Comments on: Love and Marriage

by: k_marie

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 01:00:08 +0000

I was raised Christian (no particular denomination), my grandfather was a presbyterian minister and my aunt is one as well. I know the rules and the rituals and can recite many bible verses, but I do not consider myself Christian. I find that all religions have a ring of truth and can’t say I believe any one over another.

I am married to a Muslim man, and have agreed to have my children raised Muslim. The only real struggle I’ve has with this is that I used to live in Saudi Arabia and was exposed to a government that claimed to be acting in the name of Islam and treats it’s women as second class citizens.

So I’m looking for a way to reconcile my belief that women and men are equal in all ways and that they should be treated exactly the same, and some of the convictions about Islam I have seen in my in-laws. For example, that men can marry non-Muslims and women can’t. That is so far from what I am willing to accept, you can’t help who you fall in love with and I will not ever allow my daughters to feel they have fewer options than their brothers. So, I’ve been searching for an interpretation of Islam that allows for more equality. I think I’ve found it. My husband agreed long ago that our children would be treated equally, I hope he keeps his word, so that we don’t have to fight it out later.

As for the Holidays. They are important to him and so we celebrate them. I don’t eat in front of him during Ramadan, I give him gifts on Eid. If it makes him happy, I’m there for him; just as he is for me.

by: muslimah

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 06:02:59 +0000

To answer the question

Though I have been in love with a person of another faith before I knew that for me personally/religiously being married to that person would simply not work out.

As a Muslim woman I am required to get up before dawn and pray everyday, to fast during Ramadan, etc. I desired a mate that would do these things as well, that would celebrate the same holidays as me etc. Its hard enough being a religious minority in your country of origin, why be one in your household as well??

Personal comfort and preference aside, I truly don’t understand interfaith marriages when it comes to children. A parent is a child’s first and most important teacher and what more important lesson can you teach them than the truth about their Lord/Creator. This is why it boggles my mind that some people would introduce their kids to both religions and then let them have a choice?? If in your heart of hearts you believe that your religion is the truth (while respecting others) how could you teach your children other than that.

For instance as a Muslim I believe that Allah is above having a son, which means though I love Jesus as a messenger and prophet of God. I don’t believe in the trinity, or that Jesus is my Lord and Savior. Therefore, if the father of my children were a Christian and we agreed to expose our children to both they’d be learning conflicting things. Believing as I do how could I sit idlly by and let my husband tell my children, who are entrusted to my care by our Creator, that Jesus is the Lord.

In other situations, instead of exposing children to both religions one party acquieses and says the children can be raised in the faith tradition that is not their own. Again, I don’t understand this logic. As a parent you want the best for your kids right, and if you are comfortable enough letting your kids be raised in a faith tradition other than your own, why don’t you just convert as well. To me it seems that you must not believe in your religion that much if you don’t even expose your own kids to it. (Meanwhile other people of your faith are busy trying to convert the world but you don’t even expose your own kids)

* In Islam Muslim men are allowed to marry Christian & Jewish women but there is a caveat that any children produced must be raised as Muslim. (What would make a practising/devoted Christian or Jewish woman agree to such a contract…. maybe that is where the love is blind part comes in?) True there is no compulsion in Islam, and once a child becomes of age they can chose not to be Muslim if they want, but until that point the children follow and are taught the religion of their father. So I’m not suggesting that children be Forced into a particular faith.

Don’t get me wrong I have respect for other faiths. In fact I am only a second generation Muslim so my entire extended family is Christian/Catholic. So I have no problem interacting with people of other faiths I love my family and attend BBQ’s, Weddings, etc. But I make it clear that I won’t be coming over for Easter. My Christian family members also respect Islam. BUT I still fail to understand how within a single family unit (husband, wife, kids) how two religions can honestly co-exist unless of course one person is just not that serious about their religion.

My comments basically apply to choices made on how to raise children. Not to how two adults without children can co-exist.

I honestly think that sometimes we put too much emphasis on how much we love a person, and think that love conquers all and everything will work out. BUT if you are a true believer in your religion no matter what it may be No love for any of creation should outweigh or cloud your decision-making when it comes to spiritual matters.

by: Cytocop

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 00:24:57 +0000

I’m single and Reform Jewish. If I were married, I’d probably feel more interfaithly married if I was married to an Orthodox Jewish man than if I were married to a liberal Christian or liberal Muslim man. It might be scriptural or denominational interpretation that indicates an interfaith marriage more than the religious label itself.

Interfaith marriages, in the strict sense, must bring lots of conflicts to settle from the moment the couple decides to say “I do.” Here in San Antonio, there are no rabbis who will perform interfaith weddings. From their point of view, I can understand why. There are parts of the Jewish wedding liturgy that would just be inappropriate in an interfaith setting. I don’t know how these things get worked out among rabbis who will officiate them - maybe the “offensive” parts are simply deleted.

There are several interfaith marrieds among the congregants at my temple. Indeed, the interfaiths and converts are among the most dedicated and active temple members. One of the couples has divorced. I’m friends with the divorced woman who converted to Judaism. Despite her divorce from her born-Jewish husband, she remains faithful to Judaism and active in the temple. I find that an affirmation that she converted to Judaism for herself, not for her husband.

by: Edward

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 17:40:49 +0000

Everyone has written such long stories, and I don’t know if I should attempt to keep up, or just write what I need…

I am currently marrying a Wiccan. A lapsed Wiccan, but Wiccan none the less. Myself? I don’t really have a religion. I have faith, yes. More faith than I can sometimes handle. I just have yet to find a “place to lay my head.” I’ve studied Christianity, Paganism, Hinduism, Judaism… Yet nothing sticks. I am studying Islam now, but while I respect it, I can not convert.

That said, I have had absolutely no trouble, thus far, in regards to an “interfaith” marriage. My fiance has, so far, opened his mind a lot more than when I met him. We are now agreeing to a church (which he expressed, when first dating, that he would never step foot in another one), looking for a pastor and going very “traditional” with the process.

I am constantly in the sea of theology, never finding a harbor to stay at for too long. But he loves me for who I am, and not what I call myself. When I decided to become a Wiccan as well, and later found other truths, I didn’t tell him. He was more upset with me not being honest with him than my religious identity (he, at one time, made a comment “What religion are you this week” - I didn’t want him to judge me more). He expressed that he understands finding a faith structure is more difficult to me, and he doesn’t want me to feel that I have to choose one, or to hide anything from him.

We’re both pretty open minded, so I don’t think there is anything to worry about.

by: Rev. Bob Forsberg

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 13:07:59 +0000

Just to add my perspective as someone who started life as a conservative Swedish Evangelical Covenant Church member, thanks to my parents and grandparents, but who became a rather liberal Presbyterian when we moved away from the New York and East Orange NJ churches where my grandfather was a prominent member, and my cousins attended.
I realized in high school in the late 1930s, both from my Sunday School teachers and the Hi-Y group at the YMCA that we were not very open to Jewish participation in many of our activities, even the ones that were ecumenical and trying to bring together folks from many Protestant, and even Catholic, churches. I was also dating a Roman Catholic girl, whose parents eventually stopped us from seeing one another, because I was planning on being a minister, and they did not think their daughter would go to heaven if she had a mixed marriage, or something like that.
While I got to know some Black Muslims in New Haven, and found them fine, dedicated folks, I really did not know much about either Islam or Judaism. Neither college nor seminary helped me here. I did have a Jewish roommate for one year, and that was a good friendship. When our two sons began dating some lovely Jewish girls, I was intrigued and even grateful that they had chosen intelligent, educated, humorous fine partners or friends. I did not fear that they would not get to heaven by not having the proper Presbyterian doctrines shared. I was more grateful if they were joining me and others in the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War protests, which they all did.
And during my protest years in New Haven, concerned about justice at home and no wars abroad, I was impressed by the large number of Jews who shared my concerns, and the smaller percentage of fellow and sister Protestants and Catholics, tho there were many. Our older son did marry a smart, capable, lovely Jewish woman when he moved to San Francisco, and they produced two smart, talented and lovely twin daughters. I enjoyed going to the Torah study as they prepared for their Bat Mitzvahs, and was glad to be invited with my Congregational minister wife to stand with them as they read from the scrolls of the Torah.
We had also enjoyed studying the Torah with an Orthodox rabbi and his wife, who were the Hillel leaders for Yale students and our neighbors. I joined him and many other rabbis and some other Protestant ministers inAugust 1962, responding to ML King’s invitation to come to Albany GA to help support the Black citizens of that city in their demands for access to the public library, the swimming pool in the hot summers, and paving on the streets where Black doctors and lawyers and others lived, despite equal tax paying by Blacks, who also did not get any city jobs, and only segregated schools with poor facilities.
Our son has two more children now, one and four year old boys, and I am glad they join their older sisters in being full Jewish members, thanks to their Brit ceremony of circumcision, done very gently by a grandfatherly rabbi. I have also benefited from studying Hebrew with other adults at a nearby synagogue where my wife sang in the choir each Sabbath evening.
Now in the West after retiring, I am getting wonderful chances to meet and become friends with Muslims and Buddhists, as well as Jews, and I am strongly supporting our Presbyterian official position that we Christians are not privileged ticket holders sure to get a place in heaven, but that God as Creator and compassionate Parent of all humans, welcomes all of us into the family and cares for us now and eternally. That is the basic good news that Jesus proclaimed and all of us who follow his Way are called on to share.
We have a Japanese son-in-law who brings a Shinto and Buddhist contribution to our family, and I rejoice in all this late life learning what great benefits we have from the several religions in our family. Our Jewish in-laws are a wonderful partners in helping us to grow and learn what a wide and diverse family we really are part of, when we wake up to that fact.

by: rachaelp

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:25:19 +0000

I was brought up in the Swedish Covenant Church, and my father was the minister. I even went to a christian university, North Park, in Chicago. My faith was important to me, but “religion” has always felt like a lie. I will go into that on another response…

I always dated men who called themselves “good christians” and most were either verbally, sexually or physically abusive - at the very least, they didn’t live as the christians they claimed to be. Obviously, not all christian men are abusive and I am sure I just picked the wrong ones.

When I met my husband, at the age of 28, I knew I had found a good heart that truly loved me. The catch? He’s an atheist. I even broke up with him for a little while because I couldn’t reconcile what my life would be like without a partner in faith. My father, the minister, adores him. They have even taken trips together.

My mother adores him. My family feels that he lives more like a christian than anyone I ever dated. And we’ve been together almost 8 years now, married for almost 5. We don’t have children, and that might change some of the dynamic and cause a few disagreements - but he holds hands at dinner when my family prays. He respects that my niece and nephew are being brought up to believe in Jesus Christ. That’s a lot for an atheist.

We really meet in the middle. We both believe that organized religion, at it’s core, creates a lot of bureaucratic rules that were never written in the bible. And that organized religion is responsible for every war ever fought. Neither one of us needs that in our lives. If I were married to a christian man, would my beliefs be different? Maybe. Or perhaps I would have a greater disdain for religion.

I thank God that I found, in my husband, a heart that is open and giving whether God resides in it or not.

by: Liahona

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 15:47:57 +0000

Interfaith marriages can be a tough one. When I met my husband he had been raised all of his life as an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and I had floated around, attending several other protestant churches over the years. When we began dating I was investigating the LDS church, but hadn’t made up my mind yet, and he was trying to stay neutral about it because he did not want me to join his church for the wrong reasons ( i.e. to be with him). His grandmonther about flipped because everyone in my family smokes and she couldn’t fathom the idea of us having children and exposing them to that when we spent time with my family. Everyone else in Gary’s family was cool about things. I ended up converting, getting baptized, then we waited one year before getting married in the LDS temple in Salt Lake City.
We have been married for 30 years now and although we have a fabulous marriage, it certainly hasn’t always been easy, particularly because we come from such different backgrounds. I was raised to be honest, hard-working, and comitted to helping others in the community, but my family did smoke and my parents did have 1 or 2 martinis every night before dinner, etc. When I was in college I sewed plenty of wild oats, using marijuana and being sexually active. Gary is a comitted Republican and I am a Democrat. Although these things can cause conflicts at times, overall I would say it has been good for our family and 4 children to see the world from 2 different views. Since I coverted to the LDS faith, our common spiritual bond and basic values of life that we now share do make it easier to smooth over the rough spots and both of us being very active spiritually helps in raising children.
Most parents I know wish for their children to marry someone of their own faith, and I am no different. However, we have one daughter who is no longer active in our faith and is living with someone who doesn’t attend any church at all. Even though this daughter knows we don’t approve of her living with her boyfriend, drinking socially, etc.–she knows that we love her with all of our hearts and are proud of the great things she does do in her life and don’t ever want her to feel unwelcome in our home.
As to the question, “What particular challenges do these relationships face?” — In my case, I can become frustrated when my husband is intolerant of other people when they drink and smoke. He has been raised in a community where you seldom have to be exposed to those things. He is a physician and sees the results of smoking and lung cancer. I have to constantly remind him that whether a person smokes or not is not an indicator of them being a wonderful person or not. He likewise has been raised around people who generally don’t swear and his tolerance for that is pretty low. I must admit, the older I get and the more time I have spent around people who do not swear, I have gotten to the point where excess swearing irritates me and when people use Jesus Christ as a swear word or use the comment, “Oh My God” in every other sentence. This is not to say I don’t let a few choice words fly when my temper flares– old habits die HARD.