Chelsea Clinton, raised Methodist, and Marc Mezvinsky, Jewish, will wed this weekend. Statistics show that 37 percent of Americans have a spouse of a different faith. Statistics also show that couples in interfaith marriages are “three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060402011.html) Is interfaith marriage good for American society? Is it good for religion? What is lost -and gained -when religious people intermarry?
Traditionally the various faiths of the world have been suspicious of each other, so it’s not really a surprise that interfaith marriages have high divorce rates. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean that you don’t harbor distrust at some level, in a secret compartment of the heart. If your family has conditioned you to believe that yours is the only true faith, a second element is added. Who wants to sacrifice part of themselves to please another person? When parents advise their children not to marry outside the faith, they aren’t passing on wisdom; more likely they are reminding their children not to stray from us-versus-them thinking. (more…)
