

African-American culture is very powerful and ever-changing and a huge influence on American culture in general.

We live in an interesting time when there are so many immigrants from other countries in this country that at a local high school the African-American kids were a minority of the black kids in the school, outnumbered by the children of African, Caribbean, and South American immmigrants.

The light skin-dark skin thing has largely collapsed now, though it used to be a real force in the social class system of black America. I know some people from that world that could easily pass for white, but identify strongly as black.

[cbayer]

20. I agree about the power and influence of the african american community.

It's one of the things I really miss about New Orleans. But much of it there is actively kept alive.

In other areas, with higher rates of inter-racial couples and children, there tends to be a pattern of the dominant culture remaining, well, dominant.

Sounds like you have an interesting and wonderful core family. My best wishes to you, your wife and your child.

[kwassa]

21. Thank you!

[pinto]

8. 1945 - my mother (Catholic) married my father (non religious). It was somewhat controversial then.

She was from New England, he from central Texas, where they would settle and start a family. That too, at the time, was somewhat controversial.

My mother got a dispensation from the church. That, along with her mother's "intervention", satisfied her dad's initial opposition to the marriage. (LOL, I would have loved to been a fly on the wall during that conversation.)

My dad's family stepped up to help them get a place in TX - rentals seemed to dry up when an Irish Catholic woman from New England inquired about housing.

How convoluted it was, yet it worked out eventually. Reminds me that things do change...eventually.