ICB: Inter-faith Marriages
My good friend Christina and I have been participating in NaNoWriMo together for two years now. Next year, we were contemplating choosing a storyline and characters and each writing our novel using the agreed upon plot and setting. I’m not sure how this is going to work out, but it sounds rather interesting. I was also recently inspired by my Twitter-bud, @melissaoyler and her friend (Amy) who are choosing a random topic and then each blogging about it. Christina and I thought this would be an awesome way to test out our ability to write individually on a collective topic.
This week’s topic: Inter-faith Marriages
Visit Christina’s blog to read about her thoughts about inter-faith marriages: here.
*/Begin shameless plug for new blog/*
I also want to take a short moment to say that there are only 71 days until the beginning of NaNoWriMo. And thus, I have officially opened my NaNoWriMo ’09 blog where I will be posting musings, excerpts, etc leading up to and throughout the NaNo season. Christina and I will be doing a Collective NaNovel.
Oh, and I’m lazy… All future posts of Individually Collective Blogging will have the prefix ICB instead of the full topic name.
Inter-faith Marriages
First, I should like to define “inter-faith.”
interfaithadjective [ attrib. ]of, relating to, or between different religions or members of different religions : action to encourage interfaith dialogue.
Now that we have that out of the way… Christina and I have been talking a lot about weddings and getting married, well, because she is getting married, and, frankly, that’s what girls do.
As it turns out, both Christina and I are going to be members of an inter-faith marriage. Bet you didn’t know that about me! Christina’s marriage is a bit more “traditional” in that she was raised Catholic and her fiancée was raised Jewish. I am “Batholic” and my husband, Steve, was raised Jehovah’s Witness. And I will be the first to admit that being part of an inter-faith marriage isn’t easy.
What the Statistics Say
When Christina and I decided to do this blog post, the first thing that came to mind were hard-core stats. What do the cold-hard facts say about inter-faith marriages. Never mind the whole “All we need is love…” bit, what can we gather from sheer facts.
I googled “statistical success of inter-faith marriages” and I was actually relatively surprised that there isn’t a single table drawn up with numbers in it. The closest that I could come to hard-core stats was a page on ReligiousTolerance.org that discusses divorce rates among inter-faith marriages.
In that article they mention despite what people may think, divorce rates across the board are up and that Atheists and Agnostics are among the lowest divorce rates of all (21%); which, frankly, shocked me. One of the highest percentages of divorce rates (27%) were born-again Christians. Another surprising statistic from that article was that INTRA-faith (couples that do not share the same denomination, but who are of the same faith) marriages are doomed just as much as INTER-faith marriages.
The article also lists some suggestions on how to avoid divorce (and they caution their readers that these suggestions aren’t firm solutions, but only “hunches”). Among their hunches they list:
- Be realistic
- Tackle the inter-faith problems directly
- Consider the in-laws
- Plan in advance
- Respect the faiths that you were raised in
- Communicate
- Communicate more
- Communicate still more
- Consider taking an inter-faith tour
Unfortunately, the data just isn’t there to make serious observations about. I’m guessing that part of this is one of those questions that when asked people tend to say, “It’s none of your business what religion I am.” Hence, the lack of hard data on the subject.
Personal Observations
I think that whoever wrote the article for ReligiousTolerance.org is an incredibly smart cookie. Especially to include Hunch #7, #8, and #9 in their “hunches” for a successful inter-faith marriage. I can’t stress enough that you have to talk about the hard topics to make sure that you and your spouse can get through the hard times. And don’t just talk about them when they’re a problem, consider implementing Hunch #4.
I’m really pleased to see that they included Hunch #3 – Consider the In-Laws as well. I think that Steve & I are pretty lucky in that respect. Steve’s father comes from generations of the parents instilling in their children the importance of choosing which faith works best for themselves. For that reason, we’ve never received pressure to become Jehovah’s Witnesses from Steve’s parents. They have invited us to church with them, but they’re not disappointed when/if we decline. My parents are similar. They do feel strongly about their faith, but they have been very accepting of Steve’s different background and haven’t pushed him to be baptized or join a church family that he’s not completely comfortable with. However, I know that this isn’t always the norm. When you’ve got parents who have expectations and who are constantly putting pressure on you it just increases the stress that you and your spouse feel.
I have to admit, being part of an inter-faith marriage is actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. I just assumed we’d work it out and it would just “be OK.” But there are times when I just don’t understand where Steve is coming from because he was raised in a completely different faith than me; and I assume that the same is true for Steve about some of the things that I value/feel. And I have also found it to be very difficult to explain my faith. I mean, after all, faith in a religion has an element of complete trust without questioning. How do you explain something that you trust in, but you don’t fully understand?
Challenges of the Wedding Ceremony
Blending a smorgasbord of faiths into a wedding ceremony can be completely challenging. I gave up very early on. When Steve and I went to find an officiant to perform the ceremony we really got shut down. I just assumed a preacher would perform the ceremony because that’s just what happens, right? Every pastor that we talked to told us that he didn’t marry people who hadn’t joined their church family. I was shocked! To me, joining a church family is an incredible commitment and not to be taken lightly. Since we hadn’t joined a church family together before the wedding, neither Steve nor I felt like there was enough time during the planning process to find a church family and then be able to ensure we could secure the pastor to perform the ceremony on the appointed date.
So we did what a lot of inter-faith couples did… we had a civil ceremony. We were, in fact, married by an air traffic controller. My dad’s best friend, who I have known since I was three or four, performed the actual ceremony and my father got a one-day civil celebrant’s license in the County we were married in and signed our marriage license. And yes, it was legal.
Our ceremony was spiritual, it just didn’t really reflect any one particular religion. We did this not just because Steve and I came from different backgrounds but because our families are all from very different religious backgrounds. Our vows were actually adapted from an Inuit love poem and the final prayer was a Native American blessing. I made the decision to use these two elements to celebrate my profession as an anthropologist.
Final Thoughts
So, basically, I think it can be done. I think that you can have a successful inter-faith marriage. But I think that right off the bat you’ve already got things working against you. There are so many things to consider, and I think that the only way to truly have a successful inter-faith marriage is to practice Hunches #7, #8, and #9 above. If you never talk about it, it will come back to haunt you… in a really big way.
It floors me, how difficult it can be to find someone to perform a wedding ceremony when you have “unusual” circumstances. I didn’t know you and Steve tried to find someone/someplace traditional first!
Also, you’ve hit the nail on the head about communication being a key. Alex and I have been talking about what we’d do about family pressures and religion if we have kids since well before we got engaged. I think a wise friend might have told me those conversations were important, too…