Water Mixed with Wine: The Beliefs, Identity and
Religious Experience of Christians in Inter-Faith
Marriages
Rosalind Ann Birtwistle
Heythrop College, University of London
1
I, Rosalind Ann Birtwistle, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own.
Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been
indicated in the thesis.
2
Abstract
This study examines the development of Christian attitudes to marriage with people of
different faiths. These attitudes have been influenced not only by scripture and tradition,
but also by beliefs about women and appropriate gender relationships, attitudes towards
those who are not Christians, and by the size and the strength of the Church. But interfaith marriage remains a sensitive topic among some groups, and until recently most
research was carried out by social scientists whose focus was on the cultural and
psychological rather than on the religious aspects of these relationships.
Christians in inter-faith marriages were interviewed; they describe their own religious
upbringing and background, the issues they faced when deciding to marry and their
relationships within their own faith communities and those of their partners. The homebased faith practice of the couples and their participation, if any, in public worship are
recorded. Although the faith identity of children is not the main focus of the research, it
can be an important indicator of parental belief, so a short discussion on children is
included.
There is a widespread belief that those who marry out of their own faith group are
secular in outlook. However, sometimes this is far from the case; moreover sometimes
marriage to a partner of a different faith can enhance and enrich one’s own faith. With
this in mind, religious and cultural practices, attendance at public worship, and personal
spirituality, beliefs and values are examined.
The notion that these marriages are necessarily unstable or deviant, or that they
weaken and corrupt Christian faith is challenged. This leads to suggestions about the
pastoral implications of inter-faith marriage. Finally it is argued that Christians in interfaith marriages may, with their partners, make a valuable contribution to the wider field
of interfaith dialogue.
3
Acknowledgements
No study of this nature is possible without the help and co-operation of many others.
My thanks are due first to the people I interviewed, who must remain anonymous. It is
not easy to share the details of your faith or your marriage with a stranger, particularly
one who arrives with a voice recorder and a notebook, but they entrusted their stories to
me and I am grateful. I also wish to thank the members of the Southall MuslimChristian marriage support group for their hospitality and their stimulating discussions.
Heather al-Yousuf, the group’s co-ordinator, has been a constant and enthusiastic
companion on my journey of discovery, as has my academic supervisor, Michael
Barnes, whose wisdom, optimism and encouragement sustained me. Adèle Rowlands’
eye for detail made her an excellent proof reader.
Finally I wish to thank my husband, David Sawyer, for his support and patience, and
our children Rhiannon, Madeleine, Lydia and Arthur who assure me that being brought
up in an inter-faith family is definitely not ‘confusing’, it is ‘cool’.
4
Contents
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
How can it be called a True Union?
8
The purpose of theological research
12
Early attitudes to exogamy: pollution or sanctification?
15
Queen Esther
17
Christians, marriage and family
19
Attitudes to women
26
Attitudes towards the ‘Other’
28
Decreased tolerance of exogamy
31
The King of Tars
35
Summary
38
Reformulating the Questions
40
The social sciences and inter-faith marriage
42
Intermarriage and assimilation
44
Secularization
48
Intermarriage as deviance
53
Marital spirituality
58
Insights from Interfaith Dialogue
65
Couples and Inter-faith Dialogue
75
Summary
76
Communities and Couples
78
Faith Communities and Exogamy
80
Abrahamic Faiths: Christian -Jewish marriage
82
Abrahamic Faiths: Christian-Muslim marriage
89
Dharmic Faiths
93
Diversity
100
Summary
105
5
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7:
Approaching the Interviews
107
Finding Interviewees: Networking and Snowballing
113
Research Problems
116
The interview process
124
Summary
127
Belonging and Community
129
Courtship and the Decision to Marry
131
Weddings
135
Conversion
140
Children’s Identity
145
Couples and Communities
149
Heterogamous Christians and their Churches
151
Christians and their Partners’ Religious Communities
157
Summary
159
Faith at Home
161
Faith in the Kitchen
164
Christian Festivals
167
Other Festivals
170
Faith, Doubt and Dilution
171
Insights from the ‘Other’
177
Faith in the Margins
178
Summary
181
Conclusions
184
Main Findings
185
Porous Boundaries
187
Tensions
191
Learning From the ‘Other’
195
The Desert Tradition
196
Questions and Recommendations for the Churches
199
6
Appendix 1: Religion of married couples, England and Wales, 2001
205
Appendix 2: Letter to interfaith to contacts
206
Appendix 3: Letter to potential interviewees
207
Appendix 4: Consent Form
209
Appendix 5: Prompting Questions
210
Bibliography
214
7
1: How can it be called a True Union?
‘How can it be called a true union between you so long as he remains alienated from
the daylight of your faith, by the barrier of dark and lamentable error?’
Thus wrote Pope Boniface V about the year 625 CE to Queen Aethelburh, King
Edwin of Northumbria’s Christian consort, urging her to work towards her husband's
conversion (Bede, 1955, 1990: 124). His question has been echoed across the centuries,
for despite St. Paul's advice that the faithful should marry only ‘in the Lord’
(I Corinthians 7:39), loving relationships between Christians and people of other faiths
never completely ceased, even when formal marriage was forbidden. What evidence we
have about these relationships is gathered mainly from the records of religious
minorities, from rules regulating contact between Christians and Jews or Muslims, from
court judgements and from literature and legend. Sometimes, particularly in areas
where Christianity was not yet established, inter-faith relationships were tolerated;
occasionally they even had the tacit approval of the Church. At other times and places
any sexual activity between a baptised person and someone who was not baptised was
punishable by excommunication, exile or death.
Religious and ethnic groups differ in their ideas about who may wed whom.
Historically most societies have attempted to regulate unions between their members
and outsiders; the French sociologist Augustin Barbara indicates that when groups
perceive the threats from outsiders to be especially great, as in Pericles’ Athens and
among the Jews during the Exodus, exogamy is more rigorously controlled (Barbara,
1989: 5). On the other hand exogamy is sometimes advantageous, and political
alliances may be sealed with a marriage, that of Aethelburh and Edwin being an
example. But whatever the advantages, most communities including the Church find
8
exogamy problematic. Christian views on inter-faith marriage were influenced by
several intertwining strands: the size and strength of the Church, scripture and tradition,
attitudes towards people of other faiths, and also beliefs about women and proper
gender relationships. I hope that by describing how attitudes towards inter-faith
marriage developed I can contribute towards a fuller understanding of the contemporary
situation and point towards an appropriate and pastorally sensitive Christian response.
For Christians, there is at the heart of inter-faith marriage a tension between
sanctification and corruption. Origen used the metaphor of wine mixed with water: the
wine flavours and sanctifies the water, but the water may dilute and corrupt the wine
(Bray, 1999: 63, 64). Does a Christian partner sanctify the whole family, 'spreading
holiness' among them (Thiselton, 2000: 531)? For much of the Church’s history the
ideal outcome of an inter-faith marriage would be the conversion of the non-Christian
spouse, and there were legends in which Christian maidens were married to nonbelievers who were eventually baptised. Other stories told of virgin martyrs who chose
death rather than marriage to pagans. The tension between pollution and sanctification
still operates today. Does the spouse who is not a Christian weaken and destabilize the
Christian's faith, leading either to syncretism or an obscuring of Truth? Or can an interfaith marriage provide an opportunity, as has been suggested, for ‘deepening faith and
cultural enrichment’ (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales 2010: 67)?
Inter-faith marriages raise questions about the nature of marriage itself, about
boundaries and belonging, about attitudes towards those who are not Christians and
about faithful Christian witness. Christological and soteriological questions are also
raised. While other faiths may recognise Jesus as a teacher, prophet, bodhisattva or one
9
of many incarnations of the divine, the centrality of Christ for Christians is nonnegotiable. These are important issues and only recently have theologians begun to
address them, or to suggest pastoral responses. In 1977, a study of Christian marriage
in Africa devoted twenty-one pages to inter-church marriages, but only five paragraphs
to inter-faith marriages.1 In 1986, Christopher Lamb added a fourteen page Appendix
on mixed-faith marriage to a book concerning ministry in multi-faith areas (Hooker and
Lamb, 1986: 143 – 156), and other publications have also included sections on interfaith marriage (for example, Wingate, 2005: 127 – 136; Catholic Bishops’ Conference
of England and Wales, 2010: 65 – 71). These address not only theological and legal
questions, but are also concerned with supporting inter-faith couples.
In this project I have focussed on how the faith and identity of a Christian is
affected by life with a partner of a different religion. During the course of the research I
interviewed Christians with partners of different faiths, and attended meetings
concerning marriage and inter-faith marriage, including the London-based MuslimChristian marriage group, the U.S.A. based Dovetail group and the Institute for Marital
Spirituality in Louvain. I have also been involved in a support network for inter-faith
couples. I shall explain how sometimes, rather than being diluted or corrupted,
Christian faith seems to be enhanced and enriched by a relationship with someone of a
different faith. I hope to show that because many exogamous Christians inhabit a space
somewhere on the margins of the church, rather like the ancient desert hermits, they
may have a distinctive perspective and sensitivity, and that therefore the Churches
should not only be ministering to them, but also listening to them.
1
See Kisembo, Benezeri, Magesa, Laurenti and Shorter, Aylward (1977) African Christian Marriage,
London, Chapman
10
Three inter-related theological principles inform my perspective. First,
Christianity is a faith which is both incarnational and relational. It is rooted not in a
series of precepts, but in a person, ‘the Word made Flesh’ and it is expressed through
daily life and behaviour, including interpersonal relationships. Although Christianity
recognises the individual as unique and precious, the faith is based on community
(Ward, 2000: 4). The Pauline metaphor of the body of Christ (see for example Romans
12:5; I Corinthians 10:16b-17; 12:13, 27; Ephesians 1:23), besides echoing the
incarnational theme, underlines the idea of the church as a gathering of interdependent
people under Christ. Second, Christians believe that each human is made in God’s
image (Genesis 1:26 - 27) which has implications not only for relationships with other
Christians, but also with those who do not share their faith. Christians are called to love
the neighbour (Luke 6:27, 35) and also the stranger (Deuteronomy 10:19); and even
enemies are to be loved (Matthew 5:44). Third, Christians are called to be transformed
by God (Ford, 2002:7). One possible location of transformation is the family home
where people may be ‘touched’ by God. This is why Christian marriage can be
described as sacramental. Writers on marital spirituality frequently call the Christian
household a ‘domestic church’ in which family members learn holiness and where
something of the divine is reflected through love, hospitality and healing. It would
perhaps be stretching this metaphor to apply it to inter-faith families; in any case it
would be unlikely to please partners who are not Christians. However, if Christians
who marry out of their faith are marginal to their churches, yet nevertheless find their
faith enhanced, matured or transformed by the daily and intimate relationship with
someone whose beliefs are different, the home is the likely setting for this process.
11
In this chapter I discuss the purpose of my research project and trace the sources
of Christian attitudes to religious intermarriage. This is not a comprehensive history;
there is an emphasis on the early and medieval church, and I have included myths and
legends which illustrate the cultural parameters within which doctrines developed. My
reason for drawing attention to the development of early doctrines is that their influence
remains significant today. In the second chapter I focus on the work of social and
behavioural scientists, writers on marital spirituality and those involved in the interfaith
dialogue, work which helped me frame my own questions. In the third chapter I begin
to address these questions, with an overview of the attitudes held by different faith
communities towards inter-faith marriage, and I introduce the people interviewed. In
the fourth I describe my methodology and the interview process. Chapters Five and Six
concern the detailed experiences of Christians in inter-faith marriages, focusing on such
issues as identity and belonging, weddings and childrearing, expressions of faith at
home and in public, and the influence of the partner’s faith on their own. In the final
Chapter I explore where these intermarried Christians belong, how they may contribute
towards the dialogue between faiths, and suggest pastoral responses to the questions
raised by inter-faith marriage. Throughout the study I use the terms ‘intermarriage’ or
‘mixed marriage’ to describe a union between people whose differences may be of
nationality, language, culture or ethnic group, ‘interchurch marriage’ to denote couples
from different Christian traditions and ‘inter-faith marriage’ where the partners are from
different religions, such as Islam and Christianity.
The Purpose of Theological Research
For Christians, the questions raised by inter-faith marriage cannot be answered
adequately without a theological exploration. However helpful the social sciences may
12
be, some religious issues, particularly those concerning the nature of marriage and
attitudes towards those who are not Christians, are not reducible to cultural categories.
Faith does indeed shape our culture, and we express our beliefs in a cultural context.
Faith also goes to the heart of who we are, what we believe and our core values. A faith
commitment is the starting point for many theologians, and the theologian’s task is
prophetic - both in interpreting culture through a personal understanding (Conn, 1989:
31), and in transmitting something of the eternal within that culture. Theological
questions may be raised when issues in daily life challenge previously held convictions
or are at odds with other sets of beliefs and values (Tanner, 1997: 70 -71). Three
locations for theology have been suggested – the Church, the Academy and ‘Public life’
- the world of social and political activity, and the conjunction of these three is the
source of theological questions (Tracy, 1981: 6-28; Morton, 2004: 31). At a specialized
theological level the questions may be expressed in a more abstract manner, rather than
the way in which ‘ordinary’ everyday questions are asked, although the purpose remains
practical, a need to find solutions to the questions.
The theologian’s task is to engage with everyday reality in the light of Christian
faith and tradition, to help the Church interpret culture, or as the Second Vatican
Council expressed it, to ‘read the signs of the times’ (Barnes, 1989: 66) - both for the
Church, so that it can better understand and act within the world, and also ‘for the times
themselves, so that the culture itself might begin to understand its own aspirations and
limitations’ (Ward, 2005: 59). Ward locates the theologian looking outwards from the
open West door of the Church, between the Church and the World, as ready to serve in
the one as the other. He recognises that the theologian is himself or herself
enculturated, and that ‘throughout its whole course the Church swims along in the
stream of culture’ (Ward, 2005: 57). Yet despite the fallenness of culture it is, he says,
13
the place where the theologian can speak of transformative hope, a promise of
resurrection in this world as well as the next. Schwarz similarly writes about the
theologian’s responsibility to the wider community: ‘As responsible talk about God
manifested in Jesus Christ, theology’s object matter is intrinsically related to the world
in which the theological discourse takes place’ (Schwarz, 1991: 5-6).
While sociologists have sometimes dismissed the beliefs and non-institutional
religious practices of ‘ordinary’ believers as folk-religion, there is now an increasing
interest in what is termed ‘practical’ or ‘ordinary’ theology (Astley, 2002). Several
researchers have investigated the beliefs and believing processes of those who are
unschooled in academic theology (see for example Slee, 2004 and Clark-King, 2004).
Van der Ven describes a study of laypeople’s attitudes towards suffering, originally
prompted by the inability of many pastors to find adequate words to comfort or support
those weighed down by suffering (van der Ven, 1993: 157). The researchers surmised
that the speechlessness of these pastors could be due in part to an inadequate
understanding of their patients’ [sic] theodicy. Sorting out the problem therefore
involved discovering something about the people who are suffering – how they
perceived suffering, their theodicy symbols and the sources of their attitudes - and using
this knowledge to develop diagnostic aids and formulate recommendations for pastoral
care (van der Ven, 1993: 162ff).
When the religious component of inter-faith marriage is recognised, it becomes
the concern of theologians, rather than (or in addition to) cultural anthropologists,
therapists and sociologists of religion. It is important to listen to the stories of those
involved, whether their experiences were positive or negative (Thatcher, 1999: 19 – 20).
14
The purpose remains practical: ‘Specialized theological activity has proper Christian
belief and action in mind’ (Tanner, 1997: 84) and must listen to the insights and values
of other disciplines. But in a project like this, there is a risk of overreliance on the
social sciences, something I discuss more fully in Chapter Four.
I have borrowed something of van der Ven’s approach, while seeking to avoid
what resembles a medicalization of the theological ‘problem’. My own questions spring
from the observation that some Christians in inter-faith marriages claim that their faith
has been enriched by the marriage, despite the warnings of religious authorities that it
could be compromised. The goal - to understand better the beliefs and spirituality of
these Christians - has practical and pastoral implications for ministers of religion and for
marriage workers, including those involved in marriage preparation. A second aim is to
determine how these couples fit within the activity of interfaith dialogue.
We can begin by articulating the questions as:

What impact does marriage to someone of a different faith have on the beliefs
and practice of the Christian partner?

Can the experiences of these intermarried Christians and their families assist in
our understanding and practice of interfaith dialogue?
In order to explore the questions, I shall begin with an account of the development of
Christian teachings concerning inter-faith marriage.
Early attitudes to exogamy: pollution or sanctification?
Israel was 'a people that dwelt alone, that had not made itself one with the
nations’ (Numbers 23:9). Foreigners, especially foreign women, could be spiritual and
sexual pollutants, as idolatry was linked with sexual impurity. There were proscriptions
15
against inter-faith marriages which applied particularly to the seven Canaanite nations
(Ben-Rafael and Sternberg, 2002: 131 -132; Cohen, 1999: 242; Hayes, 2002: 68).
Douglas argues that it is idolatry rather than contact with foreigners per se which
defiles, and the Biblical purity code was about keeping the living God separate from
death, polluting bodily conditions and idolatry, and the whole community's welfare
depended on each individual observing the rules (Douglas, 2001). Hayes asserts that
although originally genealogical purity meant freedom from foreign admixture, by the
Second Temple period the impurity of gentiles was seen as a moral impurity not a ritual
or genealogical one. While there could be business contacts between Jews and gentiles,
closer friendships, or eating and drinking together and shared worship were seen as
polluting because gentiles were associated with idolatry and sexual sins. The parallels
drawn between the sanctuary and the community underline the holiness code. The
Restoration leaders sought both to exclude foreign spouses from the land, and to restrict
temple access to Jews. Both these actions derive from a single verse prohibiting both
intermarriage and sanctuary access (Hayes, 2002: 45-49). The scandal of foreign
conquerors desecrating the Temple is because of their atrocities – the language used
conveys something stronger than mere pollution, it suggests defilement by bloodshed.
But there were exceptions to the exogamy rules; for example an Israelite warrior
could marry a foreign woman captured in battle after she had mourned her parents and
undergone purification rituals. This may have been a conversion procedure, and the
girl’s lament not simply for the loss of her parents, but for the error of her parents’
house (Cohen, 1999: 242ff). But generally exogamy was discouraged, because ‘a
foreign spouse will lead an Israelite to adopt foreign customs and ultimately foreign
gods’ (Hayes, 2002: 70). Concern about the status of mixed children also informed the
16
purity rules. A foreign wife did not necessarily pollute the average Israelite, but the
priestly caste should be kept from foreigners, even foreign-born converts. Other sources
explain that the marriage of a priest to an outsider would profane his offspring, although
the laws concerning Jewish laity were sometimes more liberal. The language of purity
used by Josephus ( […]  ) denotes not only ritual purity but
also unalloyed and unmixed (Josephus against Apion 1:30, quoted in Hayes, 2002: 71).
Queen Esther
There are a few instances of mixed unions in the Hebrew Scriptures, some of
which serve as warnings, like the marriages of Samson to Delilah and Ahab to Jezebel,
while some are recalled more sympathetically, like the marriage between Ruth the
Moabitess and Boaz. The story of Esther’s marriage to Ahasuerus is of interest for this
present study. There are three versions, one Hebrew and two Greek.2 Esther is a
beautiful Jewish orphan living under the guardianship of her cousin Mordecai during
the Persian Empire. When the king dismisses his disobedient wife Vashti, a new set of
girls is recruited into the royal harem, Esther among them. The king is so pleased by
her that he makes her his new queen. Members of the court are unaware of her Jewish
origins. Meanwhile Mordecai, who remains in contact with Esther, offends the
powerful Haman by refusing to pay him obeisance, and Haman plans to massacre the
Jews. Mordecai sends word to Esther, who risks her life by approaching the King
unsummoned in order to plead for her people. Eventually the Jews are saved while
Haman dies on the gallows he had erected for Mordecai.
2
For a detailed comparative analysis of the three texts see Day, Linda (1995) The Three Faces of a
Queen. The Hebrew Masoretic version is shorter, the two Greek texts elaborate the story, adding
prayers and accounts of dreams, and describe Esther’s sense of alienation in the royal household and her
distaste for ‘the bed of the uncircumcised’ and ‘the glory of the lawless’. She is depicted as pious and
prayerful, refusing to worship idols, and avoiding the frequent drinking parties which were held in the
royal household. Some Jewish folk traditions distance Esther even further from the king; one version
holds that God sent a lookalike spirit to take Esther’s place in the king’s bed. (Unterman, 1997:73)
17
The origins of the Esther story have been questioned; women can be metaphors,
symbolising towns or communities (Brenner, 1995: 11 – 24) and Esther is frequently
interpreted as imaging the Jewish people in diaspora, living under foreign rule and
keeping their faith despite apparently being assimilated (Beal, 1997; Klein, 1995). The
Book of Esther is famous for the absence of explicit references to God, or to any
religious practice other than fasting (prayer is mentioned only in the Greek texts). And
yet it is shot through with the message that God cares for his people; Mordecai tells
Esther: ‘if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the
Jews from another quarter’ (Esther 4:14a).
Leaving aside the question of historicity, does Esther’s story reflect life in an
inter-faith marriage? She is assimilated (Klein, 1995: 159). Her Hebrew name,
Hadassah, is replaced by a Persian one. Her Jewish identity is initially kept secret on
Mordecai’s instructions and until she fasts, there is no expression of faith. Nor is there
any reference to the King’s religion, he takes no part in any rituals, the banquets are not
apparently in honour of any gods and Esther is not expected to join in any religious
occasions. Unlike the husbands in the stories of exogamous Christian princesses,
Ahasuerus never converts, although embracing Judaism may have been possible3
(Levenson, 1997: 56). Identities in the story are ‘slippery and complex’ (Beal, 1997:
119) and besides Esther there are other threshold characters such as the eunuchs and
Haman, also a foreigner. Esther moves from female passivity early in the plot to
assume a masculine role, taking command of events, while remaining modest and
deferential (Klein, 1995: 160, 63). No children are mentioned in this marriage, because
3
Esther 8: 17b ‘many of the peoples of the country professed to be Jews, because the fear of the Jews had fallen upon
them.’
18
the point of the story is not about life in a mixed family or the identity of children of
dual heritage. Esther’s loyalty to the Jews and her obedience to God (or to Mordecai)
take precedence over obedience to her husband, and she risks execution by approaching
the king unbidden. She is portrayed as reliant on God, thus working in co-operation
with God as an instrument of salvation. ‘Who knows?’ suggests Mordecai, ‘Perhaps
you have come to royal dignity for such a time as this’ (Esther 4: 14b).
Esther will be revisited in Chapter Seven. Her story is unusual for the Bible;
Judaism generally regarded mixed unions with suspicion, and the early Church inherited
this tendency. But when the topic was raised in the Corinthian Church, St. Paul
inverted the Hebrew purity code, arguing that pagan spouses did not defile believers,
but could themselves be sanctified by the believing partner, and that the children of such
families were 'clean and holy'. Rose observes that Paul’s language contrasting light and
darkness, Christ and Belial give a metaphysical edge to the phenomenon of
intermarriage: ‘Intermarriage in these terms violates the conditions of existence’ (Rose,
A., 2001: 7). Yet sexual union and spiritual union were still somehow linked. Husband
and wife were 'one flesh', whose relationship was not merely physical.
Christians, Marriage and Family
The terms ‘marriage’ and ‘family’ are multifaceted, and notoriously difficult to
define (Thatcher, 2007: 4). Does a marriage begin with the wedding, or is it a process,
starting with a betrothal or pledge, and completed sometime afterwards, perhaps with
the birth of the first child? For a long time the main questions Christians asked about
marriage focussed on validity. Was a formal ceremony essential for a marriage, or was
the consent of the parties involved sufficient? If so, did this mean the consent of the
19
couple or was their parents’ consent also necessary? On the other hand, was
consummation of the union required in addition to consent (Gies and Gies, 1987: 137 141; Cartlidge, 1997: 15 -17; Martos, 1981: 29 - 44)? Although there were nuptial
blessings and liturgies before the fifth century, only gradually did they become
widespread, and a nuptial mass was not required in the West until the eleventh century.
Previously consent and consummation were all that was normally necessary for a valid
marriage.4
If marriage is difficult to define, the term ‘family’ is even hazier. Does it mean a
heterosexual couple (married or not) and their biological children, plus grandparents
maybe? What about extended families, blended families, single-parent families, foster
children, or others who live in the household? In the past the boundaries between
family and the outside world were more porous than is generally the case in Western
Europe today (Gies and Gies, 1987: 4) and families may have included several
generations as well as servants, slaves and their partners and children. There is no
Greek or Latin term for ‘family’ in the sense of nuclear family that is often meant today,
and the words domus, oikos and familia indicated prosperous households composed of
blood relatives, slaves and other dependants (Moxnes, 1997: 25). As late as the mid
eighteenth century, family meant to Johnson ‘those who live in the same house whether
or not they were related by blood or marriage’ (Gillis, 1985: 81). Different religious,
ethnic and national groups vary in their precise understanding of marriage and family,
something which has an impact on those who marry across boundaries.5
4
Practices varied in different parts of Europe, and the difference between Roman, Frankish and Germanic
customs prompted further debate about validity. For a detailed discussion, see Wallace-Hadrill (1983),
The Frankish Church. in different parts of Europe, and the differences between Roman
5
Ghosh describes how officials in colonial India dealt with the families of mixed parents which were
often temporary, or at least not based on the marriage of the parents. As concubines and temporary
wives, the women lacked the rights of married women, and even those who were baptised and married
20
In a faith which addresses God as ‘Father’ and sees humanity as his children, is
there an ideal of Christian marriage and family life? The Bible contains no single
model of marriage (Thatcher, 1999: 67 -103; Thatcher, 2007: 25); both polygyny and
concubinage were accepted practice among the ancient Hebrews6 and marriage is
assumed rather than commended (Thatcher, 2007: 31). Thatcher describes several
Biblical models of marriage, the major ones being the ‘Covenant’, a binding
relationship whose meaning in the context of marriage is derived particularly from the
books of Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Deutero-Isaiah (Thatcher 1999: 68 – 77), and the
‘One Flesh Union’, originating in Genesis, and elaborated by Paul, the author of
Ephesians, and several patristic writers (Thatcher, 1999: 77-81). Thatcher rightly points
out that both these models lend themselves to androcentric theological reflection and
patriarchal and oppressive practices, as Covenant models stress the leadership of the
male and submission of the female, and ‘One Flesh’ models can subsume the woman’s
identity into the man’s. It is, he says, time to reappraise marriage and make a fresh
account of the grace of marriage (Thatcher, 1999: 44-45).
Early Christians were influenced by Jewish and Roman assumptions about
marriage, and then by Frankish and other practices. In the Roman Empire, legal
marriage was restricted to Roman citizens, although slaves who were unable to make a
valid contract often lived monogamously (Osiek and Balch, 1997). Inter-class
marriages, which were not always banned by the law, nevertheless were generally
could face discrimination. However, masculine authority was often upheld in dealings between European
men and ‘native women’ and mixed race children were often acknowledged and even sent back to Britain
to be brought up. Ghosh cites as an example Amelia, the mixed race half-sister of William Makepeace
Thackeray whose father had been an official in India (Ghosh, 2006: 3-15).
6
Polygyny was outlawed among European Jews in the Middle Ages (Greenberg, 1990: 2) but persisted
among Jews in some predominantly Muslim states until the early twentieth century.
21
frowned on (Gies and Gies, 1987: 22-23) although occasionally citizens married their
own freed slaves.
For many early converts loyalty to the local Christian community was at least as
strong as family ties. The Church was a 'fictive kin group' (Ruether, 2000:13) and may
well have been a haven, especially for those estranged from their own families. Many
local Churches were based on private households and although for the first Church
leaders family life was not a pressing concern, the Christian household was recognised
as the church in microcosm. Matson argues that the household was the primary means
of evangelisation in the early church, both among the Jewish diaspora, and in Jerusalem.
Not only were whole households converted, like those of Cornelius and Lydia, but the
faith spread literally from house to house in Acts 20:20 (Matson, 1996: 11, 26).
However, in challenging traditional kinship loyalties and elevating celibacy, early
church teaching can appear ambivalent about marriage and family life. In the epistles,
marriage is treated both as a concession for those unable to live celibately, and as a holy
estate, reflecting the relationship between Christ and the Church.
Despite celibacy being the ideal, marriage and childrearing remained an
acceptable way of living the faith (Brooke, 1989: 47, 73). John Chrysostom advised
couples:
‘You ought to pray together. Both should go to church, and at home the
husband should ask the wife, and the wife should ask the husband, about what
was said and read there […] teach her that there is nothing in this life to fear,
except offending God. If you marry in this way and with these aims, you will
not be much inferior to the monks; the married person will not be much less than
the unmarried’ (Miller, 2005: 275).
Joint prayers may have been feasible for the Christian couple, but there were
numerous converts whose spouses remained pagan. Roman religion was interwoven
22
with domestic life, and many rituals took place at home; thus the wife of a traditional
paterfamilias would be expected to look after the hearth where Vesta was venerated
(Barclay, 1997: 66ff), and prominent families would probably be involved in cultic
feasts in pagan temples (Chow, 1992: 143, 146). Religion was not a matter of personal
choice but of family belonging (Gies and Gies, 1987: 18) and in pre-Christian Rome, a
bride switched from the worship of her natal family’s gods to those of her husband’s
family when she was handed over by her father to her husband. It is likely that this was
a problem for Christian women, because women were normally expected to defer to
their husbands in everything, including religious affiliation. But virtuous and devoted
Christian wives were 'apologists for the new faith' (Clarke, 1990), straddling the
boundaries of Church and world, exposed to the risks of doubt and compromise, yet in a
special position to evangelise the family:
How a believing woman should behave within a household which had a nonbeliever at its head becomes the subject of serious deliberation (e.g. 1 Peter 3:16). Within the church community, such marriages were clearly of 'public'
interest. Once one Christian had infiltrated the household of a non-believer,
there was hope for further expansion of the group as a whole (Macdonald, 1996:
30).
Gregory of Nazianzus praised his sister Gorgonia and their mother for
converting their husbands (Miller 2005: 278, 283). Jerome wrote to Laeta:
You yourself are the offspring of a mixed marriage; but the parents of Paula –
you and my friend Toxotius – are both Christians. Who could have believed that
to the heathen pontiff Albinus should be born – in answer to a mother’s vows – a
Christian granddaughter; that a delighted grandfather should hear from the little
one’s faltering lips Christ’s Alleluia, and that in his old age he should nurse in
his bosom one of God’s own virgins? Our expectations have been fully
gratified. The one unbeliever is sanctified by his holy and believing family. For
when a man is surrounded by a believing crowd of children and grandchildren
he is as good as a candidate for the faith (Kraemer, 2004: 168).
But the presence of Christian women in pagan households could have serious
implications both for themselves and for their co-religionists, particularly at times of
23
persecution. Tertullian thought that the Christian wife who rose during the night to
pray, joined in all-night vigils or became involved in charity work on the wrong side of
town could excite the suspicion of a pagan husband (Tertullian, 1854: 438). Macdonald
has raised the possibility that Paul’s acceptance into the church of wives without their
husbands could be construed as sanctioning a kind of infidelity (Macdonald, 1996: 189)
and ‘a woman’s marital infidelity (implicit in her decision to join the church without her
husband) could have life-threatening repercussions’ (Macdonald, 1996: 71).
Christianity was believed to undermine public standards and family values and to
delude gullible women. Christians were considered subversive, and rumours of rituals
that involved promiscuity and cannibalism may have exacerbated the concerns of pagan
husbands.
Christian women, if they had any choice in the matter, could have problems
finding a suitable husband when the church was still sometimes persecuted and young
Christian noblemen were rare: ‘a patrician woman may have had to remain single or to
lose her own status in order to enter into a legitimate marriage with a Christian of lower
rank’ (Reynolds, 1994: 160). Tertullian advised that if a Christian widow had to marry
at all – he cautioned against it - a Christian slave would be better than a wealthy pagan
noble (Tertullian, 1854: 442). But in the early third century Hippolytus complained of
aristocratic Christian women who lived with lower class Christian men, including
slaves, but did not marry them because to do so would mean losing their own status
(Roberts and Donaldson, 1868: 344).
Interest grew in the meaning of Christian marriage. Despite ambivalent attitudes
to marriage, Augustine wrote of its three 'goods': fides (faith) proles (children) and
24
sacramentum, describing the marriage bond as a sacrament which had spiritual
significance and should not be dissolved. Questions about the validity and the
sacramental nature of marriage occupied medieval scholars who developed further the
understanding of the sacramentality of marriage. The marriage of two Christians
mirrored the relationship between Christ and the Church, and therefore was permanent
and indissoluble:
the union of husband and wife is an image of the union of Christ and the Church,
the image must correspond with that which it images. Now the union of Christ
and the church is a union of one person with one person, and it is to last in
perpetuity. For there is only one Church […] and Christ will never be separated
from His Church (Aquinas quoted in Witte, 1997: 28).
From the image of marriage as a reflection of Christ’s love for the church flows
a wealth of theological meaning, ideas concerning the creativeness and loving selfgiving of God, and about human procreativity and loving relationships (Sadgrove, 1993:
55). A marriage is not merely about legal status. It carries the notion of an affective
bond - something more difficult either to define or to demonstrate.
In traditional Christian theology, monogamous marriage is understood as
universal and natural, part of the order of Creation. Additionally in some churches,
notably the Roman Catholic Church, Christian marriage is a sacrament, part of the order
of Redemption.7 This indicates that marriage is more than a natural and good state; it is
a relationship which enables the couple to grow closer to God, to learn to love and to be
transformed. Like the other sacraments, marriage is a sign and channel of grace,
sanctifying the couple. All sacraments are rooted in Christ's passion, death and
resurrection, and the first or basic sacrament is baptism, in which a person is united with
7
Marriage itself was not officially a sacrament until the second millennium, although the view of
marriage as reflecting divine grace and being a channel for that grace is ancient.
25
Christ in his death. It follows that sacramental marriage can occur only between two
baptised Christians.
Attitudes to Women
Beliefs about women and about proper gender relationships also influenced the
development of marriage theology. Critical familism has attempted to highlight the
egalitarian strands of biblical thinking, but the priority of men over women was largely
unquestioned, despite the declaration in Galatians 3:28 that ‘there is no longer male and
female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’. The household code of Ephesians 5 in
which wives are reminded to submit to their husbands who are in turn instructed to love
their wives reflects a view of men as the active partners and women as passive. Honour
and shame considerations meant different behavioural codes for men and for women.
Whether or not the early churches encouraged egalitarianism is debatable; in any case
Jesus’ radical teachings about servant leadership and the reversal of power relationships
were remoulded and eventually used to back up traditional hierarchies, and women were
instructed to be quiet, obedient and submissive (Thatcher, 2007: 25-37). Intellectual
and spiritual qualities became identified as masculine, whereas worldly, carnal desires
and temptations were seen as particularly feminine attributes, and women who were
recognised as exceptionally holy were sometimes treated as honorary males (Jantzen,
1995: 43 -58).
Despite apparent early ambivalence about marriage and family life, as the
Church became more secure, its leaders took more interest in the home lives of
Christians, and responded to the kinds of questions and dilemmas raised by their
communities. Isodore of Seville saw marriage as a vocation (Reynolds, 1994: xvii). To
26
some extent church leaders internalised contemporary attitudes and practices, including
patriarchal assumptions about women. Issues of control over women and about proper
feminine behaviour were certainly present, and female inferiority was unquestioned.
Eve had been created from Adam, and her disobedience had caused the Fall and
expulsion from Eden. She was also the archetypal temptress. Women were naturally
weaker, physically, intellectually and spiritually, and therefore should be subject to
men.
Host desecration and ritual murder stories in which weak or wicked Christian
women were portrayed as accomplices of Jewish men, common during the Middle
Ages, show how gullible women could become corrupted. The main purpose of the
host desecration stories was to demonstrate the Real Presence of Christ in the host
(Hsia, 1988: 55), but it is possible to read a subtext in both genres dealing with the
problem of Christian women who colluded with Jewish men (Hsia, 1988: 164 -174;
Rubin, 1999: 73 -77). They did not participate in the abuse itself, but sometimes
featured as child-sellers, or, in the host desecration stories, they obtained the
consecrated bread. Why did they do this? Sometimes they were dependent on Jews,
perhaps through debt. In one of the earliest and most popular versions a Parisian
obtains the host as redemption for a gown which she had pawned to a Jew (Rubin, 1999:
41 - 42) and variations tell of poor women tempted by Jewish offers of money. The
woman might have a closer relationship with a Jew - not necessarily sexual, although
this may be implicit. Sometimes the story would feature a domestic servant in a Jewish
household. The Church repeatedly tried to prevent Christians from working in close
proximity to Jews, and laws in various countries forbade Christian women from
domestic service in Jewish or Muslim households, or from suckling non-Christian
27
babies (Dobson, 1996: 48). Can we interpret these cautionary tales as coded warnings
about emotional over-involvement with Jews? By becoming entangled with Jews
Christian women could be seduced into being party to wounding the body of Christ,
either in the form of bread or an innocent Christian child. Because of their
susceptibility to temptation, Christian women were seen as requiring careful protection
from Jews.
Attitudes towards the ‘Other’
Attitudes towards those outside the Church became increasingly negative as
Christianity spread, and patterns of engagement between Christians and Jews seem to
have set the tone for Christian responses to other ‘Others’. Although Jews were not a
military threat to Christian kings, because they bore the guilt of rejecting and killing
Christ, Judaism was superseded by the Church, and those Jews who continued to reject
Christ were considered accursed.
While ecclesiastical power and influence increased in Western Europe, there
were external and internal challenges to Church authority. Heresies and heretics were a
perennial challenge. The continuing presence and tenacity of Jewish communities
within Christian countries frustrated rulers and clergy alike. Indeed, Judaism remained
attractive to some Christians during the early Middle Ages; in Southern France there
were occasional conversions to Judaism, and some intermarriages despite the Church’s
attempts at prevention (Wallace-Hadrill, 1983: 394). With Muslim expansion, Islam
was perceived as threatening Christendom from outside. As the Church faced these
challenges, antagonism hardened towards the 'Other.'
28
This antagonism became directed towards all who were not Christians, whether
pagans, heretics, Jews or Muslims, all of whom came to be seen as culpably ignorant of
the Gospel. In some areas pagans were forcibly converted and anyone subsequently
caught participating in pagan rituals was punished. Pagans, heretics and Muslims were
thought responsible for their own damnation. Pagans and Muslims were considered
enemies of the Christian Church, through the slaughter and enslavement of Christians
and the destruction of churches (Urban, 2003: 159 -162; Luchitskaja, 2000: 116), a
belief reinforced by hostilities in North-East Europe, Iberia and the Middle East. The
speed of Arab conquests around the Mediterranean was recorded soon after the events
by Burgundian writers who have little to say about their religion, seeing them at first as
a political and military threat (Wolf, 1996: 85-87). But later Muhammad became
identified with magic, deception and the Antichrist:
The demonization of Islam is a long and deeply rooted tradition in the West – it
spans centuries, from the early medieval period to the end of the twentieth
century, and harks back to a tradition of representations that describe the Eastern
empires and invading hordes that came before Islam, such as the Assyrians and
the Persians of the ancient world. The classical and biblical stereotypes that are
embedded in the tradition of Western humanism were further shaped and
solidified by the historical experience of ‘holy war’ (Vitkus 2000: 6).
In the folklore of medieval Europe, both Jews and Muslims were associated with
mysterious knowledge, heresy and sorcery (Hsia, 1988: 6; Trachtenberg, 1945: 57).
Medieval literature illustrates vividly how they were linked with dark forces. In English
passion plays, the Jews are frequently portrayed as accusers, torturers and executioners
of Christ (Meredith, 1990: 117). And if the Jews were guilty, Muslims were also
condemned by extension. Curiously, Muslims also had roles in several passion plays, in
which they were depicted as powerful and predatory, praying to or swearing by
Muhammad. Herod invokes 'Mahounde my god of grace,' to whom he owes his status
(Smith, 1885: 291; Cawley, 1974: 111).
29
The authorities felt that relations between Christians and Jews had to be
regulated, and following the Second Lateran Council in 1215, laws were introduced in
several countries either restricting Jews to separate areas or requiring them to wear
identifying badges, distinctive clothes or hats. These were adopted mainly in areas
where Jews were fairly well integrated, and similar restrictions were also applied to
Muslims in some places. Walter Pakter suggests that although the stated purpose of
Jews' badges and clothing was to prevent sexual liaisons between Christians and Jews, it
was more likely to prevent Christian men from claiming ignorance about the identity of
Jewish women (Pakter, 1988: 292). Although most folk tales show the danger posed by
Jewish men to Christian women, occasionally a female stereotype is featured;
sometimes the beautiful Jewess is a potential convert, but more often she is a femme
fatale who leads Christian men to their doom (Dobson, 1996: 27 - 48). In some
versions of the legend, little St Hugh of Lincoln is lured by the Jew’s daughter who
tempts him in a garden with a red and white apple (Fabre-Vassas, 1997: 134).
Apart from the dangers of seduction, Christians allegedly needed protection
from Jews for other reasons. Jews were blamed for the plague, for poisoning wells and
were thought to pollute anyone in contact with them. They were considered devious
and easily able to outwit and corrupt ordinary Christian folk. St. Thomas Aquinas
cautions against allowing the ‘simple-minded’ to hear Jews or heretics debating matters
of faith. They were always ready to exploit the vulnerable, particularly children and
women. In Christian eyes, contemporary Jews inherited the guilt of those who had
rejected Christ, and were believed to enjoy repeating their crimes, constantly seeking
opportunities to wound him again. They wanted consecrated bread to test, particularly
30
for magical properties, to desecrate, or torture, usually by piercing it in imitation of
Christ's passion (Rubin, 1999: 72, 143). It was thought that Jews required Christian
blood for preparing matzos, anointing rabbis and for assorted magical and medicinal
purposes, and that they obtained it from children who were ritually murdered, often in
imitation of the crucifixion (Fabre-Vassas, 1997: 130 -136; Langmuir, 1990, 1996: 282
-298).
Decreased Tolerance of Exogamy
Three strands – the size and strength of the Church, beliefs about proper gender
relationships (taking into account the moral weakness of women) and about those who
were not Christians (particularly Jews and Muslims) informed attitudes to inter-faith
marriage. In the early fourth century, when Christianity ceased to be a persecuted sect
and became both widespread and socially respectable, inter-faith marriage became
restricted. The Synods of Elvira (c305 CE) and Arles (c309/14 CE) prohibited the
marriage of Christian women to Jews and heretics. However, Christian men were not
barred from taking 'unbelieving wives', because by then Christianity was becoming
acceptable, even popular, and as Walter Pakter points out, ‘the significance of these
one-sided prohibitions is not that it was acceptable for a Christian man to marry a
Jewess, but rather that it was unthinkable’ (Pakter, 1988: 270).
In Western Europe two theological teachings were developed which had a
particular impact on intermarriage. First was the idea that the marriage of a baptised
Christian to an unbaptized person was invalid without a dispensation. Such
dispensations were probably granted rarely, if ever. Baptism cannot be undone, even
through conversion to a different faith, so a former Christian remained a baptised person
31
and in the view of the medieval church was subject to Church discipline, and would still
be barred from marriage to someone unbaptized. The second was the doctrine that
through baptism individual Christians were spiritually wedded to Christ. Because of
this, the Church considered marriage between a Christian and a non-Christian to be
adulterous and punishable as such. Two medieval cases, in England and France,
illustrate the implications of this. In April 1222, at Oseney Abbey in Oxfordshire, a
deacon named Robert was tried before Archbishop Langton. He had presumably come
up to Oxford to study, and fell in love first with the Hebrew language, and then with a
Jewish woman. He was accused of various crimes, including attempted host
desecration, and defiling a crucifix. The basic offence, however, was his conversion to
Judaism, which was seen as apostasy, and his subsequent marriage to the woman, and
he was handed over to the Sheriff of Oxford to be burnt (Meyer, 1982). In the second
case, heard at Avignon in the early fourteenth century, the lawyer Oldratus de Ponte
successfully argued for clemency on the grounds that although his Jewish client,
Pandonus, had taken a Christian lover, he had not actually married her, so the pair had
not committed spiritual adultery. Pandonus was castrated, but spared the death penalty
(Zacour, 1990: 30).
Relationships between Christians and Muslims posed a different problem for
Church authorities in Southern Europe, particularly in coastal areas and islands.
Although Muslims were associated with magic, and sometimes charged with slaying
Christians, it was not ritual murder, and therefore not a direct attack on Christ’s body.
However, whereas Jewish leaders resisted intermarriage as vigorously as did the
Church, Islam permitted Muslim men to marry Christian women, and despite Church
efforts at prevention, such marriages happened at all levels. Sometimes the marriages
32
involved royal or noble families, and were contracted for dynastic or diplomatic reasons
(Melville and Ubaydli, 1992: 104 -107) but romances and marriage also occurred
between commoners.
The stereotype of the lascivious Muslim man is a regular theme. The thirteenth
century poet, Jacob van Maerlant depicts Muhammad as a travelling salesman who uses
magic and deceit to trick Lady Cadigan into marriage (Claassens, 1996: 219). In the
late sixteenth century an English traveller noted that the ‘Great Turk’ had a Christian
wife, besides four or five hundred other women, and that ‘No Crystyan man may have
to doe wythe a Turkyshe woman, but he shall dye for yt yf yt be known, but a Turk may
have as many Crystyan women as he wyll’ (Wood, 1940: 24-25). There were also tales
of kidnap and murder by Muslims. Lust was not the only motive, though. Muslim men
wanted to father soldiers who would grow up to fight Christians (Daniel 1984: 77).
Before the expulsions of Jews and Muslims from Spain canon lawyers had to
decide on cases involving conversion and desertion associated with inter-faith
marriages. In Italian trading centres local women sometimes became involved with
Muslim men. Vanzan suggests that these women may have had romantic, political or
economic aspirations, or may simply have been trying to escape dull lives. In any case
the Church intervened to stop them becoming 'prey to the infidels', illustrating the
endemic view of Muslim men as predatory, and of Christian women as needing control
and protection (Vanzan, 1996: 327-336).
If Muslim men were predators, Muslim women were temptresses brimming with
animal passion as described in an early modern play, Massinger’s The Renegade:
33
You are young,
And may be tempted, and these Turkish dames
(Like English mastiffs that increase their fierceness
By being chained up), from the restraint of freedom,
If lust once fire their blood from a fair object,
Will run a course the fiends themselves would shake at
To enjoy their wanton ends.
Act 1:3 7 – 13 (Vitkus, 2000: 261).
Saracen women were not only wanton, but demonic. Robert Daborne’s 1612
play, A Christian Turned Turk gives a lurid account of the main character’s conversion,
done for the sake of a Muslim woman. A friend counsels him not to renounce his God
or take the ‘abhorred name of Turk’, but the advice is ignored, and after a series of
disasters, the convert commits suicide, having put lust for a woman before his God. As
he dies he laments, ‘I am betrayed, outdone by a she-devil’ (Vitkus, 2000: 208, 219).
Legends of virgin martyrs who refused to marry pagans were popular in
medieval Europe (Mockridge, 1990: 60 -78; Lipton, 2007: 133). Typically the setting
was somewhere in the Roman Empire during a time of persecution, and the plot centred
on a devout and beautiful girl of noble family who had pledged herself to God, but who
had been promised by a male guardian to a pagan aristocrat. Despite the pleas of
friends and magistrates, and the threats of her male relatives and the rejected suitor, the
saint would embrace death rather than an unbeliever. A few other stories recount
Saracen princesses who elope or betray their families in order to be baptised and marry
Christian heroes, or Christian princesses who are rescued by knights from the harems of
Muslim rulers, their virtue miraculously preserved.
34
The King of Tars8
In contrast, this medieval poem tells of a Christian princess who willingly
consents to marry a Muslim. She is the daughter of the king of Tars (Tarsus), and news
of her beauty reaches the Sultan of Damas (Damascus) who, desiring her, is prepared to
take her by force. To prevent the slaughter of her people the princess marries him and a
year later their first child is born. He is ‘a misforschapen thing’ (King of Tars, l. 978), a
lifeless, limbless, boneless and featureless lump,9 and both parents pray for his healing.
First the Sultan prays with increasing desperation to ‘Mahoun’ and a selection of
ancient gods,10 but predictably nothing happens. Then the princess prays for the child
and sends for a Christian priest whom the Sultan has incarcerated for ten years,
requesting that he baptize the baby. The effect is miraculous: the child acquires ‘life
and limbs and face’. The story concludes with the Sultan’s acceptance of baptism for
himself (which in addition to cleansing his soul bleaches his skin) and the forcible
conversion of his entire kingdom.
The poem illustrates medieval Christian attitudes towards Muslims and to interfaith marriage. First, the Sultan is depicted as repulsive, predatory, violent, and a
persecutor of Christians. In other medieval manuscripts Saracens are represented as
beasts, and here the Sultan is a heathen hound who rages when thwarted. Second, he is
identified as idolatrous, for the storyteller describes him worshipping Muhammad
8
The King of Tars is a Middle English chivalric poem, part of the Auchinleck Manuscript,which was
probably produced in London between 1331 and 1340, and which is now preserved in the National
Library of Scotland. It can be viewed on http://auchinleck.nls.uk/mss/tars.html . There are a few other
stories from this period which illustrate Christian piety in the face of pagan or Muslim opposition. Calkin
notes six European texts predating this one which tell of a Christian wife’s conversion of a ruler, and the
miraculous transformation of a monstrous child. (Calkin, 2005: 105)
9
The deformity reflects the Aristotelian belief that while the mother gives flesh to the child, its form and
spiritual qualities are inherited from the father. The sultan, being defective in these qualities, cannot pass
them on to his son, who is therefore a mere lump of flesh. For more on monstrous births and
miscegenation see Judith Perryman (1980).
10
Muslims were frequently depicted as pagans and idolaters in the Song of Roland, the chansons de
gestes and other medieval romances (Tolan, 2009: 62).
35
alongside several pagan gods. Third, his prayers, although heartfelt and fervent, have
no effect, while the princess’s calmly confident prayers and her courage before her
husband set the scene for a dramatic demonstration of divine healing. The prayer
contest echoes that between Elijah and the prophets on Mount Carmel. Fourth, the
sacrament of baptism not only heals the baby instantly, it transforms the Sultan too,
both spiritually and physically - the waters cleanse his soul and bleach his hitherto dark
skin. Fifth, the princess’s ordeal, which can be seen as a form of living martyrdom, is
not in vain. She consents to marriage to a man from whom she naturally recoils, not for
her own benefit, but for the good of others, and through her actions her own people are
spared and the Sultan’s people are saved. The moral of the story is clear: although a
Christian woman should not normally consent to this kind of marriage, it may be
unavoidable, but through heroic suffering and virtue she may be the agent of the
conversion of a whole kingdom.
I have considered these examples of Christian attitudes to marriage and interfaith marriage from the early and medieval church in some detail because they have had
a lasting influence on Christian attitudes. This influence remains despite the changes
since the Protestant Reformation including an emphasis on marriage as companionship
(Yates, 1990: 61) or as covenant (Saad, 2004: 398-399) and the growing interest in
other faiths and cultures during the past two centuries.
The better education and gradual emancipation of women also had a profound
effect on marriage and family life. Although romantic love is present in medieval
literature (Coleman, 2004: 2), the emphasis on romance as a basis for marriage comes
later. Whatever the causes of the changes, be they economic, social or behavioural, the
36
social context and expectations of marriage have altered. A number of writers point to
the way that domestic life has become more privatised than it was even a century ago, in
the sense that the 'private' sphere of family, domestic and home life, is separated from
the 'public' sphere of employment, political and public activity. As people tend to be
more committed to their family and private lives, there has been a decline in public and
political involvement, including institutional religious activity.
The privatisation of domestic life has also affected marriage, which is
increasingly seen as ‘a private and voluntary association’, which the parties involved are
free to end if the quality of the relationship deteriorates (Coleman, 2004: 198). Whereas
in earlier centuries, social and economic factors may have played a great part in
marriage, now there is an increased expectation for personal fulfilment and
companionship. According to Graham Allan:
There can be little doubt that many couples seek to find a higher level of
intrinsic happiness in their marriage, rather than simply accepting its extrinsic
benefits. The creation of the personal relationship increasingly becomes its own
he end; it is seen as a means of authenticating the individual and of expressing
and defining the self […] the common idea that marriages need 'working at'
indicates the extent to which marriage is seen as a personal project capable of
providing the individual with meaning and self-realisation (Allan, 1996: 12).
In a society where religion is privatised, and in which individual choice
frequently over-rides family and faith tradition, inter-faith marriage still matters. The
questions which I address in this study centre round the anxieties, expectations and
coping strategies of intermarried Christians and their families. For Christian partners
there seem to be two main areas of concern; a moral question on whether it is right to
marry someone of a different faith, and a pragmatic question about the wisdom of doing
so. Christian families may also have concerns about the religious faith of any future
children of the union. The churches, too, have concerns about exogamy, and given the
37
history of antipathy towards people of different faiths and about the marriage of
Christian women to men of different faiths, it is not surprising that the churches have
been slow to accommodate such marriages, let alone offer effective pastoral help to
those involved. But theologians must work towards finding meaning in everyday
situations. Ward’s vision of the theologian looking out from the open west door of the
Church, offering transformative hope to the world, is a fitting one. In the final chapter I
shall suggest ways in which the Church’s insights and expertise may be harnessed to
help inter-faith couples and their families recognise the presence of God within and
through their relationships. I shall also suggest that the Church should not only be
ministering to these people, but listening to them.
Summary
Three strands – beliefs about marriage, and attitudes towards women and
towards those who were not Christians, played a major part in forming the Church’s
policies on inter-faith relationships. Jewish antipathy to inter-faith marriage, based on
the anxiety that outsiders would corrupt the worship of the God of Israel, influenced
early Christian believers. Yet the Jewish ban was partial and although rigorously
enforced during some periods, exceptions were sometimes made. The early Christians
preferred marriage within the faith, but not until the fourth century were sanctions for
exogamy laid down. In missionary areas church authorities tended to be more
permissive in the hope of conversions, which sometimes occurred. The growth in size
and strength of the church was accompanied by increasingly negative views of Jews,
Muslims and others who were not Christians, and in places where there were mixed
populations, such as medieval Spain and Mediterranean ports, both Church and civic
authorities attempted to enforce separation. The need to protect or control women
38
played a major part in the development of Christian marriage rules, and female
exogamy was dealt with more sternly than male exogamy.
Despite changes in the modern era including the gradual emancipation of
women and an improved interest and understanding of different cultures and faiths,
Christian suspicion of exogamy persists. In the next chapter I shall examine what light
recent writers have thrown on inter-faith relationships.
39
2: Reformulating the Questions
Coming from a variegated tree surely has something to do with seeking difference.
(Michèle Drouart)
I have already identified the two basic questions I wish to address. One
concerns the impact of inter-faith marriage on the spirituality of the Christian partner,
the other the way in which the experiences of these couples can contribute to the wider
field of inter-religious dialogue. Many studies of couples in inter-faith marriages have
been concerned with social, ethnic and cultural issues and have not dealt with the
specific part played in the relationship by religious beliefs, values and practices. There
has been little theological discussion of these marriages; possibly Christian theologians
have felt that because scripture, tradition and reason discouraged exogamy, there was
little more to say on the matter. But a few writers have engaged sympathetically with
the subject, the focus of some being pastoral (Hooker and Lamb, 1986; McCarthy,
2006; Anasthas, 2006; the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, 2010)
while there are personal stories (for example Abdullah, 1934; Rosenbaum and
Rosenbaum, 1994; Lababidi, 1997; Drouart, 2000; van Geldermalsen, 2006) and selfhelp books (Mayer, 1985; Crohn, 1995; Romano, 2001). In addition, there are a range of
websites and internet discussion boards. As I have already noted, there are occasional
exceptions to the rules forbidding exogamy, although in the past the only positive
outcome from the point of view of Church leaders would be the conversion of the nonChristian partner to Christian faith. So why should we become involved in questions of
inter-faith relationships now?
First, anecdotal evidence suggests that the incidence of inter-faith marriage is
increasing in the United Kingdom and the statistics from the 2001 Census, the first to
40
record such details, show that there were over eighty thousand religiously mixed
households in England and Wales alone11. Although these figures need careful
interpretation if we want an accurate picture, statistics of this kind ‘are vital evidence
which cannot be discarded [and] important indicators of key changes in social behaviour
– there are probably none better to be had in the realms of religion’ (Brown 1992: 36 –
37). It is likely that the next census will disclose many more inter-faith marriages.
Second, there is a widespread view that many of those who marry out of their
own religion are secular in attitude and practice, or at least not very interested in matters
of faith. One book asked, ‘would an inter-faith marriage be seriously considered by a
deeply committed Christian, or is it often the indifferent believer or backslider to whom
the Christian religion is as good as any other religious belief who accepts it? The latter
is more likely than the former’ (Kisembo et al, 1977: 150). I wanted to know whether
this secularity is actually the case, and if so, whether it is maintained by mixed couples,
or do the differences which become apparent during their life together make matters of
faith increasingly important?
Third, the couples involved and their families have pastoral needs, not only at
the outset of their relationship or when planning a wedding. These needs sometimes
arise suddenly or unexpectedly, for example at times of stress such as illness or a death
in the family. It is difficult for ministers of religion to address such needs without an
adequate knowledge and understanding not only of the different faiths, but also of the
specific issues faced by these couples - issues which are theological as well as social
and cultural in nature. Similarly relationship counsellors and social workers need to
11
The data for Scotland was recorded in a different manner. A marriage between two Christians of
different denominations, for example a member of the Church of Scotland and a Roman Catholic, would
be classified as ‘Interfaith’.
41
understand the ‘invisible culture’ of faith if they are to be effective. In the final chapter
I suggest steps that the churches could take in order better to support Christians in interfaith marriages and their families.
Fourth, inter-faith couples exemplify on-going dialogue. Speelman suggests that
others engaged in inter-religious dialogue can learn from experienced inter-faith
couples, who, she says, are real experts at practical communication (Speelman, 2001:
5). Although intermarriage is frequently seen as problematic by religious authorities, is
it possible for those involved to contribute both to better communication between faith
communities, and to a wider understanding both of other faiths and their own? I return
to this question in Chapter Five.
In formulating my research questions, the insights of three disciplines were
particularly useful: the social and behavioural sciences, recent explorations into marital
spirituality, and the theory and practice of interfaith dialogue. I shall describe these
before turning to my own questions and methodology.
The Social Sciences and inter-faith marriage.
While literature about inter-faith marriages is limited, much of what does exist is
written from the perspective of the social and behavioural sciences. These examine
both the interpersonal dynamics and stability of inter-faith marriages and their wider
implications. Much of the early work is from the United States, a nation of immigrants
where there was an interest in understanding patterns of integration, socio-cultural
42
change and assimilation (Johnson and Warren, 1994: 4). In this ‘triple melting pot’12
Jews, Catholics and Protestants lived alongside and among each other. Marriages
tended at first to be within rather than between the groups; thus Protestants of different
denominations, or Jews or Catholics whose families originated from different countries
would marry one another rather than people from outside their faith communities,
although there were inter-faith marriages even in the early nineteenth century (Rose, A,
2001: 15). Questions were raised in North America and Europe about the motives and
psychological predispositions of those marrying out of community, the stability of these
unions, the well-being of the children, and the impact of inter-faith marriages on wider
society (Cerroni-Long, 1984; Cohen, 1982; Larson and Munro, 1990; Paris and Guzder,
1989). Underlying many of these studies are two related assumptions; first that
intermarriage is part of a process of assimilation, something which is generally seen as
positive except by minorities whose continued identity it threatens, and second that it
demonstrates a movement towards secularization, in which religious institutions and
authorities are losing influence.
There are different explanations as to why intermarriage occurs and its social
and psychological outcomes, though not all studies distinguish between inter-church,
inter-faith, inter-cultural and inter-ethnic relationships. Crohn argues that some people
are consciously attracted to other cultures before ever meeting their spouse and that
those who marry out rarely feel that their choice was completely accidental (Crohn,
1995: 44).
The size and status of a particular community affect the likelihood of
intermarriage (Kalmijn, 1991). Rules about exogamy and endogamy are protective
12
The melting pot image comes from a play of that name by Israel Zangwill, first staged in 1907, in
which the Jewish hero looks forward to an American future of supermen, with the ancient prejudices of
race and group left behind in the Old World. His ideals are challenged when he falls in love with a
woman whose family allowed his own relatives to suffer back in the ‘Old Country’.
43
strategies which vary according to the circumstances of a given community (An Na’im,
2005: 22) and exogamy can help small or vulnerable groups form or reinforce alliances,
while endogamy is important to groups who want to keep their identity, strengthen
intra-group relations and resist assimilation into a larger group (Barbara, 1989: 5;
Larson and Munro, 1990: 239 - 240). Many groups tolerate female exogamy less well
than they do male exogamy; for example early church synods proscribed female
exogamy. Muslim men are, in certain circumstances, allowed Christian or Jewish
wives, while Muslim women may marry only Muslims (Suras 2:221; 5:5; 60:10). This
is because women are normally expected to defer to their spouses who are seen as their
protectors (Sura 4:34). In the past, it was commonplace for either the member of the
minority faith or the woman to convert on the occasion of intermarriage, and there can
still be some family pressure to do so (Kisembo et al, 1977: 139). In this sense, the
resistance of many heterogamous Western Europeans to marital conversion is
something new.
Intermarriage and Assimilation
An-Na’im sums up assimilation theories as concerning ‘questions of group
autonomy and identity on the one hand, and of social acceptance and integration of
minority and/or marginal groups on the other’ (An-Na’im, 2005: 14). Minorities tend to
be more anxious about assimilation through inter-religious marriages (Vardar, 2005:
259). A change in the size or status of a given group, or a shift in its ideology, may
herald a changed attitude towards exogamy (Cerroni-Long, 1984: 25 -27). This is
evident in the records of the early Church; for example Tertullian advised Christian
widows to avoid remarriage to rich pagans, while formal penalties were not introduced
until the fourth century, when the church was stronger.
44
Intermarriage is more frequent where romantic love is idealised and where
individual, rather than parental choice of partner is the norm (Cerroni-Long, 1984: 2546). If religious endogamy reinforces sacred traditions, then exogamy may undermine
or challenge those traditions. In a mixed society, endogamy can be promoted in a
number of ways. Marriages may be arranged, rather than allowing young people a
completely free choice of partners; arranged marriage is normal in many parts of the
world and among some communities in Britain. There are legal means of preventing
inter-faith marriages, sometimes accompanied by sanctions; such measures were used in
colonial Maryland13 and in South Africa under Apartheid.14 But it is not only formal
rules which act as barriers. In a more stratified society, there is less contact between
different groups, and therefore less intermarriage. In South Africa under Apartheid
there was little mixing between groups, and the exogamy rate among South African
Jews was significantly lower than among Jews in other diaspora communities such as
Britain, the USA and Australia. This is despite the fact that white Jews were allowed to
marry other white people. Since the end of Apartheid, the Jewish exogamy rate has
been slowly rising, but is still lower than comparable communities elsewhere
(Frankental and Rothgeisser, 2009: 27).
Segregation limits the possibility of meeting members of other groups, so
religious parents may encourage their children to join youth clubs or societies connected
with their faith group rather than socialising with non-members. There is some
13
A 1661 law decreed that ‘whatsoever freeborn woman shall intermarry with any slave, shall serve the
master of that slave during the lifetime of her husband; all issue of such free-born women, so married,
shall be slaves as their fathers were.’ Some owners encouraged their white female servants to marry
black slaves so as to extend the period of indenture and acquire more slaves (Roberts 1994: 25). During
the colonial period similar laws were passed in other British and French colonies and by the outbreak of
the American civil war twenty-eight American states had laws prohibiting interracial marriages (Pascoe
2009: 19-21).
14
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and the Immorality Act (1927, amended 1950)
45
evidence linking Jewish schooling and socialization with a stronger religious and ethnic
orientation (Frankental and Rothgeisser, 2009: 23). Some writers suggest that the
choice of mate is more likely to be affected by the availability of potential partners than
by religious affiliation (Larson and Munro, 1990: 240; Speelman, 2001: 8;
Summerfield, 1993: 84 – 85). Vardur quotes a young Turkish doctor:
‘Our community is around 60 thousand people and I always thought it irrational
to be forced to limit myself to a small group […] I always thought I would
marry someone who I consider to be the right person, regardless of her religion’
(Vardar, 2005: 252).
New immigrants, frequently young males, may seek out partners from
mainstream society if their own community is small. But otherwise, first generation
immigrants usually marry homogamously; subsequent generations - perhaps more
assimilated than their parents - are more likely to marry out of community. Cultural,
economic and intellectual similarity, emotional compatibility, shared interests and
language also play a part in the incidence of intermarriage (Barron quoted in CerroniLong, 1984: 34; Kalmijn, 1991), and class and educational homogamy is common in
otherwise mixed marriages (Spickhard 1989: 345; Speelman 2001:7). Sometimes
mixed relationships occur between people who felt marginal or different even before
they met their partner, for example because they had a grandparent who was born
overseas or because they had themselves lived in different countries (Khatib-Chahidi,
Hill and Paton, 1998: 62). This was reflected in my own research as I describe in
Chapter 3.
Nevertheless some mixed relationships seem to occur whatever prohibitions and
penalties are in place, and we should note that boundaries between different groups are
46
not static, and that ideas about who are ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ can vary (Barbara,
1989: 4; Breger and Hill, 1998: 7 - 8).
Exchange Theory may explain some instances of inter-faith marriage. Couples
seek out partners who offer mutual advantage, thus a working class woman from a
Western developed country may marry a professionally qualified man from a third
world country, both feeling that any disadvantages of disparity are outweighed by other
gains. She acquires a raised socioeconomic status, while he benefits from acceptance
into the host community, and perhaps a passport (Barbara, 1989: 194, 195). Cahill adds
that the exchange theory explanation has particular validity regarding females (Cahill,
1990: 44-45).
While this sounds crudely materialistic, or at least unromantic, it is possible that
exchange theory could apply to other close relationships besides marriage. For
example, good friends are not looking for immediate reciprocity when they invest time
or effort in their relationship, and doing good for a friend may cost little and bring great
pleasure to the do-er. Two partners ‘discover new areas of payoff correspondence: one
person listening while the other is talking, one helping when the other desires help, one
paddling astern while the other is at the bow. As relationships develop, each person’s
satisfactions and dissatisfactions become more and more identified with one’s own’
(Levinger, 1982: 102). In any case, advantages are not necessarily of material value,
affection may be the reward.
47
Secularization
Some scholars see the rate of religious intermarriage in a given group or society
as indicating the degree of secularity within that group (Larson and Munro, 1990; AnNa’im, 2005: 15 – 16). There is evidence to support this theory. For example, Jews
brought up with a strong religious identity are more likely either to marry fellow Jews
or to ask non-Jewish prospective spouses to convert, although this is not guaranteed
(Fishman, 2004: 30 – 33) and exogamy is rare in strictly Orthodox communities
(Greenberg, 1990: 17). Zemmel found that Jewish men who married out were likely to
have lapsed from practice before they met their gentile partners (Zemmel, 2000).
Secularization has been defined as ‘the process whereby religious thinking,
practice and institutions lose social significance’ (Wilson, 1966: 14). There is not space
here for an extended debate on secularization, but the basic thesis, which developed
alongside social science, holds that religion gradually diminishes as societies
modernize, and this diminishment is evident at the individual level, with a decline in
personal belief, churchgoing and so on, and also at the socio-political level, with the
waning influence of religious institutions on the state.
Secularization is connected with processes of rationalisation, social
differentiation, individualism and privatisation (Martin, 2005: 47). Some see it as
inherent in Christianity because of the tension between transcendence and immanence,
as humans attempt to make sense of the world but realise their own vulnerability. As
transcendence becomes less comprehensible, belief in God also declines, and the world
becomes ‘dis-enchanted’ (Vanheeswijck, 2009: 12 – 14). The distinction between
church and world has been seen as paving the way for secularization as ‘the Gospel
48
itself lays down the cultural slipways of secularization, making it difficult for the
institutional Church to resist a momentum in which it shares’ (Martin, 2005: 3). Many
people no longer believe in God, ‘because not only the physical but also the
psychological and social worlds are now seen as controllable and calculable.
Consequently human beings can manipulate these worlds [and] this has not only had an
impact on church attendance and the desacralisation of ethics; it has also desacralized
the meaning of life, suffering, and death’ (Dobbelaere, 1993: 26).
Several writers have noted dwindling church attendance and a marginalising of
religion from public discourse during the last decades of the twentieth century (Brown,
2006: 279 – 280; Janssen, 2001: 16 – 17). Traditional Christian belief has declined
especially among younger adults, who no longer turn to the churches on solemn
occasions (Dobbelaere, 1993: 21). But there is debate about whether the process of
secularization is inevitable, permanent, or indeed reversible, and also whether it is part
of a wider trend affecting spheres of activity other than religion, including a decline of
membership of political parties and trades unions (Martin 2005: 124).
The secularization thesis has been challenged on several grounds.
Conceptualisations of ‘religion’ vary; social scientists have been challenged for
ignoring implicit faith and ‘folk-religion’ including practices seen as superstitious, and
for concentrating only on institutional religion. In any case, although we may see a
decline in church attendance rates, we may make assumptions about how committed
people were in the past. Percy argues that apart from periodic revivals, the English at
least have always been lukewarm about their religion, and yet the majority persistently
relate to religious institutions, albeit from a distance (Percy 2001: 63 – 64). Voas calls
49
attention to a phenomenon which he calls ‘fuzzy fidelity’ in which there is a casual
loyalty to a religious tradition much without active participation. Thus people may
attend church on occasions – he mentions harvest festivals, Christmas and rites of
passage as examples – and may identify themselves as Christian, but may have few
discernible Christian beliefs, or hold beliefs which do not cohere with traditional
Christian doctrine (Voas, 2007: 155 – 168). While there is indeed less engagement with
traditional Christianity in Western Europe, this is not the case in all parts of the world,
or even among all groups in the UK. Brown noted that secularization in post-war
Britain was largely a white experience; many of the black Christians who arrived during
those years had a strong Christian identity, and many Muslim immigrants similarly had
a clear Muslim identity. He argues that although it has been generally accepted as a
given by social scientists, historians and even churches, secularization theory is an
inadequate explanation of society in which religious decline and growth both occur
(Brown, 2006: 292, 301 – 307). Further, Sheldrake argues that ‘many young and
intelligent people are also turning to conservative forms of “religion”’ (Sheldrake, 2007:
205). De Groot notes that although Dutch public culture transformed from the overtly
religious to the overtly secular in the nineteen seventies, as the millennium came to an
end, the religious climate changed again (de Groot, 2009: 96).
While many professed Christians do not accept the authority of their church
leaders or of the Bible without question, there remains an interest in faith and
spirituality which has become increasingly privatised, individualized. Is religious
resurgence (including the rise of new religious movements, an interest in Eastern
meditation or other spiritualties, or religious fundamentalism for example) part of a resacralisation process? Although classical secularization theory sees such resurgences as
50
aberrations which will not halt the process, Martin argues that there are phases of
sanctification as well as secularization (Martin, 2005: 139). Vanheesewijck redefines
secularization not in terms of a simple contrast between belief and unbelief, but adds in
a complicating factor, the difficulty of understanding transcendence, and argues that
contemporary culture has not seen the end of religion, but is characterised by spiritual
instability (Vanheesewijck, 2009: 22). One common assumption is that as religious
belief and practice inevitably declines, religion becomes pluralist.15 But even if
secularization theory is accepted it does not follow that there is a causal connection
between secularization and inter-faith marriage.
Further, we may ask whether secularism is as popular among inter-faith couples
as is sometimes supposed (Bambawale, 1982: 216ff). In some cases it may be a
defensive strategy – the couple whose relationship is forbidden by their religious rules
may consciously decide to avoid engagement with either partner’s religion. Religion
has become, for them, a barrier, a nuisance. Yet some mixed couples continue to
observe holy days and even when rituals and rites are simplified, or the religious
significance of festivals played down or given alternative meanings, this does not
necessarily indicate a loss of religious identity (Larson and Munro, 1990). The people I
interviewed celebrated holy days, often with their partners, and although they did not
give radically alternative meanings or ignore the religious significance of fasts and
festivals, some had developed a distinctively inclusive way of describing religious
events. This is examined in further detail in Chapter Six.
15
Bellah argues that it is the privatisation of religion rather than secularization which has facilitated the
growth of pluralism in the post-colonial American case. See Bellah, 1996: 225 - 226.
51
It would be simplistic to see inter-faith marriage as ‘caused’ by either
assimilation or secularism. A growing emphasis on individualism may provide an
additional clue as to the conditions and the internal dynamics of inter-faith marriages.
Arweck and Nesbitt suggest that changes within family life have implications for the
manner in which faith and values are transmitted to succeeding generations. The
contemporary culture of individualism and the recognition of the autonomy of members
within a family has influenced religiosity; individuals voluntarily associate themselves
with particular religious beliefs and practices (Arweck and Nesbitt, 2010: 78). Heelas
argues that in the process of individuation, authority and legitimacy come to rest with
the person. ‘It involves, among other things, the decline of the institutional
determination of life choices and instead the reflexive reconstruction of identity. What
the traditional used to demand has transformed into lifestyle options’ (Heelas, 1998: 4 –
5). Bellah called this tendency ‘Sheilaism’ after a young woman who illustrated how
faith can be privatised and the individual becomes the final arbiter of the validity of
belief and practice. Sheila explained:
I believe in God… I am not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I
went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my
own little voice… It's just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You
know, I guess, take care of each other. I think God would want us to take care of
each other’ (Bellah, 1996: 221).
When my interviewees describe an apparently individualistic approach to faith,
then, we can see it as an expression not of the death-throes of religion, but of a culture
in which family and community are less important in the transmission of values than
they once were. A faith which develops in a context of hybridity is shaped by
circumstances as well as by traditional principles. The way of believing and expressing
faith has become personalised.
52
Intermarriage as Deviance
Intermarriage has been labelled deviant behaviour; as early as 1913 Karl
Abraham wrote about ‘neurotic exogamy’ in which complex family jealousies play a
part in the choice of a partner from outside the group (quoted in Berman, 1968: 55 - 56).
Intermarriage may be perceived as a ‘risk’ or an ‘adventure’ (Barbara, 1989: 14;
Fishman, 2004: 24 – 25) and the desire for such a ‘Desdemona wish’ (Osherson, 2001:
160). Cerroni-Long described several scenarios in which personal needs or expectations
could predispose a person to marry out of their community. For example the white
American male pursuing an ideal of femininity may marry an ‘oriental doll’.
Alternatively, the choice of partner may reflect the need to escape a sense of personal
inadequacy, or negative feelings either towards the norms of their own group or
authority figures within it, or indeed guilt feeling about other groups. Thus exogamy is
seen as a form either of rebellion or revenge, and he adds that such marriages are
unlikely to survive (Cerroni-Long, 1984: 35, 38 - 39, 42).
A few writers see intermarriage as symptomatic of more serious pathology.
Sometimes those who marry partners who are different are uncertain about their own
sense of self: ‘The marriage out of their own culture provide(s) them with a more
definite identity while at the same time giving them a valid reason to avoid the
difficulties inherent in the process of developing their individuality within their original
culture’ (Cohen, 1982: 178). The most frequent features Cohen identified among
intercultural couples presenting for psychotherapy included difficulty in relating to their
parents, a choice of foreign partner with whom they shared a strong empathy (and
related to it, a sense of rejecting their original culture) and a hope that marriage would
solve their current problems. However if they then encountered problems within the
53
marriage, they distanced themselves from one another. Relational difficulties were
exacerbated by the couples’ tendency to play down their differences (Cohen 1982: 190;
see also Mody Spencer, 2000).
For some exogamy is a strategy of remaking their lives in a different mould
from that of their parents. Fishman quotes one women: ‘My mother was a
dysfunctional person who brought unhappiness to herself and everyone who lived in her
household. I have tried very hard not to do anything the way my mother did it’
(Fishman, 2004: 25). Exogamy may in some instances be an attempt to heal wounds
from the family of origin: ‘If the familial nest is poisoned, marital choice becomes an
attempt at detoxification’ (Paris and Gudzer, 1989: 494). This hurt may be due to
emotional neglect by parents, or to ‘emotional enmeshment’ which Paris and Gudzer
call the ‘Portnoy Syndrome’. If the difficulties in the natal family which have led to the
exogamous choice remain unresolved, the marriage itself becomes a similarly poisoned
nest, and the difficulties are inherited by the next generation.
There are problems with studies based on psychotherapy. Cohen’s work, for
example, was based on a clinical population who were seeking help for acknowledged
problems. Another problem is the possibility of ascribing the difficulties experienced
by a mixed couple to exogamy, or seeing exogamy as evidence of some flaw or personal
difficulty. Cahill has identified two fundamental approaches to the question of
intermarriage, the ‘stunting’ paradigm and the ‘liberating’ one. The stunting approach
emphasises the problems of intermarriage which is assumed to rupture group
boundaries, generate identity problems for partners and their children, and which may
also be associated with female suppression or exploitation (Cahill, 1990: 3). The
54
liberating approach accentuates the positive outcomes. Whether or not it is the case that
exogamy represents deviance, we should remember that it ceases to be deviant as
intermarriage rates increase to the point at which it becomes ‘normal’ (Larson and
Munro, 1990: 239 -250).
Some researchers have studied the daily life and stability of inter-faith
marriages. Bambawale (1982) asked Indian inter-faith couples about personal
adjustment, attitudes towards other religious groups, the socialization of their children,
and the reactions of their natal families to their intermarriages and patterns of
reconciliation with relatives (which eventually occurred in about three quarters of
cases). Divorce rates are thought to be higher among couples with different religions
and nationality (Bumpass and Sweet, 1972; Glenn, 1982; Janssen, 2001: 171 – 173).
However, it is not possible to determine whether this is the case in the United Kingdom
because religion is not recorded either at civil weddings or in the divorce courts. There
is some evidence that conflict is more likely when there is great dissimilarity between
the partners’ religions: ‘Even minor denominational differences within the Christian
fold do make a difference; so much difference in fact that interfaith marriages must
result in mental unhappiness’ (Rokeach, 1968, 1972: 193, my italics). However, recent
writers suggest that when problems arise in an inter-faith marriage, they are not
necessarily caused by religious differences, but by the pressure of religious groups or by
power relationships within extended families (Bop, 2005: 167), while supportive family
and friends are a major factor in lessening the likelihood of conflict between religiously
mixed couples (Chinitz and Brown, 2001).
55
Several recent studies have focussed on identity. Personal identity is
constructed in the context of a group, and depends on a sense of collective identity
shared with others. It involves place, community, nation, gender, race, social, cultural
and political-economic landscapes, and is constantly reinforced by those around.
Identity develops within a context of difference, as individuals are shaped by their
environments, environments which are themselves changeable. It is not fixed and static,
but can mutate, or be multiple, hybrid or hyphenated; this is particularly true for
members of minority groups. Keaton argues that identity is defined both by what you
say you are, and by others’ perceptions. For example, in accounting for the competing
identities of French girls of African Muslim parentage, she notes that not only do they
have to struggle against poverty and racialized barriers, but that:
Certain Muslim girls must navigate an additional layer of gendered constraints
attached to competing home, neighbourhood and school expectations. They
must also develop strategies to cope and exist within these often incompatible
arenas, sometimes to their own peril (Keaton, 2006: 194-195).
Someone entering an inter-faith marriage may find their sense of personal
identity does not fit in with the new family or group and is not reinforced by their
surroundings (Refsing, 1998: 195-196). Thus developing hybrid identity may be an
adaptation to new circumstances. Some of my sample indicated that although they had
a clear Christian identity (even the two converts had identified themselves as being in
‘mixed’ rather than same-faith marriages), they also had within their own backgrounds
multiple layers of diversity – ethnic, religious, linguistic and so on.
A further area of social research concerns the stability and identity of children of
inter-faith marriages. It is sometimes thought that these children are likely to have
problems with adjustment, to be ‘confused’ or have difficulties in identity. One study
56
of children in care in Northern Ireland found that the children of cross-community
families (that is those with mixed Roman Catholic and Protestant parents) were
significantly over-represented in the ‘looked after’ population (McCay and Sinclair,
1999: 38). While this may suggest either that couples who form relationships across
religious boundaries are themselves less stable, or that denominational differences in
themselves cause problems within the family, there may be other factors at play. In the
context of Northern Ireland, segregation and sectarianism can have a malign effect on
the identity and self-esteem of the children of mixed parentage (McCay and Sinclair.
1999: 4). But more recent literature, including reports of UK based projects has been
more positive about the outcomes for ‘mixed’ children (Masrani, 2005; Caballero,
Edwards and Puthussery, 2008; Arweck and Nesbitt, 2010).
Are there particular factors in some people predisposing them to mixed
marriage? Perhaps some individuals feel less connected or loyal towards family and
community, or are less religiously observant. It is equally possible that some people
find members of certain groups especially attractive or interesting; and part of the
attraction may be the sense of adventure, the unpredictability - even risk - promised by a
relationship with someone radically different (Barbara, 1989: 14). As I shall explain in
Chapter Five, most of the people I interviewed said that they had a pre-existing interest
in or experience of other faiths, cultures and languages. The spouses, too, were
accustomed to mixing with people of other faiths and cultures, suggesting that they had
already learned to negotiate boundaries. The view that intermarriage is bound up with
the process of assimilation is therefore only part of the picture. For many mixed
couples religious and cultural difference is acknowledged, even celebrated, rather than
played down.
57
These social studies raise further questions. Who marries across religious
boundaries and why? Is inter-faith marriage really an indicator of secularity, suggesting
that religion does not matter to couples? Can it be seen as a rejection or an escape,
either from a faith or a religious or cultural system or from something else? Does it
represent the pursuit of an ideal? Despite evidence that in some cases intermarried
couples are less likely to be publicly practising their faith, it seems that at least some of
those who marry ‘out’ remain devout and devoted, and yet others experience a renewal
of faith, possibly triggered by the intermarriage itself.
Marital Spirituality
While the social and behavioural sciences teach us a great deal about marriage, a
neglect of the spiritual dimension impoverishes our understanding (Jeffery, 2006: xv).
Thus the second major area which I shall discuss is marital or conjugal spirituality,
which has attracted growing interest during the past few decades. But spirituality is an
ambiguous term, ‘rather spongy [because] it seems to lack definition, and yet soak[s] up
virtually everything’ (Percy, 2001: 65). Sometimes it is ‘a neat catch-all intimating a
certain something without necessarily revealing much about what it entails’ (Rose, S,
2001: 193). Traditionally the term denoted devotion and obedience to God, through
prayer and other spiritual practices. It has implications for daily living, understanding
the material world as the context for human transformation (Sheldrake, 2007: 2). While
it can involve sometimes intense emotions, the focus is beyond the individual. Heelas
and Woodhead call this ‘life-as spirituality’ (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005:5-6). It may
be conceived as an individual journey, a personal quest for meaning, and a
consciousness of transcendence (Miller and Thoreson, 1999: 4 – 6). Since the nineteen
58
sixties the meaning has drifted away from traditional Christian practice and the idea of
life in the Holy Spirit (Greshake, 1996: 142). Indeed, the term can now evoke exotic
and esoteric beliefs and practices unconnected with Christian faith (Rose, S, 2001: 205)
or any sort of faith at all, as spirituality ‘migrates’ from the religious to the secular
(Swinton, 2001). Sometimes the term ‘spirituality’ is differentiated from ‘religion’ with
the implication that spirituality involves a search for authentic meaning and religion
means conformity to institutional religion and its trappings. Swatos suggests that used
in this sense, ‘religion’ is tied to denominationalism and ‘spirituality’ with an expressive
‘style’ (Swatos, 2009: 120). Heelas and Woodhead contrast ‘life-as religion and
spirituality’ with what they term ‘subjective life spirituality’ which emphasises inner,
personal sources of significance and authority rather than obedience to an external
authority or a transcendent God. Subjective life spiritualities include New Age
practices, various forms of holistic and health related concerns such as aromatherapy,
reiki and yoga, and other activities which aim to bring people into contact with the
sacred dimension within themselves (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005: 6-7).
Both traditional ‘life-as’ and ‘subjective-life’ spirituality are concerned with
finding meaning and purpose. But features of the latter, ‘its subjectivism, its focus on
the self and its wholeness, its emphasis on feeling has led many to see the new forms of
spiritual quest which arise in our society as intrinsically trivial or privatised’ (Taylor,
2007: 508). It has been linked with consumerism (Sheldrake, 2007: 2) and criticised for
superficiality, or for using practices out of context. It is beyond the scope of this study
to consider all of these definitions of spirituality, some of which are highly
individualistic, and I shall limit my attention to those ideas and practices which were
described by the people I interviewed. In fact, very few mentioned participating in what
59
might be termed ‘New Age’ practices, apart from one who mentioned an interest in
aromatherapy, and another who had been taken to a séance by a spiritualist aunt after a
bereavement. Most of them were linked with recognisable or ‘life-as’ traditions such as
Judaism or Islam or Christianity.
If the aim of Christian spiritual formation is wholeness and union with God, in
the present context the term spirituality will be used to denote the way in which
someone lives out his or her relationship with God (Gallagher, 1985: 201). This may
include beliefs, including mental images or perceptions of God, devotional practices
such as worship and ritual, and understandings, such as the way in which experiences
and events are interpreted and given meaning within a faith context. Traditional
spirituality was defined in male, ascetic, terms (Sheldrake, 2007: 8), while marriage was
often seen either as a distraction from holiness, or as a lesser calling (Hart and Hart,
1984: 15; McPherson-Oliver, 1991: 55-56). Yet in many religions marriage and family
relationships are seen as sacred (Mahoney et al, 2003: 222). The metaphors used in
Judaism and Christianity likening the relationship between God and Israel or Christ and
the Church to that of a married couple imply that qualities such as love, trust, fidelity
and commitment are valued in both marriage and in faith. However, even when couples
experience the growth of these qualities in their relationships, they do not always
identify these as spiritual (Yates, 1985: 284). This may reflect a lack of confidence, or a
difficulty in perceiving the sacred in everyday life.
Further, married couples lack spiritual role models; possibly because most saints
were single, and married ones were not canonized for specifically spousal or parental
virtues (McPherson-Oliver, 1991: 54; Wright, 2005: 421). Many popular medieval
60
hagiographies concerned virgin martyrs, or those who had chaste marriages or attained
holiness during widowhood (Lipton, 2007: 132 – 133). But over the past few decades,
the notion of marital or family spirituality has been reclaimed and developed, and there
is an increasing amount of material concerned with the religious aspects of marriage
preparation and the spiritual life of families. The main theme of these is that God, being
immanent, is present and revealed through everyday activities and relationships, and
that therefore holiness can be found within family life (Mahoney et al, 2003: 222;
Sobhanam, 2007: 97). The language of marital spirituality refers to the communion of
shared life – not dissimilar to the language of interreligious dialogue - and to fidelity
and commitment, also attributes of the life of faith. Where marriages are long and
fulfilling, transcendent feelings are experienced, and if satisfaction, self-esteem and
identity is fragile, then spirituality can be a stabilising influence for couples (Gutteridge,
2005: 88).
There is a broad consensus about the main features of conjugal Christian spirituality:

At the heart of this covenantal relationship is life-long fidelity and commitment,
which are seen as sacred qualities.

People live their married lives in the light of the spiritual dimension (or of God)
and the spiritual life in the light of their marriages and therefore their spirituality
is grounded in the relationship.

Marriage is a joint pilgrimage of faith in which the couple move together as
Christ’s followers, supporting, nurturing, loving and challenging each other.

At times the journey involves difficulties, crises, insecurities and conflicts
(Mahoney et al, 2003: 229) which lead to the importance of on-going
reconciliation, mutual acceptance and support.
61

But it is more than a shared journey; it is also a shared mission within the world
(McDonald and McDonald, 1997: 39). This journey is embarked on in
relationship, which some writers see as reflecting the inner life of the Trinity
(Gallagher, 1985: 201). The Christian couple’s mutual love shows them
absolute value in one another (McPherson-Oliver 1991:55; Orsuto 2001: 5) and
therefore the relationship itself becomes a holy space wherein God is
encountered (McPherson-Oliver: 1991).

The Christian home is a sacred space and the hospitality or turning outward of
the Christian couple towards the world is a shared mission.

The birth and upbringing of children in faith add a creative dimension to marital
spirituality.
Thus marriage is now often described in vocational terms, a vocation to grow in
love for one another and for God. The sacramental nature of Christian marriage means
that through their relationship the couple participate in something greater than
themselves and draw closer to God. In Catholic terms, the Christian family is seen as
the Church in microcosm or ‘domestic church’ (Vatican 2 Dogmatic Constitution of the
Church, no 40, 41). There has also been a shift in focus from the married couple and
their family as recipients of ministry to the couple as ministers (Gallagher, 1985: 203;
Bourg, 2001: 182-191).
The notion of ‘domestic church’ is not without problems. It is too easy to
sacralise practices which are oppressive, patriarchy being an obvious example. Besides,
the spirituality of a Christian household is not about the observable things like saying
grace before meals or having holy pictures on the wall, but is located within day-to-day
62
family life, conversation and gestures, welcoming and letting go, eating, sharing,
forgiving. Family rituals therefore grow out of actual conditions (Grillo, 2010) and are
connected not only with formal rites like family prayers or celebrating anniversaries, but
also ordinary routines like mealtimes, bedtimes and the way members behave toward
one another.
Within the family there is both self-sufficiency and interdependence. Thatcher
argues that couples need to find a healthy balance of autonomy with togetherness, and
should recognise the value of friendship and of commitment (Thatcher, 1999: 218 –
222). Despite our individualistic culture, close relationships remain important for
learning and spiritual growth, and there is widespread agreement that Christian marriage
can be a valid path to holiness.
When Christians marry across denominational boundaries, their common faith
and baptism are recognised by most Churches. However, when couples marry across
faith boundaries, the spiritual issues become more complex, more difficult to define and
negotiate. Sandor writes that:
The implications of interchurch and inter-faith marriage, increasingly a reality in
many people’s lives, for living out a spirituality of marriage […] needs further
study and reflection (Sandor, 2004: 174).
Yet a survey of the literature on marital or family spirituality yields almost no
reference to religiously mixed families. There are several possible reasons for the
silence. Sometimes, in order to preserve harmony in the marital home, couples
themselves attempt to ignore potentially divisive religious issues. Sometimes they
avoid all formal religious practice. Sometimes they attempt to balance their two faiths
or cultures within family life, but feel that in doing so they are merely being pragmatic,
63
and do not see themselves as achieving anything remarkable. They may emphasise
‘traditions’ rather than ‘Truth’, extrinsic rather than intrinsic faith. But perhaps the
main reason for the silence is that because of the usual cautions against marriage to
‘unbelievers’ who could threaten or erode the faith of the Christian partner, any
worthwhile exchange of spiritual understanding between a mixed couple has been
thought unlikely.
Nevertheless, two aspects of inter-church family life have implications for interfaith couples. First, the idea of conjugal spirituality raises the question of whether there
can be a spirituality of inter-faith couples, one which may be expressed in informal
ways, and which does not lapse into relativism. One possibility is ‘double belonging’
which has been suggested by some writers on conjugal spirituality, and also by a
number of French scholars with an interest in interfaith issues (see, for example Gira
and Scheuer, 2000).
Second, inter-church families have had a substantial impact on the Ecumenical
movement. Arguing that the pain of an inter-church couple or family reflects the pain
of a fractured church, these couples have actively promoted reconciliation between
churches. A few writers have begun to suggest that inter-faith couples and families,
with their links within different communities, could perform a comparable role. But
although inter-faith couples share some characteristics with inter-church couples, there
are more profound issues to negotiate. It is not possible to appeal to a common baptism
as the basis for spiritual sharing, and the home is no more a little church than it is a mini
mosque or gurdwara. Also, as I shall describe, many inter-faith couples relish their
64
separate identities and none of those I interviewed desired anything beyond closer
understanding between faith groups.
The field of conjugal spirituality has raised the profile of family life as a locus
for learning about, and being transformed by God through everyday relationships.
Further, inter-church couples argue that their differences can be a positive influence on
the faith and practice of both partners. Their enthusiasm for church unity and their
influence on the ecumenical movement has been notable. Do inter-faith couples
perform a comparable task? McCarthy suggests that sometimes marriage to someone of
a different faith may be an extraordinary vocation, part of the dialogue of life ‘taking [it]
to a completely diverse and broader dimension than of meetings between the experts of
both traditions’ (McCarthy, 2006: 3). One of Speelman’s subjects also began to see her
marriage to a Muslim in vocational terms after hearing a sermon:
“It gave me the idea that Jesus breaks down barriers, and that I got permission to
take my chance with a Muslim. That it was not bad, but on the contrary, that it
was my calling” (Speelman, 2001:164).
Insights from the Inter-faith Dialogue
The major world faiths tend towards self-sufficiency, offering a complete
account of Truth (Cornille, 2008: 2) and although people of different faiths have lived
close by each other for many centuries, in some regions, separate communities
frequently regarded each other with suspicion. Even where they were not threats, they
could be competitors. More often the communities were relatively isolated from one
another - psychologically if not geographically - and largely ignorant of each other’s
faith and devotional practice (Lochhead, 1988: 5 – 22). But increased opportunities for
travel, mass migration and more efficient communication between different parts of the
world have made us more aware of faiths other than our own. There have also been
65
social and political reasons for connecting with people of different faiths. Interfaith
Dialogue has become a pressing, even urgent task, and has since the nineteen sixties
grown in momentum as a conscious activity, both at a scholarly and theological level
and as a means of sorting out everyday issues.
The Christian theological basis for interfaith dialogue rests on three principles.
First is our common humanity which proceeds from creation, and means that our
similarities are more important than our differences. Second is the recognition that God
acts with all humankind, and not solely with the Church, and that the Holy Spirit is
present and active among Christians and those who are not Christians, motivating all
sincere prayer (Dupuis, 1997: 360 – 361). Third is the command to ‘love the stranger’.
The issue of mission should be briefly addressed. Proclaiming the gospel is
rightly the function of the church but this should not be confused with dialogue. For
Christians, faithful Christian witness is at the heart of dialogue, but its purpose is not
conversionary, nor is it to ‘prove’ that either faith is better than the other. It is part of
the witness of life (Dupuis, 1997: 360). In some circumstances, the confusion of
dialogue and mission could undermine dialogue – the partners in dialogue become
mutually suspicious that they are being targeted for conversion. We should neither
colonise nor totalise the experience of the ‘other’ into our own categories, nor should
we assume that Christianity is the answer to the questions which they are not asking.
Those involved in this dialogue frequently report that it stimulates a new and
deepened awareness of their own faith. There is a sense in which there is no interfaith
encounter more complete than that which occurs between spouses of different faiths.
66
But although it may appear obvious that the experiences of those practising interreligious dialogue will shed light on the dynamics of inter-faith marriage, the reality is
complex. Two basic principles of effective inter-religious dialogue are openness to the
other and faithfulness to one’s own beliefs (Barnes, 1989: 3). It is about respecting
differences as well as about finding commonalities, and in some local interfaith groups,
the issue of inter-faith marriage, like conversion from one religion to another, muddles
the boundaries between faith groups and can cause embarrassment and awkwardness.
Further, inter-faith couples enter the dialogue not because they have been prompted by
intellectual, social or theological reasons. Unlike delegates who consciously represent
their faiths at a conference, they may not be very knowledgeable about matters of
religion and, particularly if young, may be exploring what they believe themselves.
Inter-faith couples have often been forced to face the theological issues simply because
of their situation, a ‘condition’ as opposed to a ‘position’ (Vanhoozer, 2003: 4).
Although dialogue can and should take place amongst scholars and religious
leaders, it cannot be abstracted from everyday concerns. It is first and foremost an
interpersonal encounter (Barnes, 2002: 20-21) rather than either a theoretical debate or a
meeting between different texts and theologies. It is “about people not systems and it
takes place between people not books” (Cracknell, 1996: paragraph 5) and friendship is
at the root of genuine inter-religious dialogue (Teasdale, 2004: 118; Ford, 2007: 71).
The dialogue begins where people meet, and the dynamic of this meeting energises and
informs theological reflection. Inter-religious dialogue has frequently led Christians
towards a new and transforming awareness of other faiths, and consequently of their
own.
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Among people of different faith communities everyday sharing can happen at
work, at the school gates, or during involvement in local politics or social issues.
Sometimes it begins when there is a practical problem to negotiate. A midwife must
listen to what her Muslim clients have to say about the Ramadan fast, and why it is
important for them, before she can discuss nutrition during pregnancy with them16. This
can prompt a further exploration of ideas and values which leads to a deeper
understanding, in which religious practice and spirituality are sometimes shared.
(Barnes, 2002: 243). Minorities may engage in dialogue wishing to be understood and
accepted within mainstream society. There are sometimes political motives for
encouraging mutual understanding; for example a government may wish to promote
community cohesion and foster loyalty among minority groups, but much genuine
dialogue begins at grass-roots level.
If inter-religious dialogue begins informally it has wider implications. Official
documents from the Roman Catholic Church see dialogue as part of the Church’s
overall evangelising mission (Redemptoris Missio, 1990: 55), operating at four levels:
life, action, religious experience and theological exchange. The dialogue of life may,
for example, include everyday interactions between neighbours or friends of different
faiths, and that of action could be collaboration in a local project, or in commitment to
an ideal such as disarmament, or human rights. Specifically religious conversation or
reflection is less explicit in these two forms of dialogue than it is in the third and fourth
types, which involve sharing religious experience and theological exchange. A
commemoration by Shi’a Muslims and Christians of the sufferings of Jesus and Imam
Hussein or a joint study by Christians, Jews and Muslims on Isaac and Ishmael might
16
I am not suggesting that the midwife would discuss her own faith with her client, merely that by
learning about Islam, through the course of her work, she may be led to further reflection herself.
68
illustrate the third or fourth type. Differences as well as similarities may emerge in such
encounters. For example, comparisons between ‘founders’ of religions may break down
because the roles of Gautama, Jesus and Muhammad are perceived in very different
terms in the different faiths. The martyrdom of Imam Hussein is seen by some Shi’a
Muslims as comparable to the sufferings of Jesus, yet for Christians the significance of
Christ’s passion lies not merely in the fact of undeserved suffering. Yet at their best
these can result not in consensus, but in ‘a dazzling intensity that […] can produce
startling surprises’ (Ford, 2007: 69).
When in the light of the four-fold typology we ask what kind of dialogue takes
place between interfaith couples, we might decide that it is mainly a sharing of life and
possibly of common action. But intermarriage is commonly represented as going
beyond dialogue, because of the persistent and inescapable questions raised:
people can have ‘dialogue’ on Tuesday evenings from 20.00 to 22.00 and then
go their separate ways again. Interreligious exchanges in the context of a
marriage are naturally more intensive. Marriage partners can hardly avoid one
another. They have no choice but to find ways of dealing with their religious
differences. They live in an interreligious context on a day-to-day basis, as it
were (Speelman, 2001: 5).
Some couples wish to avoid religious practice, and even discussion of faith
issues, either because they have rejected faith intellectually or because they have
experienced religion as a divisive force in their relationship. But sometimes sharing
spiritual insights or participating in family occasions such as the Passover Seder
stimulates further exploration of core values and assumptions. Sometimes the fact that
someone dearly beloved – whether a spouse, a child, or an in-law – is profoundly
‘Other’ leads to a reflection in which one’s own values and beliefs are questioned, and
69
perhaps discarded or reappraised or remoulded. I wish to draw attention to some of the
features of inter-religious dialogue which are particularly pertinent for mixed couples:
First, the motives for dialogue are often pragmatic rather than theological or
ideological in nature. For example, a couple may need to sort out their children’s
school – will they attend the local Church primary along with the other children in the
street, or will they feel out of place there because their parents are not both Christians?
What if the school of choice only normally admits baptised children - is the parent who
is not a Christian prepared to agree to baptism? A practical issue like this may lead to a
discussion (or an argument) about faith and values which might not have happened were
there no problem to resolve. Barbara discovered in his research that:
Each family comes up with its own context for religious faith based on the
situations they actually experience: everyone is involved in the search: the
bishops the priests, committed religious people, the parents and […] even the
children (Barbara, 1989: 133).
Second, some specific attitudes are helpful for engaging in interfaith dialogue:
openness, honesty, a willingness to be challenged, even vulnerability. Yet commitment
to faith is equally important, and that faith should not be ‘bracketed’ or suspended,
something which would compromise the integrity of the participant. Speelman
identified four strategies used by Muslim-Christian couples: annexation and yielding,
(as one partner tries to convert the other, or to persuade them to conform, and the other
yields to these demands) ignoring, and negotiating (Speelman, 1998). Dialogue can
become competitive or can lapse into woolly relativism, between couples as with larger
interfaith groups. If a couple cultivate openness and honesty in their dealings with one
other over faith and cultural matters, rather than either avoidance and suppression, or
annexing and yielding, the relationship will be healthier.
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Third, sincere interfaith dialogue results in the enhanced awareness and
deepened commitment of both partners in the conversation (Dupuis, 1997: 365 -367,
382). Koyama notes the interplay of Christian spirituality with other types in the ‘busy
context of religions and cultures’ (Koyama, 1986: 555). It may be that a partner in
dialogue asks difficult or searching questions; in some instances it is the perception of
God through the other which leads to this awareness.
Jeanrond distinguishes between identity and belonging. We are all already
bearers of multiple identities, and there are multiple ways of living out Catholic,
Protestant, Muslim or Buddhist faith (Jeanrond, 2002: 106 – 120). The concept of
‘hyphenated identity,’ which implies that someone can define themselves as a ‘British
Asian’ for example, is well established in social and cultural anthropology, and can be a
means both of integrating, and also of redefining identities (Modood, 2004: 1-3). Yet
there are difficulties in applying this principle to religious belonging. Ethnic or national
identities such as ‘British’ and ‘Asian’ are not incompatible, and even ‘Jewish
Christian’ is generally understood as denoting Jewish ethnicity combined with Christian
belief. However the term ‘Christian Buddhist’ can be challenged as an oxymoron. Yet
in some cases, the lived experience may point to the possibility of belonging to more
than one faith; for example the Christian who practises Zen meditation may identify
with both Buddhism and Christianity, despite profound differences (Baatz, 2000: 148).
Identification with two faiths is something which goes further than the idea of
inculturation. In some countries people claim several religious identities; thus some
Japanese families mark childbirth with Shinto rituals and use Buddhist rites at funerals,
while at other times Christian or Confucian beliefs and practices are evident. Similar
processes occur in parts of Latin America and Benin (Saad, 2004). In colonial India,
71
there were ‘shared’ shrines where saints were venerated by pilgrims from different
faiths.17
Does mixed identity mean leading a kind of double life, switching from one
system to another? Can two faiths be held together, albeit in tension? Khan argues that
for centuries people in India had borrowed and appropriated elements of each other’s
faiths until colonial administrators wanted to delineate communities, and orthodox
forces promoted stronger religious identities (Khan, 2004: 124). The interfaces where
Hindu, Muslim and other religious cultures (to use later categories) met in ‘dynamic,
interpretive and expressive spaces’ are variously described as ‘liminal’ locations, or
‘contact zones’ where ‘cultures meet, clash and grapple’ (Khan, 2004: 5). Religious
diversity and blending was more prevalent in the past, but different religious
communities have been gradually homogenized, first by colonial powers who wanted to
categorise faith groups for administrative purposes, then by ‘orthodox forces’.
Khan sees two main modes of interaction between faiths in the context of these
thresholds: sharing and borrowing. One example of sharing is the pilgrimage to shrines
of saints revered by people of different faiths. At the death of people whose holiness
was recognized by those of different faiths, there could be disputes: should the remains
be buried according to Islamic rites, or cremated in the Hindu or Buddhist practice?
17
Dominique-Sila Khan tells of Hindu and Jain ladies who visited the shrine of a Sufi saint to pray for
sons, and of a few Gujarati communities who described themselves as ‘Mahommedan Hindu’ (Khan,
2004: 37 -38, 73). Paul Sumita similarly writes of shared customs and festivals and describes a Muslim,
Ala al-Din who ‘regularly went to the local mosque and to the Ramdar temple, and had given Hindu
names to his children’. Some local marriages, according to Sumita, were ‘performed simultaneously with
the traditional pherās (fire circumambulation) and the nikah ceremony. Rawats and Merats celebrated
Diwali and Holi with the same enthusiasm as ‘Id or Shab-e-barat. Ala al-Din explained that if the
majority of Hindu and Muslim mers used to visit both temples and mosques, after their death all of them
were buried according to the Islamic rite (Sunday Times of India, 10 September 1995, quoted in Khan,
2004: 123).
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Basset suggests that double religious identity, like bilingualism or dual
nationality, can only happen when religious institutions let go of rigid boundaries. He
argues that as we are all bearers of multiple identities – religious, cultural and national –
it is less a question of creating a particular new identity than of making it possible for
people to live in the community of their choice while being open, attentive and sensitive
towards the ‘other’ community (Basset. 2000: 19 -31). It depends in part on what the
two faiths are; some dissimilarities are more profound than others. In several faiths
converts are expected to repudiate their past identity totally on being accepted into the
new faith community, and within such a mind-set the idea of double belonging is
associated with syncretism, a muddling of faiths. Can we be too hasty in dismissing it
as D.I.Y religion or syncretism (Gira and Scheuer, 2000: 12)? The experiences of some
people, including some of those I interviewed suggest that it is indeed possible to be a
sincere practising Christian while at the same time incorporating aspects of some other
faith or practice. This may happen at the level of believing in one faith while observing
the ethical values or practising the rituals of another. It can happen as part of a personal
quest, the need to find inner peace, rather than an intellectual choice (Blée, 2000: 152153, 154).
What can we learn from these insights about religious identity? Dialogue
involves a sharing not only of life and action but also of spiritual experience and
theological insights. There is a sense in which different faiths or practices meet within
the person, as a dialogue within a person rather than between persons (Johnston, 1997:
1). But this does not mean belonging to more than one tradition. The Association of
Interchurch Families sometimes speaks of ‘double belonging’. Could Christians in
interfaith relationships experience a similar ‘belonging’ to more than one religious
73
community? This is not the same as using meditation techniques or of ‘borrowing’
prayers or readings from another tradition. We should clarify here about the different
possible uses of the word ‘belonging’. It could convey a subjective sense of being
accepted, even if only partial, into a faith community other than one’s own. It could
also mean a sense of loyalty to another path. But those I interviewed all had a clear
sense of boundary, and none apparently wanted to ‘belong’ to their partner’s community
in the sense that they wished to belong to their own.
Khan reminds us that thresholds are gateways, with two-way traffic bearing
elements of different faiths and culture, and describes a blending or blurring process
happening around the threshold. This, she argues, is neither syncretism, nor an attempt
to reconcile different religions (Khan, 2004: 5). Perhaps those who feel called to this
double belonging are not so much belonging to two religions as inhabiting such a
threshold space, crossing boundaries and acting as mediators between groups. For
example for the Christian monk seeking Hindu wisdom, borrowing outward forms of
liturgy or theological concepts may be insufficient. What is required is something more
radical – only through total self-emptying will the monk fulfil the preconditions for
enlightenment by the Absolute (Dupuis, 2000:60). But such monks are religious
‘professionals’, knowledgeable about Christian theology and also the faith to which
they own a second loyalty. Dupuis also distinguishes between total and partial forms of
‘double belonging’ and between successive and simultaneous forms (Dupuis, 2000:55).
What of the convert who seeks to integrate their old faith into the new one? Can the
two be combined? Dupuis cites Gandhi whose Hindu faith and devotion to the person
of Jesus Christ, notably the teaching summarized in the Sermon on the Mount, and Bede
74
Griffiths and Henri le Saux as exemplars in whom Hindu non-dual saccidananda18 and
Christian revelation converge (Dupuis, 1997: 278 - 279).
Couples and Interfaith Dialogue
How do the insights of the inter-religious dialogue help us understand the
experiences of Christians in interfaith relationships, and can they help strengthen those
relationships? First, for exogamous people the initial motive for learning about a
partner’s faith or tradition is more likely to be practical than theological in nature – it is,
to use the Catholic term, the dialogue of common life. Perhaps the Christian partner
simply needs to know what is happening at a particular ceremony, and why, in order to
behave appropriately, or perhaps they need to understand the principles underlying a
complex set of rules relating to food, drink and hygiene in order to welcome relatives
into their home. I encouraged my interviewees to talk about what they understood prior
to their relationship about their partner’s faith tradition, how they had learned about it,
and what they thought about it.
Second, the attitudes recommended for interfaith dialogue include honesty and a
willingness to be challenged, while at the same time being centred in one’s own faith.
Some interfaith couples, particularly those with little support either from family or faith
18
Bowker (1997) defines saccidananda as the three-fold characterization of Brahman, the Absolute, as
that which is pure being, consciousness, and bliss. Sat-cit-ānanda characterizes the essence of brahman as
it is grasped in human experience (anubhava). Sat, ‘being’ or ‘truth’, emphasizes the unchanging nature
of Brahman as pure unqualified existence with ontological priority over all other experience. Cit,
‘consciousness’, emphasizes the conscious nature of Brahman experience: Brahman is the
epistemological ultimate, the self-luminous essence of knowing which is the witness of all other
experience. Ānanda, ‘bliss’, emphasizes the sublime value of the experience of Brahman. Brahman is the
axiological ultimate, the highest and most fulfilling human experience, the goal of human experience.
However, sat, cit, and ānanda are not to be understood as qualities attributed to Brahman which is
nirguṇaa, beyond all relative qualification. Rather sat, cit, and ānanda are each the very essence of
Brahman known through the experience of ecstasy.
75
community, find the questions and challenges too difficult and may reject or suppress
all religious discussion and practice. Others dismiss the challenges as cultural rather
than religious, or see the reservations of families as due simply to prejudice – as
sometimes is indeed the case. It is worth noting at this point that some couples
approaching marriage may not have thought much about questions of faith and values,
until prompted to do so by the challenge of someone ‘different’ or by pressure for one
partner to convert.
Summary
This chapter has situated my study within the broader context of social scientific
investigations into inter-faith marriage, as well as the areas of ecumenical and interfaith
discourse. The experiences of people in inter-church marriages and of those engaged in
the interfaith dialogue added a further dimension. Social scientists have explained the
increased frequency of interfaith marriages particularly in terms of assimilation and
secularization. I suggest, however, that for many interfaith couples, secularity is less
important than was once supposed. In Chapter Five I record the experiences of several
Christians who discovered that their faith became increasingly important to them either
because of their marriages, or most commonly, after the birth of children. This
experience of a stimulation of faith has similarly been noted by some Christians in interchurch marriages.
When formulating my research questions and planning my methodology, the
insights of the social and behavioural sciences were useful. But it is important to bear
in mind the question of whether people in interfaith marriages are really secular in
outlook, if we are to understand their experiences, or suggest pastoral responses to their
76
questions and dilemmas. We should also remind ourselves of the theological question
before discussing the interviews. “How does being in an inter-faith marriage affect the
faith, identity, values and spiritual practice of the Christian partner?” I encouraged
those I interviewed to reflect on the impact their marriages had on their faith.
In the next chapter I turn to focus on the interviewees themselves.
77
3: Communities and Couples
As Jacob knew very well, according to the law he must avoid her, but if it had not been
for Wanda he would have forgotten that he had a tongue in his head. Besides, she
assisted him in fulfilling his obligations as a Jew. Thus, when in winter, on the Sabbath,
her father commanded him to light the oven, she got up before Jacob and lit the kindling
herself and added the firewood. (Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Slave)
I have already discussed how Christian beliefs about inter-faith marriage in the
early and medieval church were linked with prevailing beliefs about women, with
attitudes towards those outside the church, and also with the size and strength of the
church relative to the world around it. In this Chapter, I begin by describing the
standpoints of contemporary faith communities towards exogamy, which vary within as
well as between communities. I also sketch profiles of the people I interviewed,
omitting identifying details in order to preserve confidentiality. Then I turn my
attention to the cultural and theological questions raised by the marriage of Christians to
people of different religious groups. I hope to show that although people in inter-faith
marriages are not a homogenous group, there are features or patterns which seem to
recur in many of these relationships.
Some definition of the field of enquiry is in order. First, we must consider what
constitutes an inter-faith marriage. A few decades ago marriages between Catholics and
other Christians were controversial throughout Britain, and remain so today in some
areas. The 2001 Census for Scotland classified Catholicism and membership of the
Church of Scotland as different faiths; therefore Scottish statistics suggest that both
marriages between Christians of different denominations and those between Christians
and members of other faiths are ‘inter-faith’. But even when a couple are members of
the same faith, there can be major cultural differences between them if they are from
different countries or have different mother tongues. Conversely, partners may have
78
different beliefs, but their way of relating to their respective religions and their level or
type of practice may be very similar; indeed they may feel they have more in common
with their partners than they have with some of their co-religionists.
For the purposes of this study, I took the term inter-faith marriage to mean a
heterosexual relationship in which one partner identifies himself or herself as a
Christian (either now or in the past) and the other as a member of a different religion,
such as Islam, Judaism, or Sikhism. But there were problems here. While all the
interviewees identified themselves as Christian, two formerly Christian women had
converted to their spouses’ faiths, something of which I was unaware when we
originally arranged to meet. In the case of the convert to Judaism it was, she said,
solely for the purpose of marriage and although she had attended synagogue regularly,
become involved in the Jewish community, brought her daughters up as Jews and kept
a kosher home, she had lapsed from all religious observance following divorce. The
other convert, originally Catholic, had become a Muslim after two years of marriage. I
describe these converts and the issues raised by conversion in more detail in Chapter
Five. I did not include in the study those whose marriage was originally same-faith,
but which became mixed due to the conversion of one of the partners to another faith.
This is because the dynamic in these relationships would be different than it would be
if they had been brought up in different faiths, as would the response of parents and
community.
Religion is frequently taken not just to indicate personal beliefs and worship, but
is often a marker of identity and belonging (Dumant, 2003: 369-371). Inter-faith
marriages are frequently also inter-ethnic, intercultural or international, but my focus is
79
primarily on the implications of the religious differences between the partners. The
spouses of the people I interviewed were Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim or Sikh.
Three spouses were described by their Christian partners as either atheist or antireligious, and one had for some time felt attracted to Christian belief.19 Most others
practised their own faith to a greater or lesser degree. Clearly, they were by no means a
homogenous group. The study illustrates that it is difficult to define a typical
Jewish/Christian couple, or a typical Muslim/Christian couple. And yet some of the
issues faced by such couples may be distinctive.
Faith Communities and Exogamy
In most religions the way individuals behave towards one another and their
relationship with secular authority is considered important. This is despite the
contemporary emphasis on individualism (Bellah, 1996: 221). In some societies
spiritual and secular authority are closely related (Ward, 2000) although it is usually
acknowledged that the spheres of authority are separate. Religions may have rules sometimes very detailed ones - about public and private life and behaviour, and about
how social and family relationships should work. Judaism and Islam, for example, both
see obedience to God as of paramount importance for the good of society, and are
concerned with social structures, family life and matters of justice. For many believers,
following their consciences may take precedence over obedience to civil authority, and
if there is conflict between faith and secular authority, then the believer may question
the validity of that authority, or seek to change regulations (Waines, 1995: 259). Recent
instances where secular standards appear to be at odds with faith principles include
19
She contacted me some months after the interview with her husband to invite me to her baptism.
80
discussions surrounding ritual slaughter or the place of religious law within civil
society.
In the United Kingdom, as in many other Western states, the religious adherence
of the couple does not affect the legal status of a marriage, and secular marriage
ceremonies are available. Nevertheless, religious considerations remain strong for some
people and families, and religious authorities may exert considerable pressure on those
wishing to marry ‘out’ of their religion and community.
Christian attitudes towards civil society vary, and the Church has been at
different times both persecuted and powerful. In a modern secular state religion is
marginalised from public life and culture (Brown, 2006: 279) and faith is seen as part of
the ‘private’ dimension, yet Church-State relations are diverse and complex (Davie,
2000: 15 – 21). There is a tension between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’, and a strong
sense of the Church being ‘in the world but not of it’. Augustine’s two cities, the
heavenly and the earthly, are based on different premises and Christians, who belong to
the former are ‘exiles, registered aliens existing in this disordered world’ (Kirwan,
2008: 60). There is an antipolitical tradition within Christianity, and some Christians
emphasise ‘spiritual’ values while avoiding political engagement (Kirwan, 2008: 34,
40). But Christianity is an incarnational faith and other Christians stress their vocation
to transform the world. Although Christianity differs from faiths such as Judaism and
Islam in its lack of detailed behavioural rules, Christian discipleship is seen as total and
interpersonal relationships matter. There has been an increased emphasis in recent
decades on the relationship between family life and the spiritual dimension (Garland,
2002: 68 – 92). Inter-faith marriage, as I noted in Chapter One, has at different times
81
and places been seen both as a potential contaminant of Christian faith, and as a
missionary strategy.
Abrahamic Faiths: Christian-Jewish Marriage
Christianity began as a Jewish sect. Both faiths are ethical monotheisms, and
both revere the pre-Christian Hebrew Scriptures albeit with some major differences in
interpretation. The most obvious distinctions between the faiths are beliefs about the
person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, and the Christian scriptures which are not seen
by Jews as especially relevant for their own faith. Similarly, few Christians are familiar
with the post-Christian Jewish scriptures, the Talmud. Some Christians believe that
Christianity has displaced Judaism, that the Church is the ‘New Israel’ and that Jewish
people are awaiting the Messiah.20 These views remain commonplace today. I have
already drawn attention to the history of Christian anti-Semitism which affected
Christian attitudes to Jews and which also reinforced Jewish distaste for exogamy and
assimilation.
There was no Jewish state for nearly two millennia, and Jews have generally
adapted to living as a social and religious minority; indeed diaspora Jews are urged to
seek the good of the host community (Jeremiah 29:7) while Esther’s marriage, which
proved a lifeline for her people, can be seen as an allegory for faithful Jewish living
under foreign domination. The Passover Seder service reminds Jews that God will
liberate and redeem his people, and yet the coming of God’s Kingdom is a process
which involves all humanity. The notion of Tikkun Olam – repairing the world – is
prominent in contemporary Jewish thought and Jonathan Sacks, observing that God
20
While Messianic movements were especially popular at times of fierce persecution when sufferings
were seen as the birth pangs of the Mashiach, and while Messianic hope has been a constant feature of
Judaism, it is not as prominent as some Christians suppose.
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promised Abraham ‘you shall be a blessing […] and through you all the families of the
earth shall be blessed’ argues that active involvement by Jews in social and political life
is not merely pragmatic, but a positive witness to their faith: ‘To do so with integrity as
a faithful Jew is to fulfil the command of Kiddush Hashem, “sanctifying God’s
name”’(Sacks, 1995: 136). Distinctiveness, according to Sacks, is part of the Jewish
vocation, thus he cannot condone inter-marriage, believing that like assimilation it
erodes the Jewish community and its values. A return to devotion and practice is the
best safeguard against such threats. While traditionalists urge a return to orthodox faith
and practice as a means of making the younger generation feel more connected to their
Jewish heritage and consequently less inclined to marry gentiles, some Progressive
(Liberal and Reform) Jews believe that the best approach is to welcome the gentile
partner, to encourage conversion where appropriate, and also to encourage the couple to
bring their children up as Jews (see for example www.liberalJudaism.com and
www.interfaithfamily.com).
Marriage is seen as the most important human relationship in Judaism
(Greenberg, 1990:3) and although polygyny and levirate marriage were permitted (even
up to the end of the nineteenth century in Yemen) they were uncommon. A Jewish man
‘takes’ a wife in marriage – traditionally it is his initiative. But Judaism is transmitted
through the female line, thus someone whose maternal grandmother is Jewish is
halachically21 Jewish him or herself, while someone whose other three grandparents
were Jews but whose maternal grandmother was a gentile would also be a gentile.
21
Halacha is the legal interpretation of Jewish scripture.
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Intermarriage was explicitly forbidden for Jews from earliest times (Greenberg,
1990: 15) although as I have noted, there were exceptions. In the medieval world both
Christians and Jews avoided marriage with one another, but after the emancipation of
Jews in the eighteenth century intermarriage increased as contacts grew and anti-Jewish
stigma lessened (Greenberg, 1990: 16). Paradoxically, the acceptance of assimilated
Jews in secular society seems to be connected with their decline as a distinctive
minority and the Jewish population has fallen dramatically in Europe, even since the
Second World War. The only European country where there has been a substantial rise
in is France, whence large numbers of Sephardic Jews migrated from North Africa
(Davie, 2000: 123). The British Jewish community has declined (Davie, 2000: 13) and
Jewish leaders in the United Kingdom are concerned about mixed, non-conversionary
marriages. Sacks’ 1994 book Will we have Jewish Grandchildren? aimed to stimulate
action for Jewish continuity in the face of the threats of assimilation and intermarriage.
According to the 2001 census for England and Wales, 9971 Jewish men were married to
Christian women and 7210 Jewish women to Christian men, out of a total of 111697
married Jews (Source: 2001 Census, Crown copyright 2004, see Appendix 1).
Traditionally, exogamous Jews were ostracised by their own community and
sometimes a son or daughter who married out was mourned as if dead. Penalties are
generally less severe today, but intermarriage is rarely undertaken lightly (Frankental
and Rothgeisser, 2009: 117). Some Jews suffer personal heart-searching when
considering inter-faith marriage, a feeling of disobeying God’s command to be
distinctive, betraying their ancestors, or breaking the 614th Commandment.22
22
Fackenheim’s response to the Shoah was to set out a new commandment – to survive as Jews – for to
disappear would be to grant Hitler a posthumous victory (Fackenheim, 1978: 22-24 quoted in Fry, 1996:
46 – 48). This new commandment supplements the 613 Biblical commandments about Jewish life.
84
One writer notes that, ‘those of us (Jews) who are intermarried often feel
apologetic or embarrassed among other couples (the really Jewish families) in the
synagogue.’ Yet he argues that intermarriage does not necessarily spell the end of
Jewish survival: ‘I have seen many intermarriages that are a source of strength, both for
families and for Judaism itself, giving children a rich sense of the possibilities of faith
and belief in the world’ (Osherson, 2001: 138, 139).
The gentile partner may also undergo heart-searching over whether to proceed
with the relationship. This can be especially acute when those around them express
disapproval:
It takes courage, commitment and determination for a born-gentile to marry into
what can be a formidable situation in which their relationship is often the sole
cause of grief and unpleasantness. The Jewish family may forget that their inlaws may also be upset. On the other hand, the gentile family may be surprised
by the Jews’ antagonism (Zemmel, 2000: 188).
I interviewed six people married to Jews, one man and five women. Two of the
women had been about forty years old when they first met their husbands, and both
these men were divorced, their ex-wives having been fellow Jews. The others had met
their spouses when they were younger. All the Jewish spouses had been born in the
United Kingdom, as had all the Christians, although two of the Christian wives had
spent several years overseas as young adults. Two Jewish spouses each had a Germanborn parent who had come to Britain as a refugee from the Nazis. One couple had no
children, and of those who did, only the couple in which the wife had converted were
bringing them up as Jews. All the couples with sons had had them circumcised but only
one child had also been baptised as an infant, while the son of another couple had been
baptised in his teens, at his own request.
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
Interviewee 5, in her forties, was brought up as an Anglican. Her parents sent
her to church and Sunday school as a child, although they did not attend worship
themselves; she said that she could not remember ever attending church as a
family, not even at Christmas. She met her husband at University, and
converted to Judaism so that they could marry in a synagogue, although they
also had a civil marriage before completing the conversion course. She kept a
kosher home and ensured their two daughters were brought up as Jews. When I
visited, there was evidence of Judaism within the home, such as mezuzot23 on the
doorframes, and two sets of dishes in the kitchen, for the separation of meat and
milk products as required by dietary rules. However, she stated that the
conversion was ‘more an academic exercise’ than a spiritual journey, and ceased
practising Judaism after the divorce.

Interviewee 7, a native Welsh speaker in her early thirties, met her husband at a
concert. They had a short civil marriage in a hotel, followed by a blessing
ceremony which reflected both faiths, and Welsh and Jewish cultures. She was
brought up attending chapel, and her husband had been educated as a Jew up to
his barmitzvah, although he no longer attends synagogue. There was already
some diversity within her natal family; two of her relations also married spouses
from overseas; one cousin married an African and now lives in Kenya, and one
married a German shortly after the Second World War. Her own grandmother, a
cook-housekeeper in a vicarage went to church while her grandfather went to
chapel (the church/chapel divide was significant at that time in Wales). They do
not keep kosher, and have no children.
23
A mezuzah is a small cylinder containing a scroll on which is written the Shema, ‘Hear O Israel’ etc.
and affixed to the doorposts of a Jewish home.
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
Interviewee 12 was brought up as a Methodist, and still regularly attends a
Methodist Church where he is Church steward and Circuit steward, taking
responsibility for the legal and financial side of Church life. His birth family
was the most homogenous of the sample, having lived in the same region for
several generations and he could recall no marriages to people of different faiths
or nationalities. He met his wife through work, and they married 35 years ago in
a Registry Office. She was from a family who although Jewish, were not very
religiously observant. Her mother had escaped Nazi occupied Europe and
married into a family of English Jews. Their two daughters attended church as
children but were not baptised; this, he explained was out of sensitivity for his
wife’s feelings.

Interviewee 13 was previously married to another Christian, a Methodist, by
whom she had three children, but the marriage ended in divorce. She was
already able to negotiate different languages and cultures. During the Second
World War, as a small child, she was evacuated with her family to a Welshspeaking area, and learned sufficient Welsh to act as interpreter for her parents.
She also lived in Africa as a young adult, as her first husband’s work took them
overseas. She met her present husband, who also had three children by his
previous Jewish wife, at a party. They have been married for some thirty years,
and have a son, who was both circumcised and baptised. She is from a
nominally Anglican family and was sent to chapel as a child in Wales. She now
belongs to an Anglican church.
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
Interviewee 15 was brought up in a Baptist family, although she is currently a
member of an Anglican church. She met her husband who had recently been
divorced, at a party organized by the singles club to which she belonged. She
had taught in Africa for several years in her twenties and thirties, and said she
became quite knowledgeable about several other faiths and cultures: ‘everything
but Jewish. I didn’t know any Jews.’ They married in a civil ceremony and the
wedding reception was ‘quite big’. Her husband already had two Jewish
daughters, and together they have a son who was circumcised but not baptised,
and who attended church with his mother when he was younger. Both partners
are actively involved in interfaith events and in religious education, and she
organises the tours, worksheets and hospitality when schools visit the local
synagogue. She keeps a kosher home, although she will eat treife24 foods
outside the home.

Interviewee 16, a widow, was married for over thirty years. She was adopted as
a baby by a couple who were practising Christians. Her parents-in-law were not
observant Jews although at first they had opposed the marriage of their son to a
gentile. Her father-in-law was a refugee from the Nazis who had arrived in
Britain on a kindertransport. She has two sons who were circumcised but not
baptised as babies; they were introduced to both faiths and joined in with some
practices as they grew up. One son chose to be baptised in his early teens and is
now involved in his local Anglican church. She said that religion was not very
important to her, and that she would have converted to Judaism had her husband
wanted her to. She had encouraged her husband, before his death, to
24
Non-kosher
88
acknowledge his Jewish heritage and have a Jewish funeral, which was
conducted by a reform Rabbi. The family sat shiva25 although only for one
night.
Abrahamic Faiths: Christian-Muslim marriage
Muslims and Christians share some characteristics – both are monotheists
revering many of the same prophets, and both aim at an ethical way of life, including
prayer, fasting and charitable giving. Muslims acknowledge both Jews and Christians
as having received genuine revelations from God, the Tawrat and the Injjul
respectively. Jesus is revered by Muslims as the prophet ‘Isa, and his mother Maryam
is also honoured. But the Hebrew and Christian scriptures are believed by Muslims to
have been corrupted and the Qur’an to be the corrected and final Word of God. While
Islam abrogates Judaism and Christianity, both Christians and Jews are respected as
‘People of the Book’ (al khitab) and Muslim men are permitted Jewish or Christian
wives in certain circumstances. (Some scholars maintain that this should happen only
in a country governed by Islamic law) Conversion to Islam is seen as preferable
(Vardar, 2005: 274 – 275) but a Christian or Jewish wife may continue her own faith
and devotional practice although the children should be brought up as Muslims. The
prophet himself had a Christian and a Jewish wife.
The Shar’ia principles on inter-faith marriage are based on Suras 60:10 and
2:222 and related Sunna traditions, and also on the general verses that see men as
guardians over women (Sura 4:35) and Muslims over non-Muslims; consequently a
non-Muslim man cannot have guardianship over a Muslim woman (An-Na’im, 2005:
25
The initial, intense period of mourning, when close relatives of the deceased stay at home sitting on low
seats, normally for seven days. Friends and neighbours bring food as the mourners are not meant to
prepare food themselves or undertake certain other everyday tasks.
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25). Muslims, whether male or female, are not allowed to marry non-Muslims other
than People of the Book:
Marry not idolatrous women till after they have believed; surely a believing
bondwoman would make a better wife than an idolatress, however pleasing she
may appear to you. Nor give believing women in marriage to idolaters till after
they have believed; surely a believing bondman would make a better husband
than an idolater (Sura 2:221).
Some Muslims living in a Western European secular setting who find features of
that society unacceptable distance themselves and their children from mainstream
society. Arranged marriage is widespread among British Muslims, although less so
among those who were born in the United Kingdom. But Muslims who marry nonMuslims may be considered more exposed to corruption, and women to be especially
vulnerable. Honour and shame codes remain important to Muslim families, and a
Muslim woman is not religiously permitted to marry a non-Muslim unless he embraces
Islam (Waines. 1995: 94). Muslim women who do so may be disowned by their family
and community.26
Christian reservations about Muslim-Christian marriage include concerns about
the understanding of marriage, and the religious nurture of children (Catholic Bishops’
Conference of England and Wales, 2010: 65 -71). Christian marriage is understood as
monogamous and exclusive, and although divorce is permitted by some Churches, the
ideal of marriage is lifelong. Islam, on the other hand, permits both divorce and
polygyny, although the latter is unusual except in the Middle East and parts of Africa.
The priority of Islam in the family, with the insistence that children should be brought
up as Muslims is a further difficulty for the Christian partner. Catholic Christians are
26
Heather al-Yousuf who runs the Muslim-Christian marriage support group has told me that an
increasing number of Muslim women married to non-Muslims are seeking help and advice from her
organization.
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expected to have their children baptised and to bring them up as Catholics (Catholic
Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales 2010: 68).27
Christian-Muslim marriages are the most numerous type of inter-faith marriage
in the United Kingdom. The 2001 Census for England and Wales recorded 17163
Muslim men with Christian wives, and 4233 Muslim women with Christian husbands
(Source 2001 Census, Crown Copyright 2004, see Appendix 1). It is likely that the
number of Muslim intermarriages is greater than these figures suggest, as some of the
quarter-million marriages between two Muslims will include those who have undergone
nominal conversions.
I interviewed four women married to Muslims but was unable to gain interviews
with any Christian men who had Muslim wives; possible reasons for this are explored in
the next chapter. Three of the women had been born and brought up outside the United
Kingdom, and while the fourth was British born, she had spent much of her childhood
abroad. They had also all travelled for purposes of work or study. Three of the Muslim
husbands were also from overseas, and the fourth was a second generation immigrant of
Pakistani descent. Two of the women were Catholic, and the sons of these families had
been both baptised and circumcised.

Interviewee 2, a nurse originally from mainland Europe, met her husband, a
Pakistani Muslim while working in this country. They married at a small
ceremony in church nearly thirty years ago. They had considered a mosque
wedding, but decided against it after attending another wedding at the mosque.
27
A condition of the dispensation for ‘disparity of cult’ is that the Catholic partner ‘must promise
sincerely to do all in their power within the unity of the marriage [my italics] to ensure that all the
children are baptised and brought up in the Catholic faith’. This allows for some flexibility in order that
the marriage itself is not jeopardized by friction over the children’s religious nurture.
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She was brought up in a family of practising protestant Christians, and became a
Roman Catholic when her children were small. Their two sons were both
circumcised and baptised, having herself arranged for a Muslim doctor to
perform the circumcisions. The boys attended Catholic schools. She said that
her husband did not practice Islam much in the past, although he became more
interested in his faith in recent years. Her sister is also married to a Muslim.

Interviewee 10 was born in the United Kingdom, brought up in South Africa and
later lived and worked in the Middle East where she met her husband. They
subsequently moved to the UK. She is an Anglican, attending church and a cell
group regularly. Her husband is less religiously observant than she is, although
she says that he and his family are well informed about faith and she enjoys
discussions with them. Two of her husband’s relatives have also married
Christians from Western Europe, and one of his closest friends is a Christian
from his home country. They have no children.

Interviewee 14, a research student from North America, met her husband, a
British-born Muslim of South Asian descent, initially through the internet. They
married in a Registry Office two years before our conversation, and had a Nikah
a few weeks before it. There was some opposition to the marriage from his
parents who had expected him to marry one of his cousins. She was brought up
as a Catholic, and there is already some ethnic diversity in her extended family,
which she describes as black, white and Hispanic. She had already explored
different religious traditions including the Hare Krishna movement, and had
taken classes in Buddhist meditation and attended Unitarian worship before
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embracing Islam. This had happened during the period between making our
arrangements to meet and the interview itself, although she felt it was not a
sudden decision, but a step on her spiritual journey. They have no children.

Interviewee 17, a widow, was born in the Caribbean into a family of Portuguese
descent, who were devout Catholics. On leaving school, she won a scholarship
to study at a British University. She met her husband, also an overseas student,
through his sister who was her close friend. She returned home for a year but
then came back to Britain and married in a Catholic church, and also had a
Muslim nikah. They had two sons who were both circumcised and baptised.
She is a lifelong practicing Catholic.
Dharmic Faiths
The issues for Christians married to members of Dharmic, or ‘Eastern’ faiths are
somewhat different. The perception of some of these faiths as idolatrous, polytheistic,
or superstitious is a concern for Christians in relationships with Hindus, and some
Christians find it disturbing to enter a Hindu or Buddhist temple where devotees may be
observed offering gifts before images and statues. Further, Christians have no shared
scriptures or traditions with these faiths. A second difference concerns attitudes to
marriage and family life; polygyny sometimes occurs in some of these faiths, although
it is unusual.
Hindu attitudes to other faiths are generally tolerant and inclusive; Hindus
believing that there are many paths to God, and Jesus may be revered as a holy man or
an avatar, one among many manifestations of the divine:
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Jesus Christ is an ineradicable part of modern Hinduism. The power of the cross
is felt in the lives of many Hindus in different walks of life. Hindus adore
Christ. The way in which Christ has touched their lives, and their responses to
him are varied: some Hindus acknowledge Jesus as an avatar; some others
consider him as a yogi, a satguru and so on. Mahatma Gandhi for instance,
showed great reverence to Jesus Christ and publicly acknowledged his
indebtedness to him, but refused to limit Jesus Christ to the boundaries of this or
that church (Seshagiri Rao, 2003: article 6).
However, for Christians, Jesus is normative and cannot be a mere avatar.
There are four stages of life in Hinduism – student, householder, forest-dweller
and renunciant. Although there are ascetics, marriage is encouraged for those able to
marry and many deities are married. Marriage is usually monogamous. Hindu attitudes
towards inter-faith marriage are complex although the scriptures do not mention interreligious marriages, and when Hindus marry people of other faiths, conversion is not
expected. Traditionally Hindus prefer marriage within castes and are not very positive
towards inter-faith marriage, although at times intermarriages between devotees of
different deities have been encouraged in India. In the late eighteenth century the
French cleric J A Dubois observed that despite the rivalry between followers of Vishnu
and of Shiva, some couples were intermarried and ‘each observes the practices of his or
her own particular creed and worships his or her own god in the way that seems best,
without any interference from the other’ (Dubois, 1999: 109). Hindu-Sikh
intermarriage is also widespread. For both Hindu and Sikh families, where there is a
resistance to intermarriage with Muslims or Christians, it is perhaps less likely to be for
specifically religious reasons than on cultural grounds, or because Islam and
Christianity are proselytising faiths. However, in some families arranged marriage is
the norm and a ‘love match’ is regarded with disapproval (Mody-Spencer, 2000).
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Arranged marriages still occur among British Hindu families, although to a lesser extent
than a generation ago.
The 2001 Census for England and Wales records 5616 Hindu men and 3369
Hindu women married to Christians, while there were 119311 same-faith Hindu
marriages (Source 2001 Census, Crown Copyright 2004, see Appendix 1). I
interviewed three Christians, two women and one man, who had married Hindus, and
one woman who at the time of interview was planning marriage. All the couples had
met as students.

Interviewee 3 is from an evangelical Christian background, and had known her
boyfriend for almost four years. She told me that they were considering
marriage, but that her parents and some friends ‘doubted the wisdom’ of her
marrying someone who was not a Christian. She herself had also agonised
about the decision. There was already some diversity within this family: her
own grandfather was a Parsee from India while the rest of the family were
British.

Interviewee 6, a teacher, met her husband in the late nineteen sixties; she said
that he was the first Asian she had ever met. He came to Britain to study, but his
parents remained in India. Her parents were not religiously observant, and she
used to attend church with her grandmother, who, she told me, had a great
influence on her life. She encountered considerable parental opposition and
married in a small civil ceremony in London without her family being present.
Two friends also married Asian partners in the same week. She and her husband
95
have three children who were blessed in the Church of England and also by a
Hindu monk. Two of the children were baptised when they were older, by their
own choice.

Interviewee 9, from a practising Catholic family, met his wife at University.
Although she is Hindu, he says that she is not practising. They travelled to his
wife’s home country for a Hindu wedding and had a Catholic blessing after
obtaining a dispensation. When I interviewed him, the couple were expecting
their second child. Their son was not baptised, but had a blessing ceremony in
church. He attends Mass with the little boy.

Interviewee 11, also a teacher, met her husband while they were students. They
married in an Anglican church and then travelled to India for an Indian wedding,
which, she remarked, had pleased the family very much. They have two
children who were baptised in the Anglican Church and also blessed in a Hindu
ceremony. Her own parents were mixed – her mother was an Irish Catholic and
her father Protestant, and there was some opposition to institutional religion at
home. Her husband was born in the United Kingdom to Indian parents, although
he spent part of his early childhood in India. Her parents-in-law are practicing
Hindus and her father-in-law acts as a celebrant at Indian weddings and pujas.
He was educated at a Jesuit school in India, and also sent his own children to a
Sunday school in East London, believing it important for them to understand
British Christian culture.
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Buddhism is also seen as inclusive and tolerant, and many Buddhists accept
inter-faith marriage, although sometimes with reservation. While the Buddha
acknowledged the importance of the householder, the noble eightfold path aims at
liberation from attachment, whether social, political or marital. A search through books
about Buddhism yields very little information on marriage and family life, whether
same-faith or inter-faith. According to Gross, Buddhism is atypical in that marriage is
not subject to religious laws, and there is also no dogma concerning intermarriage, and
there can be a range of opinions on it. Some Buddhists would argue that intermarriage
is difficult because there is no common basis while others would welcome a nonBuddhist but sympathetic spouse (Gross, 1990: 131). Consequently Christians with
Buddhist partners may encounter less opposition from parents-in-law than those in other
interfaith relationships. The 2001 Census for England and Wales records over thirteen
thousand marriages between Christians and Buddhists (Source 2001 Census, Crown
Copyright 2004, see Appendix 1).
I interviewed one man with a Buddhist wife. Interviewee 8 is from an Asian
diplomatic family, was born in the USA and grew up in various countries. His family
are devout Catholics; one grandmother had been a convert from Hinduism. He met his
wife at University in the United Kingdom. She returned to her home in the Far East
after graduation but later joined him in the United Kingdom. He describes his wife as
an atheist. They were married in a Catholic church, and although there was a period
when he used to attend infrequently, he now takes their two little boys to Mass more
regularly. The children have been baptized. He feels that Buddhism has not really
informed his own faith and practice.
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Marriage is a holy estate within Sikhism, and the wedding ceremony may take
place at home or in the gurdwara. Bhai Bhagwant Singh Ji writes that:
The rules for an ideal family life enumerated in Guru Granth Sahib are universal
rules and must be followed by all the devotees. To be happy in life we must
grasp them, understand them and implement them in our lives.
In our own simple words we advise the couple as follows:
The groom and the bride must vow to be loyal and faithful to each other. From
today the groom must treat every other woman as his mother, sister or daughter.
The bride must consider her husband as her divine-partner and must never boast
about her parents, family in front of her in-laws; must completely merge herself
into her husband and must become his better half (Kapoor, 1996: 60, my italics).
While Sikhs respect other religious traditions, there is an apparent reluctance to
accept inter-faith marriages especially between a Sikh woman and an adherent of
another faith. Arranged marriages remain common among British Sikhs and inter-faith
marriages with Hindus may be acceptable, but not with members of other faiths. While
researching the topic, I was informed by several people that mixed couples find it
difficult to obtain a wedding in a gurdwara, particularly if the bride is the Sikh partner.
Sikhism appears to be more retentive of its young people than some other faiths – the
2001 Census suggests a markedly lower rate of exogamy than some of the other faiths.
There were less than three thousand Christian-Sikh marriages compared with sixtyseven thousand Sikh same-faith marriages (Source 2001 Census, Crown Copyright
2004, see Appendix 1). However, such statistics need careful interpretation.
Three of the Christians I interviewed had Sikh partners; one man had been
married for about twenty years, one woman for nine years and another woman had
cohabited for over three years, but the relationship finally broke down some months
after the unexpected death of their child. All reported that their partners’ families were
initially unwelcoming, and one that the coolness persisted, but all said that their own
families accepted the relationship.
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
Interviewee 1 had a five year relationship with a Sikh, who already had a
daughter by a previous, arranged marriage. He had custody and when she
moved in to his flat, she cared for the little girl. The couple then had a son who
died suddenly when he was two years old. The child was not baptized, but he
had been taken to the Sikh grandparents’ home for a naming ceremony when he
was a few days old. He had a Christian funeral and was buried in the Parish
churchyard, after being taken to the gurdwara for ritual washing and Sikh
prayers. The couple separated some months after the child’s death. Religion
was a matter of some contention in her own birth family but she formed an
emotional attachment to the Anglican parish church, although did not attend it
regularly. She sometimes attended the gurdwara when her son was small,
particularly on family occasions, and would wear traditional Indian clothing for
these events. She had left school with few qualifications, yet managed to
acquire a working knowledge of her partner’s family’s language, which she
called ‘Indian’.

Interviewee 4 has been married to a Sikh for over twenty years. They met
through a dating agency. He was brought up a Methodist, although he did not
attend worship regularly for the first few years of his life. At school he had
several Asian friends, and his profession currently brings him into contact with
young people of different religions and cultures. They have two children in their
teens, and they have attended the gurdwara, Baha’i’ worship and several
different churches as a family. The children were baptised at their own request.
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
Interviewee 18’s mother is an Irish Catholic, and her father an Englishman who
converted to Catholicism on marriage but who subsequently rarely attended
services. She met her husband more than twenty years ago, when they were
both at college. They married nine years ago in a Registrar’s Office, with only
two friends as witnesses, and they have two sons who are now at primary
school. The children are not baptised, although a puja was held to celebrate
each birth. She told me that she did not go to any church for several years
because she felt out of place, but now attends an Anglican church.
Diversity
One of the most striking features of this sample was their personal experience of
diversity, frequently before they had met their partners. This was apparent in several
forms: religious or ethnic difference within the family of origin, bilingualism, a preexisting interest in other cultures, close friendships with people of different faiths, and
the experience of living, studying or working overseas. A number of the partners, too,
had similar experiences. I shall briefly describe the ways in which diversity was present
in the personal backgrounds and experience of the interviewees.
Several of the interviewees had either parents or grandparents who were of
different nationalities. Three had one English parent and one who was Irish or Scottish,
and as one of them explained, ‘that was quite a big thing in those days’ (post war
Britain). One interviewee had one Indian grandfather and three British grandparents,
another had one Eastern European Jewish grandfather, and a third had grandparents
from different Asian countries.
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Three came from mixed Catholic/Anglican families. One woman said: ‘I would
call my dad more of an atheist, but he was converted. I’m surprised there wasn’t a bolt
of lightning when he did! But I think that to get married in the Catholic Church at the
time you had to. But he was quite friendly with the Catholic priest.’ (Interview 18) The
children of this family went to church regularly and to Catholic schools. In the other
two families, there was some animosity towards institutional religion, and these sets of
parents eventually divorced. One woman said that her Irish Catholic mother had
negative feelings about the church, and although she and her siblings were christened in
an Anglican church and sometimes went to Sunday school, regular church attendance
was not a major part of their childhood. Another woman’s father was more hostile
towards the church, and refused to have his children baptised:
I wasn’t christened; um, my mum wanted me to be but my dad didn’t. My
mum’s dad’s catholic but my mum wasn’t a catholic; she’s just Christian; not
strictly, she doesn’t go to church or anything, but she does believe in God. And
she wanted to have us christened, but not my dad because he’s not religious. He
was dead against it (Interview 1).
Not only did some interviewees have relatives of different Christian traditions,
but other faiths were present in some natal families. One interviewee had a Jewish
grandfather and another had a Parsee one, while a third’s grandmother had converted
from Hinduism to Catholicism on the occasion of her own marriage. In addition two
interviewees already had siblings who had married spouses of faiths different from their
own.
The presence of diversity within the interviewees’ own families reflects the
findings of other researchers. Khatib-Chahidi, Hill and Paton observed that half of their
sample of women in cross-cultural marriages had ‘foreign’ antecedents, specifically that
at least one parent or grandparent had been born in a different country, or had been a
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citizen of another country from their children (Khatib-Chahidi, Hill and Paton, 1998:
51).
Four of my sample had been brought up or spent extensive periods of time in
different countries, either because of their parents’ work (two interviewees), that of their
spouse (one), or their own career (two, including one who had also lived overseas as a
child). Living in more than one country meant that interviewees were exposed to
different influences, learned to negotiate different cultures and sometimes learned a new
language, and perhaps made friends of different cultures and faiths. The skills acquired
in adapting to life in different countries seem to be transferable to other areas, including
the dialogue in which these inter-faith couples are involved. Even when families lived
within a religious or cultural enclave, as had happened in three cases, there was still an
awareness of different groups. Another commented that although she had been brought
up in a closely knit Catholic community in the Caribbean, where at first she knew very
little about the five other religious groups in her country, she ‘must have had leanings’
and became interested at first in the ecumenical movement. One of the women said that
reflection led her to a wider appreciation of others:
I was brought up in South Africa, apartheid South Africa, and when you are
brought up as a white in apartheid South Africa you have to reflect, to try to
make sense of it. And, one of the points is very much that we were living in
complete isolation, segregation and we knew absolutely nothing about the
‘Others’. And once you start breaking down the barriers and get to know
people, people are people aren’t they? That’s when relationships develop and all
your prejudices can fly away. But it’s the separation that fuels prejudice I think
(Interview 10).
Bilingualism also seems to have been significant. One woman had studied
French as the major part of her degree. Two of the British born Christians who had
married Jews spoke Welsh. One, from a Welsh-speaking family, remarked that
marrying someone who did not understand Welsh was as daunting for her as it was for
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her husband to marry a gentile. Some of those who had lived overseas spoke two or
more languages fluently. Three of the Christians who were born overseas studied or
worked in the UK, although English was not their mother-tongue. It appears that
bilingualism or multilingualism assists people to understand more than one mode of
thought, and according to some psychologists, early bilingualism seems to promote
other cognitive advantages in some children, including originality, problem solving
abilities, and linguistic flexibility (Hamers and Blanc, 1989: 78).
Some interviewees related an early interest in other cultures or friendships with
people of other faiths. One recalled being fascinated as a young child by pictures in a
school geography book:
I remember in the book there were pictures of two faces, a Hindu and a Muslim;
I don’t remember what the lesson was about, but I remember staring at the
Hindu face and thinking ‘I wonder what he is like.’ And I didn’t know anybody
Asian. Isn’t it strange that even then I felt [interested] and I didn’t know how
things were going to be in my life (Interview 6).
Other writers have pointed to a fascination for the ‘Other’ in the background of some of
those who marry into different groups (Barbara, 1989: 17-18).
School and college life gave the opportunity to mix with a wider circle and two
reported close friendships with people of the same sex but different religions, again
before they met their eventual partners. It seems that the experience of living with
people of different denominations, religions, nationalities or languages, or of having
childhood or college friends from different groups enabled many interviewees to
develop skills of appreciating and negotiating difference while they were still young.
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Romano has also observed that some intercultural spouses are ‘internationals’
whose parents’ work had taken the family abroad, and who had been influenced by
different cultures during their formative years. She argues that consequently they did
not feel they belonged completely to any single culture (Romano, 2001: 13). Some
writers have suggested that those in mixed marriages may have themselves experienced
either a break from their original cultures, so that rules are interpreted less absolutely, or
at least that they are less connected to their origins than those in homogamous
relationships (Barbara, 1989: 14).
Several of the spouses had experiences of negotiating difference comparable to
those of their Christian partners. In four cases both partners in the marriage were from
overseas countries, having met and married and set up home in the United Kingdom.
Some respondents reported that their partners had anglophile parents: this was
particularly apparent in two of the Indian families:
[My husband’s] father was a head teacher in India, he taught English and always
thought of England as The Mother Country, that’s how a lot of people used to
think of England, it was encouraged by the colonial government too (Interview
6).
Another woman’s father-in-law had been educated at a Jesuit school in India
and, she explained, had considered becoming a Catholic priest himself, but is now a
Brahmin priest. When the family came to Britain, her husband was sent to the local
Sunday school because his father felt it was important for him to learn about the
Christian faith.
One woman reported that her Muslim in-laws were well informed about faith
and enjoyed discussing it:
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his father has read a lot of philosophy, he is a very well read man, and we have
great conversations and you know discussions about religion, and our
understandings; he will say ‘you Christians worship three gods.’ Well, I say,
‘not really’, but I go with the flow, whatever and wait for the right moment to
assert a different perspective. It’s very stimulating. I love that. With my fatherin-law and my sister-in-law as well, we have great conversations. I mean, not
constantly, but it will come up: ‘what’s it say in the Qu’ran, is it the same in the
Bible?’ (Interview 10)
Some of the spouses were from well-travelled families, including two whose
fathers had been diplomats. Other families had a history of exile; three of the spouses
had parents who had been refugees. One family had been displaced at the partition of
India, when they had also lost much of their wealth. Two of the Jewish spouses each
had a parent who had escaped Nazi persecution and settled in Britain. Several of the
spouses had also studied or worked in more than one country, and spoke two, three or
more languages well. Some had received a Christian education, and were
knowledgeable about Christianity.
Summary
This brief survey demonstrates that inter-faith couples are so varied as to defy
easy categorisation. The people I interviewed varied in age, ethnicity, general outlook
on life and religiosity. Some had been brought up in devout Christian families; others
were from families where faith was a matter of indifference or even tension. Several
were themselves religiously observant before their marriage, discrediting the popular
notion that inter-faith marriage only happens when faith is unimportant to a person.
Others became more intrigued by matters of faith after meeting their partner. Yet others
were not especially interested in faith at all, but still identified themselves as Christian.
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One of the most striking features of the group was an often multi-layered
personal diversity, something which was expressed in various ways. Did this mean they
already had looser more permeable boundaries? It is difficult to know whether this
would prompt someone into entering an inter-faith relationship, but a positive attitude
towards other faiths and cultures and the ability to deal with difference would certainly
be advantageous. It is not simply knowledge about other faiths and cultures which is
important. I would also suggest that because of their experiences these people have
learned to negotiate differences.
In the next chapter I describe the recruitment of people for interview.
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4: Approaching the Interviews.
Even in describing your theology I am implicitly engaged in a conversation between my
theology and your theology, at least to some extent. My perspective influences what
comes to my attention as I listen to you talk about, and see you practice, your faith;
indeed it influences what it is that I am capable of seeing and hearing, and what I take
seriously in what you say.
(Jeff Astley)
I turn now to the issues which affected my research methods, bearing in mind
that my own assumptions would inevitably influence my choice of methodology and my
interpretation. I shall describe the ethical and practical concerns associated with this
project, and the recruitment of Christians in inter-faith relationships who were willing to
be interviewed.
I begin with a change of terminology. Traditionally mixed marriages, whether
inter-religious, inter-ethnic or international, have been classified as endogamous or
exogamous, and the sanctions which sometimes accompanied religious exogamy
reflected the notion that someone really was marrying out of faith and community. It
could mean breaking all contact with family, and parents might mourn an exogamous
son or daughter as if dead. As one post-war pamphleteer warned young American Jews:
‘No one will without further thought enter into a marital union knowing that it will
mean a lifelong sorrow to his parents, and that it may result in a complete break
between him and the father and mother who have given him life. Such a marriage
usually forebodes a farewell to Judaism and the Jewish people’ (Pool, [n.d.] pamphlet,
circa 1958). But contemporary writers are beginning to question whether mixed unions
inevitably mean parting with faith, even if the religious community remains hostile to
those involved (see, for example, Speelman, 1998). In addition, the families of some
intermarriers do accept the fact of intermarriage, whether grudgingly or gladly. I shall
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therefore use the word heterogamy when referring to the people I interviewed, reserving
the terms exogamy and endogamy for accounts from the perspective of faith
communities.
Before approaching any potential subjects for interview, I needed to define what
information was required, and how best to elicit it. There were two main choices of
research method: quantitative or qualitative. Both methods may employ sampling and
interviewing as part of the process, although the underlying assumptions differ.
Quantitative methods rely on the belief that if sampling is done correctly, the
respondents will represent a typical range of the population being surveyed, so that
generalised rules can be predicated from their answers (Måseide, 1990: 3-5; Lee, 1993:
60). Such methods may be used to test an hypothesis, or to ascertain whether there are
causal connections between events or behaviours. Questionnaires, statistical surveys
and structured interviews are examples of quantitative forms of research. A
questionnaire may be self-administered, and if an interviewer is present she should aim
at a kind of clinical detachment and avoid disclosing her own opinions and feelings or
sharing knowledge. The underlying aim is to control, even eliminate bias (Mason,
2002: 65). For this reason, in the past it was sometimes recommended that researchers
did not engage in topics with which they identified too closely.
Structured research interviews tend to ask standardised questions. These
methods are useful for social surveys, cohort studies and other investigations where
responses can be coded and analysed statistically. An example of this type of research
is the National Census, and some statistics for the incidence of inter-faith marriages and
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households in the UK are already available through the Office of National Statistics
(See Appendix 1).
Quantitative research is sometimes, although not necessarily, linked with a
positivist or scientific stance, but has been criticised on the basis that it is difficult to
achieve impartiality and neutrality and that such research may include unrecognised
assumptions. Standardised, closed questions can channel the responses of interviewees
into categories previously set by the researcher, especially if s/he encourages concise
responses. Westmarland writes that ‘quantitative data, like qualitative data, is
interpreted and often manipulated by the researcher and therefore incorporates
subjective acts within a supposedly pure objective analysis’ (Westmarland, 2001: 3). It
is easy to assume that there are ‘facts’ to be gathered and interpreted by the researcher.
But the ‘facts’ which are sought cannot be separated from their theoretical and social
context, and there are problems in interpreting statistical correlations (Silverman, 1993:
42 - 43). In addition, feminist researchers in particular have raised questions about the
power balance in this kind of research interview which, they argue, subordinates
interviewees especially if female, objectifies their experience and suppresses their selfexpression (Westmarland, 2001: 2). Feminists seek not only to redress power
imbalances, but to attend to women’s concerns as well as men’s. In religious settings,
women’s experiences have sometimes been misunderstood or only understood in
masculine categories (Schneiders, 1983: 105 - 108).
But if the subject matter being investigated is nuanced or complex, quantitative
methods can be too simplistic. This may be the case when specific belief, as opposed to
religious affiliation, is being investigated. Astley argues that the uncritical use of
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questions like ‘do you believe in God?’ with no explanation of what is meant by ‘God’
or even ‘belief’, produces meaningless data in the field of religious research:
Many questionnaire studies in religion continue to suffer from a lack of
intelligence and discrimination in posing their questions, a weakness that frankly
sometimes renders them incapable of supporting the sophisticated interpretative
structures built on their foundation. The excuse that is often made here is that
questions need to be simple and straightforward, so they are capable of being
understood by respondents across a wide range of intelligence and linguistic
ability. But a wooden application of these maxims can sometimes lead to
worthless data, even nonsense-on-stilts (Astley, 2002: 101).
Qualitative research is felt to be especially appropriate when the subject matter
is either relatively unknown, or when interpretation of the lived meaning of a subject’s
experience would be helpful (Gutteridge, 2005: 81). The emphasis is on context, indepth interviews, subjective meanings, emotions and interpretation, and narrative
interviewing is generally classified as a form of qualitative research. The purpose of a
less tightly structured interview is to attend to the meanings given by the interviewee to
their own experiences, and to their perception of causality. Narrative interviews are
also informal in style, having the appearance of a conversation, which should enable
participants to relax, and in turn the interview should yield good quality data. But, with
the exception of completely unstructured interviews, some advance categorization is
still necessary or the interviews would lack direction.
A major advantage of qualitative interviewing is that new discoveries and
insights may emerge during the course of the interview, something which is less likely
to happen in a highly structured interview. The interview and the interviewer herself
can be seen as part of the process of discovery, of data-generation, and the research
interview as a social event in which the researcher is not a potential contaminant but an
active participant.
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Qualitative and quantitative methods are not mutually exclusive; many studies
contain elements of both. Måseide argues that in any case neither objective ‘facts’ nor
people’s interpretations and meanings can alone aid our understanding of the world
(Måseide, 1990: 5-6). Any kind of methodology - quantitative or qualitative - is rigid if
used in ‘pure’ or extreme form (Morse, 1996: 467 - 468) and needs to be adapted to suit
the particular research subject. I am primarily interested in people’s subjective
experiences, their own understanding and the meaning they ascribe to events in their
lives, many of which would be too complex, nuanced or subtle to be discovered in a
questionnaire or even a standardized interview. I chose semi-structured narrative
interviews believing that this would elicit useful data and hoping that as the theological
task in such research is to aid understanding and point towards practical, pastoral action,
then the stories people tell would be the most fruitful means of achieving this.
But attention to detail is as important as listening to the sometimes fascinating
stories of people’s lives. Silverman describes people watching police movies to
illustrate different approaches to ethnography. Some watch these movies because they
enjoy the action, whereas others find the details of police work and criminal activity
intriguing. He argues that those who can attend to routines and mundane details and not
just the excitement are likely to make better ethnographers, as they will form a better
understanding: ‘How police do their paperwork and assemble their files may tell us
more about their activities than the occasional “shootout”’ (Silverman 1993: 69).
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Discourse analysis is a specialised field and there is not space here adequately to
discuss it.28 However, I attended not only to what the respondents actually said to me,
but also to their facial expressions and tone of voice, and the context of the
conversations. Normal speech is frequently punctuated by utterances like ‘um’ and ‘er’,
by hesitations and pauses, laughter, unfinished sentences and sudden tangential changes.
It was therefore important not only to listen to the storylines, but also to attend to hints
and undercurrents, body language and the surroundings in order to build up a picture of
what inter-faith marriage meant in an individual’s life. For example, one woman who
described preparing for Passover in a kosher home talked of ‘changing over the plates,
the cutlery, the napery and the whole bloody lot.’ The words themselves would suggest
irritation at the fuss over having the right tableware for the right foods, but her general
good humour and the tone of here voice indicated a ready willingness to adapt to her
husband’s religious needs. She later added. ‘I suppose [it’s] because I am always
curious and I like different things.’
Narratives recognise that individuals do not have fixed immutable identities
(Elliott, 2005: 1). Indeed, those being interviewed may develop their own
understanding of their situation during the course of the interview. The attention to
what is important to the interviewee, and what parts of their story they see as significant
also points to a shift in emphasis which has taken place in the field of social
investigation since the nineteen sixties. But even where the researcher wishes to hear
the voices and experiences of those she studies, there are still risks – risks ‘of colonising
others’ experiences and distorting their voices to fit in with the harmony, or discord,
that the researcher hopes to hear’ (Clark-King, 2004: 26). And qualitative research can
28
Discourse analysis can involve a number of disciplines which aim to understand communication in
context, whether through spoken or written words, or gestures and signs, and includes sociolinguistic,
psycholinguistic and philosophical approaches.
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be criticised for a tendency to subjectivity (Gubrium and Holstein, 1997: 12), even
woolliness, and the data can be difficult to handle and report on (Astley, 2002: 99).
I interviewed people at a time and place they chose themselves, hoping that they
would therefore be at ease. After all, in most instances I was the guest in their home. If
the power imbalance can be redressed by allowing greater reciprocity in the interview, it
should lead to greater self-disclosure and therefore better quality data (Lee, 1993: 108).
Finding Interviewees: Networking and Snowballing
Initially I recruited interviewees by networking. This process begins with a set
of contacts, some of whom refer the researcher to other contacts, and so on (Lee, 1993:
65). First I asked people in church and interfaith organizations if they knew any
Christians in inter-faith relationships who might be willing to talk with me. If they did,
then I asked them to forward letters from me to the potential interviewee including an
explanation of the nature and purpose of the research, my contact details, a consent
form, and a stamped envelope addressed to me (Appendices 2 and 3). At this stage I did
not know the names of the people who were being approached. I sent over seventy five
letters in this way, yielding some twelve initially positive responses. Sometimes the
response would be ‘I know a couple, but they are not very religious,’ perhaps indicating
that there was little outward observance of either faith. However, I would explain that if
one partner had been raised in Christian faith, it could still be a useful contact. A few
others came through ‘snowballing’ – where one person willing to be interviewed
recruits another, or through friends who had heard about the research I was undertaking.
Although ‘snowball sampling’ – so named because of the incremental growth of the
sample – is widespread in studies of rare or deviant populations because other methods
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may not yield enough results, it can be problematic. Lee, who studied CatholicProtestant intermarriage in Northern Ireland found it disappointing; couples did not
necessarily know or interact with similar couples (Lee, 1993). And where snowballing
does lead to adequate samples, these samples can still be biased, for example friends
who refer others in similar situations to the researcher may be like-minded and share
similar backgrounds or similar attitudes towards faith and family life.
Because of the sensitive nature of the topic, I was careful to reassure them that
the interview would be confidential, that the full transcripts would be read only by my
academic supervisor and myself; and further that any quotations used in my thesis or
any descriptions of individual circumstances would be anonymised. I explained that I
was interested in learning more about how mixed couples meet each other, and the
issues they face in deciding whether to marry, how they fit in with the wider family and
within the faith communities, how they dealt with religion at home – for example what
festivals they celebrated, and whether they kept religious food laws, how they decided
about the religious identity and education of their children and how the Christian partner
was affected by the close relationship with someone of another faith and background.
On receiving a response from someone considering participation in the study, I
followed it up with a telephone call or e-mail, to ensure that they could ask any further
questions before consenting. In some of these calls, the interviewee told me a great deal
about themselves, and sometimes asked about my own interest in the subject. I
answered the questions honestly, without evading direct questions, for example about
my own marriage, children and faith affiliation, although I discovered that I did not
need to say much about myself – the majority seemed satisfied simply to know that I
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was a Christian with a Jewish husband. Some asked a few questions, for example about
whether we practiced our religions, but most did not. Presumably they felt that because
I was in an inter-faith marriage myself, I would understand the dynamics, and was
unlikely to be judgemental about other Christians in inter-faith marriages. If a
respondent was hesitant about participating, I suggested thinking about it for a few more
days. By the time they had reached this stage most were willing, even eager to take
part.
All except two of the people I interviewed were, or had been, married. One
woman was planning marriage when interviewed, and another had lived with her
partner and had a child with him. Both had been in their relationships for over three
years. I decided not to restrict my study to a particular combination of religions such as
Christian/Jewish couples or Christian/Muslim couples, because of my interest in
specifically Christian responses to a variety of partners. I did not include Christians
married to members of oral traditions, such as pagans and wiccans, to adherents of New
Religious Movements, or to members of groups which are seen by most mainstream
Christians as heretical, for example Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians, and Latter
Day Saints (Mormons).
I include two women who had converted to the faith of their partners.
Sometimes marital conversions are nominal, or the convert has done so because he or
she felt pressurised to adopt the new faith. The woman who had become Jewish solely
for the purpose of marriage had ceased all religious practice on the breakdown of the
relationship; the other was included almost accidentally, having embraced Islam
between our first contact and our meeting. I excluded those whose marriage was
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formerly a same faith marriage, but which had become mixed due to the conversion of
one of the partners to a different faith, because the dynamic in these relationships would
quite likely be different than if they had been brought up in different faith communities.
The responses of parents and community to a marriage-become-mixed would reflect the
fact that religion is not just a matter of personal beliefs, devotion and public worship; it
is also a marker of identity and belonging (Dumont, 2003: 369-371).
An early decision concerned whether to include in this study Christians who
were in same-sex, but inter-faith relationships. While the insights of such people can be
valuable – those of the marginalised often are – there were two reasons for not including
them in the study. First, gay and lesbian relationships are discouraged by many
churches and in some instances the difficulties experienced by these Christians vis-à-vis
their churches may concern the same sex dynamic rather than the inter-faith aspect of
their relationships. Their partners may also experience rejection from their own
families and faith communities on the basis of their sexual orientation. Second, one of
the major issues faced by many inter-faith heterosexual partners is the faith identity of
any children they may have. This is not the case for most same sex couples.
Research Problems
From the outset there were a number of potential problems. First, while I was
borrowing ideas and methods from the social sciences, I hoped to shed light on an issue
that is theological in nature, and point to pastoral responses. But, although religion is
socially experienced and socially expressed, social scientists and theologians see
religion and religious behaviours through different lenses:
Sociology assumes that religion is social; anthropology assumes that it is
cultural and theology assumes that it is ‘real’ and irreducible (Percy, 2005: 8).
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Theology and the social sciences involve different mind-sets and priorities.
Milbank challenges ‘secular’ social theories as elusive; they are, he argues, not valuefree but can be theologies or anti-theologies in disguise (Milbank, 1993:3). Brown sees
the social scientific reductionist definition of religion as a central problem; social
science treats religion in rationalist terms, making it into an institutional ‘thing’
comprising churches and religious organizations, those who do or do not attend church,
pray, believe, and other data which can be divided into bipolarities. Besides the
institutions, there are intellectual, functional and diffusive aspects of religion, by which
he means the influence of Christian ideas (in the British case), the role of faith in society
including local government, education and welfare, and Christian outreach among the
population. But things such as ‘folk religion’, superstition and religious activity and
beliefs unconnected with a formal church or organisation are more difficult to measure
and are, he says, largely ignored in the sociology of religion (Brown, 2001: 11-13).
Hervieu-Léger argues that the social sciences and theology ‘collide’ because
they interpret the world using different systems of reference (Hervieu-Léger, 2000: 13).
Social scientists may suspect a ‘theological plot’ at work when the religiously
committed investigate social phenomena, while those who are religiously committed
may disagree with the rationalising and relativising explanations of religious experience
offered by sociologists of religion (Hervieu-Léger 2000: 18 – 20). Each can perceive
the other as undermining. This mutual suspicion, she continues, has occurred in
different settings: in France where modernising political and cultural thinkers,
traditionally opposed to the Catholic Church, believed that religion would eventually
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die out, and in North America where although religion, particularly Protestantism, is
influential, the separation of social science and religion nevertheless developed:
During this process of secularization, social science, in a novel departure, took
over the Protestant ambition of social improvement through rational
management. ‘Sociodicy’ took the place of theodicy, thanks to a special affinity
existing between puritanical Protestantism and sociological positivism in their
common belief in the perfectibility of society (Hervieu-Léger, 2000: 20 – 21).
Second, the subject matter itself raised a number of ethical questions. How do
we justify any kind of research which involves studying other people and asking them
difficult or personal questions? Would finding out about the experiences of
heterogamous Christians do any good for anybody? Even if it could be useful, would
this justify any discomfort caused – however unwittingly - to the participants? Research
becomes ‘an intrusive threat’ if it touches on areas which are private, stressful or sacred
(Lee, 1993: 4). Because this study deals with marriage and faith, both potentially
sensitive areas, it meant discussing issues which respondents could find difficult or
distressing, and it was therefore important to gain informed consent, and to guarantee
confidentiality. However, not all ‘difficult’ subjects are perceived as upsetting and
sometimes respondents are glad to be listened to – perhaps for the first time (Elliott,
2005: 138 -139). This was borne out in my own study; for example one woman who
had become tearful at one point during the interview said at the end that she had ‘never
really talked about these things,’ and that she found it, ‘Cathartic, really.’
Third, the question of personal involvement in the subject matter must be
addressed. Interviewees are not passive respondents, and the interviewer is not
detached from the process, but influences the type and quality of responses. Silverman
distinguishes naturally occurring talk from researcher-provoked data – the latter exists
because of the researcher’s interventions (Silverman, 1993: 201-202). In the past, when
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researchers were advised to avoid subjects in which they were personally involved this
was because it was feared that this would prevent objectivity. However, some current
thinking holds that emotional involvement can lead to more useful data (Westmarland,
2001 paragraph 24). Again, my experience confirms this. It would have been
disingenuous to deny a very personal interest in the topic, and I neither hid nor
announced it. ‘Bracketing’ of one’s own personal interest is, after all very difficult to
achieve, particularly when seeking to establish rapport with someone in order to achieve
a useful conversation. However, most respondents were willing to talk about their
experiences without seeking either my approval or my opinions. After the interview,
we usually had some further conversation and participants would perhaps ask about my
own experiences, or my opinion on some matter – I was careful not to talk too much
about my own family until the interview itself was finished. But personal involvement
in the subject matter influences the entire research process:
The description of another person’s (ordinary) theology will always be partly
dependant on the describer’s own theological presupposition. We notice and
select ‘significant’ themes and concepts from our theological standpoint, at least
to some extent. All description involves selection and all selection is our
selection even if we decide to select everything that a person says (Astley. 2002:
110, his italics)
Any study of this nature depends on the availability of people willing to talk
about themselves. As there appear to be a substantial number of inter-faith couples in
Britain, it might be assumed that finding enough subjects to interview would be easy
enough, even if I were to specify that both the partners should be active participants in
their religious traditions. However I encountered two major problems in finding
suitable and willing interviewees. The first was the fact that people in inter-faith
marriages are a ‘hidden’ population, in the sense that they are not easily identifiable
from electoral rolls, lists in doctors’ surgeries and so on, strategies used by some social
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researchers. Because religious affiliation is not recorded at civil wedding ceremonies, it
would not help to apply to local registrars for contacts, even if they were willing to
disclose such details. Ethnicity and religion are often linked (Arweck and Nesbitt,
2010: 72) and it is possible, using Census data, to identify localities where there are
likely to be ethnically mixed households. However, there is no reliable data for
identifying areas where religiously mixed families are more concentrated (Caballero,
Edwards and Puthussery, 2008:12).
Some researchers begin by screening large populations in order to identify
members of a rarer population, but this is time consuming and does not always identify
many subjects for further study. When the screening process is sampling specifically
religious minorities, it may be less successful than might otherwise be the case (Lee,
1993: 65). Further, it could make some people feel that their privacy has been invaded
when they discover that their details have been discovered in this way. While we may
assume that religiously mixed couples are more likely to live in cities where there are
large ethnic minorities, this is not always the case. If a member of a minority group
lives in a sizeable community, even if they reject arranged marriage, they still have a
greater pool of potential partners of similar faith than someone who lives among the
host community. One student researching Muslim-Christian couples in Leicester
discovered that ‘where there is a large faith group such as Leicester’s Muslim
community, it tends to be more conservative, and there is more pressure not to “marry
out”.’29 Some of those I interviewed did indeed live in large cities, but others lived in
suburbs or small towns and two in rural settings, where their partners were the only
members of any ethnic or religious minority in their villages.
29
The Revd Clare Downing quoted in the Church Times 5 September 2008.
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The second difficulty was that the study dealt with sensitive topics, as discussed
above. Despite reassurances about confidentiality, one group eluded me much more
than others. Christians, both men and women, who were married to Jews, Hindus or
Sikhs were generally willing to talk about their relationships and some evidently
enjoyed doing so. But it was substantially more difficult to find Christians with Muslim
partners who were willing to discuss their marriages, even though the incidence of
Muslim-Christian marriage is greater than other inter-faith marriages. According to the
2001 Census there were over twenty one thousand Muslims married to Christians in
England and Wales, compared with seventeen thousand Jewish-Christian marriages,
less than eight thousand Hindu-Christian marriages and under three thousand SikhChristian marriages (source 2001 Census, Crown Copyright 2004, see Appendix 1).
Given the relative frequency of Muslim-Christian marriages, and the fact that Islam
permits Muslim men to marry Christians I was initially surprised by the additional
difficulty in finding willing interviewees among this group. In three cases I received
feedback from my contacts, explaining that interviewing would not be possible because
the couple were experiencing difficulties. Two Christian wives of Muslims sent
apologies, explaining either that they ‘weren’t very religious’ or that they did not want
to be interviewed ‘at this time’.30 No-one married to a Jew, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist
sent similar messages.
Their reluctance seems significant. Why should Christians married to Muslims
be more wary of a researcher than those married to Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists or Hindus?
There are several possible reasons for the reticence. First, it may reflect a polarization
30
These replies were unexpected, as I had not contacted the people directly, but through a third party.
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between faiths, a situation which has apparently worsened in the past decade. As one
woman married to a Muslim observed: ‘September 11th - that’s when everything
changed’. Others thought that although this was a turning point, the polarisation
between faiths and cultures has been a more gradual process. Six years previously
Waines had cited the Rushdie Affair in Britain as an instance of mutual
misunderstanding and the controversies surrounding the Nation of Islam in the United
States as illustrating polarisation between the dominant community and a black
underclass (Waines, 1995: 259 – 264). Whether or not the events of September 11th
2001 were a defining moment, there is a perception that Islamophobia is widespread in
Britain31 and that the stereotypical image of Islam is of fanaticism and extremism. Yet
there is also a new assertiveness, especially among some young people that is expressed
through renewed commitment to Islam, including dress and behaviour (Bartels, 2005)
and peer pressure among Muslims can affect non-Muslim spouses too.
Second, the fact that Islam, while allowing the marriage of Muslim men to
Christian women, is fairly prescriptive about how these marriages should work, may
have a bearing on the situation. According to Islamic rules, a Christian wife may
continue to practice her faith, but the children of such a union are to be brought up as
Muslims. I interviewed two women married to Muslims who had children, and both
had had them baptised and sent them to church schools. The other two did not have
31
The publishers of the Muslim Directory 2007-2008 list among other things: ‘the continued
stereotyping of Islam and its adherents, the incarceration and proposed extradition of British citizens to
the USA…without any recourse to the British courts… the politicisation of public institutions such as the
police; the shooting and arrest of innocent Muslims… the “media frenzy” which is allegedly “stoked up”
by our government.’ (Muslim Directory 2007-2008:4) According to the Government’s community
website ‘In 2007- 2008 within both the Muslim population and the general population seven out of ten
people perceived that there was religious prejudice in Britain and six out of ten believed that religious
prejudice against Muslims had increased in the previous five years. See
www.communities.gov.uk/statistics:6
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children. It is possible there were others who received my request, whose children were
being brought up as Muslims and who did not respond due to fear of being judged.
Third, if Islam is perceived in the west as oppressive towards women (Waines,
1995: 254 - 255) then Western women who marry Muslims may be disinclined to
discuss their marriages if they have already heard negative comments about Islam from
other women. And lastly, many intermarried people simply want to live normal lives
without attracting attention, and in some areas may prefer to conceal the fact that they
are in a mixed relationship (Lee, 1993: 67). They may minimize their differences
because they do not want to stand out from other couples (Barbara, 1989: 195) or they
may simply want to lead a quiet, ordinary life. Speelman encountered a reluctance to
discuss religious differences among Dutch/Egyptian couples:
When I see interreligious couples as potential experts in the field of
interreligious dialogue, I realise that the main concern of most of these partners
seems to be not to be publicly engaged in dialogue (Speelman, 2001: 11, my
italics).
She writes of a ‘stigmatized identity’ where difference is emphasised:
in interreligious couples the Dutch partner often tends to defend the Egyptian
partner over against the Dutch environment by insisting that although s/he is a
Muslim, in practice that it hardly noticeable, that s/he is completely ‘normal’ as
everyone should be. Moreover, both partners deny that their marriage is
anything but a marriage between two Dutch citizens. Differences pose a threat
because they may have a stigmatizing effect (Speelman, 2001: 58).
If public discussion of differences has a stigmatising effect, then Speelman
suggests that Muslim/Christian couples may cope by denying or minimizing their
differences, avoiding them, or conversely by idealizing them (Speelman, 2001: 58).
Mody Spencer similarly found that many of the ‘love marriage’ couples she studied in
Delhi – a group which included some inter-religious couples – also tried to disguise
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their differences in order to blend into the urban milieu (Mody Spencer, 2000:3). In the
event, I found four Christian women married to Muslims who were willing to be
interviewed. It may be significant that the husbands of all these women were either
liberal in their attitudes to faith or non-practising. But I was unable to locate any
Christian men with Muslim wives.
The interview process
I interviewed most participants in their own homes, or if preferred, in a neutral
space such as a café. This was more likely if meeting someone after work in a city
centre. There are problems with public places, however, such as distraction from
waiters, and the noise of other peoples’ conversations, which is picked up on recording
equipment. Although I was clear that the emphasis in the interview would be on the
Christian partner’s experience, I did not insist on interviewing them alone. In some
settings it might have been culturally inappropriate for a female researcher to be alone
with a male interviewee, even one young enough to be her son. Two wives joined us
for the interview; one sat with us at the dining table and participated fully in the
conversation, the other sat at a slight distance and was content to listen, speaking only if
her husband wanted her to clarify something. Two of the husbands joined us after I had
interviewed their wives, adding further information and opinions. In one case a friend
unexpectedly called at the subject’s home during through the interview and was invited
by the interviewee to stay; she did not join in the conversation, although commented
afterwards. It is difficult to determine how the presence of others influences an
interview, in the case of the wife who participated fully, the husband referred to her a
great deal, especially for remembering details of past events. But it is possible that the
presence of a third person could inhibit conversation.
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I used a small digital voice recorder, placing it near the respondent and showing
them how to stop the recording in case they wanted to say something ‘off the record’ or
terminate the interview. As soon as was practical I transcribed the interviews verbatim,
including emphases, pauses and hesitations, and adding my own field notes and
observations. Taping is more accurate than recollecting conversations, but accurate
transcribing still requires a great deal of time and attention and listening repeatedly
yields better data. But transcribed conversations have their limitations; while tones of
voice, laughter, sounds of strain and hesitations are recordable, facial expressions,
especially slight ones, cannot easily be recorded. And data thus generated does not
speak for itself (Silverman, 1993: 205). The researcher still selects what she believes to
be relevant findings.
Interviewees took it for granted that I understood about Christian teaching and
the details of church life. Some referred to the Bible, to practices like First
Communion, and roles within churches such as Circuit Steward, chalice assistant, or
PCC member. Some of them asked a little about my own interest in the subject, and
occasionally a supplementary question – for example, ‘do you keep kosher?’ or ‘what
religion are your children?’ – but most did not. When I clearly understood the rules of
Kashrut it was noticed (‘it’s nice to have someone who knows what I’m talking about’).
A few used terms from their spouses’ faith and culture, such as nikah (an Islamic
wedding ceremony), porging (a procedure of removing blood vessels and other parts of
kosher meat), and puja (an act of reverence to a deity, for example through offerings of
fruits or flowers) assuming that I would understand. Some were evidently pleased that I
did, making comments such as ‘It’s nice not to have to explain these things.’
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As interviews were to be semi-structured, I prepared a series of questions in
advance in order to ensure that the main topics were addressed (See Appendix 5). I
wanted conversational interviews with a sense of coherence. Therefore the questions
were used as prompts, and adapted to suit the flow of conversation, rather than being
used in a linear fashion. If a respondent brought up a subject that I had not anticipated
but which was likely to be relevant to the study, we talked about that. Some questions
were not used in all the interviews, for example those about children. My focus was on
the following four broad subject areas: the interviewee’s own faith background, events
surrounding their decision to marry (if applicable) and the wedding itself, the way in
which the couple and any children relate to their wider families and faith communities,
and the interviewee’s current spirituality and practice. I aimed to discover who or what
influenced the interviewee during childhood and adolescence, whether they had
received any formal religious education and nurture, and what place faith had in the
family of origin, and listened for illustrative stories and anecdotes. I also asked about
what contact they had with other faiths or cultures while they were growing up, and any
significant religious changes or events.
Questions about current spirituality and practice had to be approached
sensitively partly because of the possible shyness of some people when discussing faith
and partly because some people do not have the language to express what they want to
say. While several of the respondents were enthusiastic about faith, only two had any
formal qualification in theology. Astley calls the beliefs and processes of believing
expressed in the God-talk of those who have received no scholarly theological
education, ‘Ordinary theology’ (Astley, 2001:1) by which is meant what goes on in
everyday lives.
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As I was aiming for a discussion on religious identity, I asked questions about
Church membership and frequency of attendance. Hearing about membership of small
(cell) groups and joining in social events at Church, or about taking responsibility for
some aspect of Church life, also helped me build up a picture of their involvement. I
wanted to know whether their practice was traditionally Christian, and whether it was
influenced or informed by other traditions, including current popular culture. What was
their concept of God, and what language did they use to describe God? I also listened
for experience of a sense of God, a Higher Power or a Sacred Presence. When and
where were these experienced?
Summary
Research into the lives and opinions of people can raise a number of difficulties.
I was aware that objectivity is illusive if not impossible to attain, and that there could be
problems in using methods developed by social scientists to investigate theological
issues. Ethical issues had to be addressed, confidentiality in particular because the
research involved sensitive areas. My methodology was designed to elicit stories and
experiences rather than statistics, and if the research was to be relevant to couples or
pastorally useful, it needed to tackle the issues which couples find important.
My sample does not represent a general population. There was a tendency
toward more middle class interviewees; only one was without formal qualifications, and
almost all were either university graduates or otherwise professionally qualified. The
male/female ratio does not reflect the general intermarried population, and although
there are increasing numbers of men from Christian background married to Muslim
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women, I could locate none to interview. Because of the nature of the study, I did not
have a hypothesis which could be ‘tested’ with my findings. Yet although there is no
stereotypical Christian who marries someone of a different faith, and no typical mixed
couple, some patterns emerged when their experiences and attitudes were explored.
In the next chapter I address the question of where heterogamous Christians and
their families feel at home.
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5: Belonging and Community.
“Our desire to melt into the melting pot is always at war with our wish to be a member
of a distinct group. It’s hard to have it both ways.” (Joel Crohn)
In this chapter I discuss the outer, observable aspects of faith and identity
described by those I interviewed, and in the next I focus on their beliefs and personal
experience. I use the broad categories of outer markers of religious identity and
personal, subjective belief because they are convenient tools and not because I believe
they are separable into distinct classes. Religion and spirituality can be approached
from different angles. I owe the conceptualisations used here to Allport and Ross
(1967) who described extrinsic and intrinsic faith, extrinsic faith meaning outward
religious practice, and intrinsic being the dimension of inner devotion. Extrinsic
religiosity may also bring benefits such as social acceptance, whereas intrinsic religious
commitment is an end in itself. Miller and Thoreson (1999) suggest that the three major
components of faith are belief, practice and experience. Belief is more than assent to
doctrines; it also implies trust in the Truth of those doctrines. Religious practice
consists of observable behaviours like fasting, attending worship, making offerings and
so on, making it relatively easy to study, while religious experience is more difficult
encompassing as it does both mystical encounters with the transcendent and subjective
interpretations.
In reality it is difficult to draw a clear delineation between ‘external’ religious
identity and practice and ‘interior’ spirituality. We internalise concepts encountered
outside ourselves, we form identities against a background of ‘otherness’, and these
identities are not fixed, but moulded and modified over time and according to context.
Rowan Williams, challenging the notion that there is some kind of pre-existing, hidden,
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authentic inner self, asks ‘where is the ‘real’ self to be found or made but in the world of
exchange – language and interaction?’ (Williams, 1997: 30). If identity is contextual,
so is religious experience, as are the ways in which people understand and interpret
those experiences. Amaladoss notes that authentic religious experiences generally
happen to a person-in-community, through particular events or circumstances, and the
symbolism of such experiences – which he insists is not ‘relativistic’, but ‘relational’ is rooted in a particular cultural or historical context. Even apophatic religious
experiences are not pure and detached from the individual’s circumstances (Amaladoss,
2000: 51). Speelman also draws attention to the differences in religious experience
described by her couples (Speelman, 2001: 220-221). When perceiving apparent
commonalities between different faiths, we should remember that seemingly parallel
experiences may have very different meanings within different faiths.
Further, some religious practices reported by my respondents cannot be
organised into purely extrinsic or intrinsic categories. Take, for example, a family
holding a Passover Seder at home. An external marker of religious identity, it
celebrates Jewish origins using traditional liturgy and symbolism. But it is also a party
for family and friends, held in the private domain of the dining room. It is personal too,
and includes exhortations to individuals to internalise the Exodus story: “In every
generation, every Jew must feel as if he himself [sic] came out of Egypt” (Raphael,
1972: 47, my italics). Both personal and communal dimensions of faith are interwoven.
This chapter, which deals with the mainly extrinsic aspects of faith, is in two
parts. I begin with four aspects of the early years of a relationship; first the courtship
and decision to marry, then the wedding itself, which can indicate a couple’s values and
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their position in their communities. Next, I consider conversion, which is sometimes
recommended as a solution to the alleged ‘problem’ of inter-faith marriage. Then,
although the religious identity of children is not the primary focus of this study, it is a
significant indicator of parental faith, so I briefly consider the faith nurture and
education of children. In the second part of the chapter I explore whether those I
interviewed see themselves and their families as belonging to a Christian community,
how they think their partners are received by other Christians and how they in turn
relate to their partners’ religious and cultural communities. I also include descriptions
of bereavement experienced by three of the interviewees, which illustrate the place of
the deceased and the mourners vis-à-vis the different faith groups. Finally the question
of marginality is raised; to what extent are heterogamous Christians part of their church
communities?
Courtship and the Decision to Marry
I listened to the stories of eighteen people. Some had been married for several
decades, while no-one’s relationship had lasted less than three years. This was
important; I wanted to hear people who had encountered difference and had sufficient
time to reflect on the issues they faced. No-one had consciously set out to marry
someone of a different faith or nationality. Indeed, some expressed surprise that it had
happened. There are several factors inhibiting heterogamy, including issues of personal
conscience and family opposition, and for some, the courtship was a period of
prolonged heart searching:
We were seeing each other every day and spending a lot of time with each other.
It went on and on - I suppose we had a lot of agonizing, painstaking talk about
what to do … we were both very conscious of the religious differences we had.
And we still are. And they are irreconcilable. There’s no other word, they really
are. And I was very much thinking at the time, this is not going to work. We
thought ‘how can this work? How can we build a stable marriage and bring up
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children together when we have these absolutely irreconcilable differences?’
But then, every time we thrashed it out we just loved each other, we were still
together, you know. I think it was a question of ‘well we’ve got these
differences, but let’s live with it’ (Interview 9).
It was actually very difficult for me. I felt as if I was being condemned at
Church; because, obviously people disagreed, thought I shouldn’t be going out
with him. And it’s more obvious than some of the other bad things that people
get up to […] and people did sit me down and say, ‘Look, you shouldn’t be
doing this.’ And in fact we did split up a couple of times, because of a crisis of
conscience, confidence. I don’t know, there were a couple of times. And before
we got together, bless his cotton socks, he did chase me, and I resisted, and
refused, ‘no, no, we shouldn’t’ for a variety of reasons, religion being one of
them; at one point I said ‘no, nothing can ever happen between us’. Yes, a
couple of times we split up, but only for a couple of weeks, because basically I
loved him too much (Interview 3).
A third of interviewees spoke of a period of separation before marriage. Three
couples ended their relationship, only to renew it within a few months. In one instance
it was a Jewish partner who had a crisis of conscience, in the other two it was a
Christian. In three more cases, one of the partners had returned as planned to their
home country after graduating, before deciding that they could not bear the separation.
Several couples experienced a degree of family opposition to their marriage. In
general the Christian families accepted the relationship although there could be some
hesitation. One woman said that her parents were worried on religious grounds, ‘they
like him as a person but they just aren’t convinced it’s right’ (Interview 3). One
Christian experienced extreme hostility:
I don’t think I said anything to [my parents] until it was getting more serious. I
had always worked hard and didn’t have boyfriends. I told them I had a
boyfriend and that he was Asian. A few months later I mentioned it again.
Maybe they realised it was getting serious but nothing was said. Then after a
few weeks - I was living with three girls – my father came to the door with all
my things in bags, and said, ‘these are your things. If you ever come within ten
miles of [home] I’ll kill you.’ I don’t know how I got through it. Those three
girls helped me through it. He said, ‘you are not to speak to your mother or your
sister.’ He had a problem with black people. If I hadn’t had those friends I
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don’t know what would have happened. They helped me through it.
(Interview 4)
No-one in the sample had kept their courtship secret until the marriage, as has
been noted in other studies (Lacar, 1980: 44 - 45) but some reported hesitation about
announcing their relationship to the partner’s family. In many countries arranged
marriage is the norm, and for some Asian families a ‘love-match’ causes embarrassment
(Mody Spencer, 2000; Joshi and Krishna, 1998). Three said that their partners had
rejected arranged marriages. This had meant family disappointment; in two cases there
was a prolonged distancing from the Sikh partner’s family, and in another, a period of a
year before reconciliation with the Muslim in-laws. Two more said that their spouses’
mothers would have preferred arranged marriages, but accepted their choice.
Of the six people married to Jews, four had faced little or no opposition from
parents-in-law. Two of these married divorced men, who had Jewish children from
their previous marriage, so if there were any expectations for Jewish continuity these
had already been fulfilled. Two who married young single Jewish men said that their
husbands had encountered serious paternal opposition. In both cases the women
themselves acted to counter it:
His parents were terribly, terribly against him being with me. His mother less
so, but his mother was dominated by his father. Um, and they tried all the
blackmail stuff to try to get us to split up. But when we said about the
conversion, they accepted it. But his dad gave us a hard time to begin with.
And there were cantors and things in the extended family. And they thought of
themselves as quite religious so it was difficult for them to tell people. And
some of them accepted me and some of them didn’t, even after the conversion,
because it was Reform and that’s not good enough for some of them. For some
of them it was worse than nothing32 (Interview 5).
32
The Reform movement is a modernising form of Judaism, which began in eighteenth century Europe.
Many Orthodox rabbis do not recognise the authority of Reform or Liberal Rabbis, and do not accept
their converts.
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His father really tried to make life hell for him because of it, to begin with, but I
am a very strong person and I thought ‘to hell with this’ and I went to see his
father at the office. I’ll never forget it, I went in and saw his brother who was
working there […] and I said, ‘I want to see your father,’ and he looked
horrified, because no-one would dare to stand up to him. And I went in and
said, ‘why are you trying to make life so difficult? We love each other and
we’re going to get married. You know, I am not after your money, I’m not after
anything else, I am just after your son because I love him and I want to make
him happy’. And the old man hardly said a word. He hardly said a word. You
know, I just said, ‘just stop making life so damn difficult for your son!’
(Interview 16).
Zemmel found the degree of opposition to intermarriage among British Jewish
parents to be affected by their own background, with those of Russian or Eastern
European descent tending to be most opposed. She suggests that the history of the
Shoah linked with intermarriage leads to ‘an emotive fusion of feelings’ (Zemmel,
2000: 208). Of the two I interviewed with a parent-in-law who had arrived in Britain on
a kindertransport, one set of in-laws accepted the relationship whereas the other was
reconciled only after several years.
Others faced little opposition from the partner’s family, whether on religious or
other grounds. Two of the Indian-born fathers-in-law (both schoolteachers) were said to
be strongly Anglophile, and pleased to have English daughters-in-law who were also
teachers:
His father was a head teacher in India, he taught English and always thought of
England as The Mother Country, that’s how a lot of people used to think of
England, it was encouraged by the colonial government too. It wasn’t easy for
his mother. I think she may have thought about an arranged marriage for him.
And he was her youngest. His father was quite religious and he went to see a
monk saying ‘my son wants to marry someone from England.’ And after that - I
don’t know if you remember - Mrs. Gandhi’s son married someone from Italy,
so it became quite fashionable, and acceptable; his father could say, ‘Yes my son
has married someone from Europe as well! Someone from England’ (Interview
6).
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Weddings
Sixteen respondents were, or had been, married. The choice of wedding venue
and rituals reflects not only income and taste but also values. The rituals and popular
practices before and during the wedding day often reflect a sense of the ‘right’ way of
doing things (Charsley, 1991: 179) and a lavish wedding may draw attention to the
couple’s celebration of love – a ‘grandiose justification’ (Barbara, 1989: 90 - 92).
Although religious weddings are less popular now than a generation ago33 they are still
considered important or special by many couples, including some who have no strongly
held faith (Verlinden, 2009: 37 - 43). Religious considerations may not be a major
concern for couples – they may simply want a ceremony which is acceptable and
meaningful for both (Lacar, 1980: 68). There are traditional symbols in the liturgy such
as the exchange of rings, yet there is also a growing demand for personalized
ceremonies, tailored to suit the particular couple, some of whom add actions like
lighting a ‘Unity Candle’ or being symbolically bound together, while some choose
poems or exchange additional vows at the reception.
Wedding plans sometimes had to be approached carefully. Several respondents
used words such as ‘difficult’ and ‘complicated’ to describe their discussions, and spoke
of the need to ‘respect both religions and cultures’ and ‘avoid offending anyone’:
if you think about the wedding, it just throws up a whole catalogue of
complications. I mean, do you have a Christian wedding, do you have a Hindu
wedding, do you have both? Will my mother run off screaming if I even just
contemplated having a Hindu blessing – probably yes - but he’ll be completely
upset if I refuse to acknowledge his religion on the most important day of our
lives (Interview 3).
33
In 1992 civil weddings outstripped religious ones for the first time in England and Wales.
135
Another spoke of personal hesitations:
I was frightened actually because although we weren’t brought up in a very
blinkered way, there was so much emphasis on Catholic behaviour and Catholic
truth that, um, here was I about to do something in their eyes that was wrong,
not going to another Christian church, but to a Mosque! So I was very worried
about it, but I wanted to marry him (Interview 17).
A blessing service involving two faiths and two languages also meant careful planning:
It isn’t till you actually start planning that you find out what his expectations
were and what my expectations were, what he could do and what I could do. I
did spend quite a long time trying to persuade him to get married in chapel, but
he said no, that would be just too alien for his parents […] it was quite tricky, it
was a complicated service.
We talked to different people about what we were going to do. I chose hymns,
but we omitted the um, the […] verses that mentioned Jesus. We tried to make
sure that we kept most of the readings so that they were Old Testament. We
didn’t want to offend, to upset anyone […] And he sang the bit from – is it from
the Bible? - about a good wife […] it’s a prayer of thanks for the wife, about
what a good wife does, and we decided that that would be inoffensive. The last
thing we wanted was to take anyone’s religion lightly. We wanted to be […]
respectful to everyone. We did encounter problems and it was quite upsetting
and quite hard (Interview 7).
Most respondents had married in a secular venue, either a Registrar’s Office or
hotel. Eight had no other ceremony; of these eight, four had married Jews, two Sikhs,
one a Muslim and one a Hindu. Three couples had followed the civil wedding with a
religious blessing, either immediately, or in the case of the two converts, after some
time had elapsed. Two Christian-Muslim couples had a Church wedding only. All four
of these were foreign nationals who married in England, and few relations were able to
attend their weddings. Three couples had two separate religious ceremonies; two
having Christian services in the United Kingdom and Hindu weddings overseas and the
third had a Catholic wedding service followed by a nikah34 in the United Kingdom.
34
Muslim wedding, which can take place between two Muslims, or between a Muslim man and a Jewish
or Christian woman
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Reasons for choosing a civil ceremony only varied. For some partners, notably
Jews and Muslims, church décor, iconography or liturgy are unacceptable. The Church
of England marriage service is prescribed by law, and although there can be additions to
the liturgy, the wording, including Trinitarian language, cannot legally be altered. Even
if the couple themselves find no difficulty in a church marriage service, they may decide
against it on the grounds that that family and friends may be uncomfortable. No-one
with a Jewish spouse had been married in a church, while two marrying Muslims had,
but not in Anglican services. Sometimes it was the Christian partner who felt
uncomfortable about a church wedding:
I think, when we got married I hadn’t been going to church for a while, and I
didn’t start going back till six years ago, something like that. So in a sense
church wasn’t a consideration (Interview 16).
Some reported that they would have liked a church wedding, one commenting
that his wedding in a Registrar’s Office was a ‘cause of some regret, maybe.’ Others
did not request a religious wedding because they thought this would be refused,
especially if they had already experienced difficulties with either religious community:
I think if the Sikhs had accommodated us and let us marry there at the
Gurdwara, we would have had a Church wedding too, to balance it. But it
wasn’t going to happen. So we went for the middle ground of the Registry
Office (Interview 4).
Several felt that a civil ceremony was ‘neutral,’ whereas religious weddings may
have required attention to a fair ‘balance’ between faiths and cultures. Others preferred
a Registry Office wedding because it could be kept small or simple, especially if they
feared attracting attention. This was especially likely if either partner’s family had
expressed opposition to the relationship:
In those days you didn’t go and live together, it wasn’t done. I don’t know,
maybe these days we could have just moved in together, but not then. And it
was a bit controversial with an Asian. [We married] in the Registry Office. It
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was strange, neither of us had ever been to a Registry Office wedding and we
simply didn’t know what to expect (Interview 6).
In addition, three of the couples choosing a Registrar’s Office were either expecting or
had already had their first child by the time of the wedding, which may have affected
their choice.
The guest list may signify the responses of the couples’ families and friends to
the marriage. Sometimes when couples of different nationalities wed, the parents of
either party are unable to be present because of distance, although friends or other
relatives may act as a substitute family (Barbara, 1989: 90 – 91). This happened in two
cases, both several decades ago when intercontinental travel was less common.
Sometimes parents choose not to attend, or are not invited to the wedding. Clandestine
weddings are not uncommon among mixed couples and three of my sample had invited
only close friends, one explaining that:
I did want to get married but it seemed very complicated with the family
situation. His family didn’t want anything to do with me, they didn’t meet me
for about three years and my family weren’t very keen at first. It was very … I
don’t know how to put it really, but we decided it would be just the two of us
and witnesses. We just did it on the quiet, which offended [my parents]. That’s
just the way we are, we’re quiet people really. A big wedding would never have
been my thing anyway (Interview 18).
No-one said they had chosen a secular ceremony because faith was unimportant.
But some couples who chose a venue such as an hotel thought that this gave them
opportunities to be creative. Once the legal formalities were completed, a couple could
write their own service and wedding vows, and incorporate symbols from both religious
and cultural traditions, in a bricolage. There were two such weddings; one included
mainly cultural symbols such as garlands for the bridal couple while the other combined
elements of the two faiths involved, including the memory of the bride’s deceased
grandmother:
138
He wanted a chuppah … I actually made it, out of … a cloth that my
grandmother had; she has passed away, but it was a cloth that she sewed, she
embroidered. We basically made it ourselves… and it was quite nice, because
we had the two mothers reading, and my brothers holding the chuppah with two
of [his] ushers… we smashed the glass although we didn’t drink wine in it.
(Interview 7)
No Christian/Sikh weddings were religious, and relations were largely absent
from these weddings. But when the spouse was Hindu or Buddhist, it seems that there
could be more flexibility over religious weddings. This was true even in the two cases
where the wives were described as being either atheistic or hostile to organised religion.
Christians who had Hindu weddings remarked that these ceremonies had underlined the
fact that marriage joins families as well as individuals:
And when we said […] that we were actually going out there to get married, and
we were going to have an Indian wedding, they were actually over the moon –
they thought it was fantastic that a girl from this country would bother going out
there in the middle of summer and go through an Indian wedding ceremony.
So we had a full church service, then […] a reception at an hotel and then our
honeymoon was to go to India. We had the whole works. They were very good,
bless them, they cut it down, because the whole ceremony goes on for two or
three days. They have an auspicious time based on your birth time, the time
when you were born, so there is an auspicious day, and a most appropriate time
of day for you to get married. It doesn’t matter even if it’s two or three o’clock
in the morning, that is the time when the actual marriage ceremony will take
place. We were lucky, ours was about nine o’clock at night.
But we did everything, we let them usher us around, and do whatever we needed
to do - the make-up, hairstyling, outfits, the patterns, the henna patterns, the
outfits and the jewellery, you know it was great… They thought it was actually
fantastic. And we did the follow-up ceremonies as well. The giving of rice to
the other family, we basically did it all, and to them, that was just unbelievable
that somebody [from England] could actually do that (Interview 11).
Two other weddings are worth noting, both having taken place after Registrar’s
Office weddings and the subsequent conversion of the brides. One was a nikah when

Bridal canopy used in Jewish weddings, to symbolise the marital home. The glass from which the
couple have shared wine is also smashed under the bridegroom’s foot at a Jewish wedding. While a few
rabbis will now bless a mixed marriage, the blessing does not include either a chuppah or breaking the
wineglass, as the ceremony must not resemble a Jewish marriage.
139
the woman embraced Islam some two years after civil marriage and the other a
synagogue wedding after conversion to Judaism. In this case the Rabbi had advised the
couple to have a civil ceremony before the conversion course was completed, because
they were already living together.
Conversion
The question of conversion frequently arises in discussions on inter-faith
marriage. It is sometimes assumed that if one partner adopts the religion of the other,
the marriage becomes either more stable or more acceptable to the family whose faith
the convert joins. However, meanings of conversion vary. It can be seen as part of a
personal journey, a sociological process, or as part of psychological change (Cusack,
1996:1). Unless it is forced, it is an act of will, an intention. The primary meaning for
most Christians is a turning, or change of heart. This does not always lead to a new
religious identity, as it can occur within a particular faith, for example when a person
experiences a renewal of faith. Conversion can also mean a change of intellectual
stance or affiliation, or joining a particular community, and the new religious identity is
sometimes underlined by the convert adopting a new name. Saul’s encounter on the
Damascus road, which led to a dramatic transformation of his life and outlook, is one
prototype, but many conversions are gradual. For Rambo it is not an event but a
process characterised by various stages which often show a quest for change, followed
by an encounter with a proselytiser (whether an individual or an event such as a revival
meeting) then commitment and consolidation. He also noted that while there are a
number of ‘ideal types’ of conversion, they occur within a socio-cultural context
(Rambo, 1993: 12-14). They generally involve changed attitudes and beliefs (Savage,
2000:14; Cusack, 1996:5) yet some conversions are nominal, or motivated by
140
pragmatism. If we distinguish too sharply between conversion as radical personal
reorientation and public adherence to a religious community, then we run into the
problem of imposing our own criteria on what is a ‘true’ conversion (Higham, 1997:
14).
Giordan notes that although conversion narratives may stress radical
transformation in terms of ‘before’ and ‘after’, this oversimplifies the experience:
besides the issues of break are issues of continuity, hence one’s identity actually
does not dissolve but is redefined, is modified, both on the individual and the
social side: the old and the new then find a form of co-existence capable of
giving meaning to everyday life. It is a new light that illuminates a previously
existing reality in a new way (Giordan 2009: 1).
Both the converts I interviewed both stressed continuities and minimised
discontinuities.
Marital conversion is apparently decreasing (Bensimon and Lautman, 1977: 10)
and Zemmel found that a high proportion of converts in her sample had done so after
marriage rather than before (Zemmel, 2000: 299). Some of those I interviewed had
either considered converting to the faith of their partners or faced pressure to do so but
only one had actually done so as a condition of marriage, and recalled her resentment:
He was emphatic that the children should be brought up Jewish, so he said to me
not in so many words that he couldn’t marry unless I did convert. I didn’t have
a lot of choice (Interview 5).
Conversion to Judaism is a lengthy matter, and involves learning about Judaism
and living and worshipping as a Jew for a year or more, then demonstrating knowledge
and commitment to a panel of Rabbis. Jews do not generally seek converts, and some
Jewish traditions actually discourage conversion; customarily, a Rabbi should only
consider an applicant the third time s/he requests conversion, as persistence
demonstrates sincerity (Rosenberg et al, 1988: 81).
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The Jewish convert felt that she never shifted her basic beliefs and values,
although she found the conversion course intellectually stimulating:
To be honest with you, I treated it as an academic exercise. I have a very, very
broad faith. I was brought up and baptized in a Christian church, but didn’t take
a lot of part in it. I believe in something but I am not sure what it is […] so I
wasn’t actually giving very much up. And I treated the conversion as an
academic exercise.
Yet she embraced Judaism thoroughly:
I had to go to synagogue regularly for a year to prove commitment, and it was
quite intensive really. They watched you quite closely and expected you to be
involved in the charitable stuff and the social side as well. We were kosher, we
kept milk and meat separate – it’s good to be telling someone who knows what
I’m talking about! I have to explain to people what I mean about milk and meat
sometimes. We had separate cutlery and crockery for milk and meat; we
weren’t absolutely fanatical - we did it at home and then went out for a curry
sometimes (laughs). We had kosher meat, nearly drove me crazy, but that was
because if I am going to do something, I am going to do it properly. If it was
about bringing up the children in a Jewish household, then I was going to do
that. But it was an academic exercise. I applied myself to it. And then they sent
me down to London to the Beth Din35 (Interview 5).
Conversion to Islam, called reversion by Muslims who consider Islam to be the
‘natural’ religion of humankind, simply involves reciting the Shahada36 in the presence
of two witnesses, and is considered sufficient by many. Conversion is not generally
accompanied by emotional expression, and the convert may change gradually (Kolig,
2010: 69). However, the new convert is expected to practice the faith, pray, keep the
dietary rules and learn about Islam, but in practice, how and when is largely up to the
individual (Dutton, 1999: 158, 164).
35
Rabbinical court, dealing with various matters including conversion.
The two-fold declaration of faith that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of
Allah. This is the first pillar of Islam.
36
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The convert to Islam had been brought up as a Catholic, explaining that she was
agnostic for several years, then explored Hare Krishna meditation and attended a
Unitarian chapel:
I started going to a Unitarian church [and] began to think, ‘there is more to this.’
Me being agnostic was really me trying to put everything on the back burner,
and not really acknowledge it […] and so it just started making me think. I
loved the way [the minister] was bringing in different traditions, within like one
service; she brought up Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For me [embracing
Islam] felt like a progression. I wasn’t going to leave the Christian side out. I
don’t think you can study Islam without studying Christianity (Interview 14).
Both converts had been brought up within the church, but maintained an
independent outlook. Neither described herself as particularly attached to Christian
faith nor did they explicitly reject it; both felt they had been somewhat agnostic, while
finding religion ‘interesting.’ Neither convert saw a major discontinuity between the
faith they were leaving and that which they were joining. For one conversion was a
conciliatory move, making her acceptable to her parents-in-law, yet it would be
inaccurate to call it nominal as she was deeply committed in the sense of practising the
outer, behavioural forms of Jewish identity and learning Hebrew and all the complex
food rules. But despite orthopraxy, she did not interiorize the beliefs of Judaism - ‘I
treated it as an academic exercise’ - stressing that her beliefs had ‘never been firmly
fixed’. Both she and her husband ceased practicing Judaism before separating. For the
other, embracing Islam was the end of a journey which had involved exploring other
spiritualities. She felt that she was not rejecting her former identity, but growing and
changing:
I believe that God, because of the whole Abrahamic tradition, that God is letting
people into heaven for having good intentions. [Islam] isn’t as extreme as
anything out there. I guess that the main thing for me is I am glad I have a very
good husband [but] I don’t think you convert for somebody (Interview 14).
143
She stressed continuities - ‘it’s not that different, not as different as people
think’ - and mentioned links and similarities between different religions, comparing
Salat (formal prayers) to a Christian congregation reciting the Apostles’ Creed. She
described Muslim behavioural standards in terms of good solid sense which fitted her
own values and preferences. For example, she agreed with the ban on alcohol, having
known people with drinking problems, and saw the female dress code as compatible
with her own tastes: ‘he wouldn’t like me to go out in a mini-skirt, but that was never
my style anyway before I converted’.
Although conversion is sometimes seen as a solution to the ‘problem’ of
religious difference, it does not eradicate cultural differences, and a convert can still feel
marginal (Bensimon and Lautman, 1977: 237; Mariner, 1999: 100). The Muslim
convert said that her in-laws initially resented her:
It was more I think just because I was different anyway. It was an issue with
him saying ‘I don’t want to marry my cousin’. And they were saying, ‘Oh,
gora’ or some other nasty word for me. They didn’t know me, but I wouldn’t
say they were absolutely warm the first time that I went over to meet them. It
was actually quite scary for me. There were undercurrents… you have to
understand that in his family they speak Pushtu and I mean that a lot of times I
don’t actually know what’s going on (Interview 14).
However, conversion within a support system of kinship or friends can reinforce the
convert in their new identity and assist in consolidating belief systems (Rambo, 1993:
108 – 111). One other woman said she had been willing to convert, but her husband
had not requested it, while several of the interviewees rejected the idea of conversion
either for themselves or for their spouses:
If you really love someone, you love them for who they are. So how can you ask
them to convert when that will change them? (Interview 6)
144
Children’s Identity
Fourteen of the couples had children. One of the immediate decisions facing
new parents is their children’s faith identity, and according to Chinitz and Brown, this is
more likely to be that of the mother (Chinitz and Brown, 2001). However, their article
relates to North America, but in Britain, where many inter-faith marriages include a
Muslim partner, the picture may be different. A second decision is whether to welcome
a new baby into a faith community. All except one couple had marked the birth of
children with at least one ceremony, either at home or in a place of worship. Most with
Hindu or Sikh partners had a blessing with a family gathering, usually at the home of
the Asian grandparents, or special prayers and, where permitted, a meal at the
gurdwara. The Christian partners tended to play down the religious significance of
these ceremonies, and stressed that they were about blessing, and marked acceptance
into the community:
we took our children to be blessed, because I thought that’s what is important –
blessing (Interview 6).
With a new child, what they do is they are received by the community and you
take a lovely square scarf that goes on top of the byd and a gift of money and
they announce the name from the book. Sikh children are sometimes given the
name out of the book but we had already got a name, which was ok, and there is
a prayer and blessing. It wasn’t so much the religious significance as the
acceptance from the community (Interview 4).
As well as being christened she also had an equivalent sort of ceremony […]
when she was quite young and she was blessed by the priest and they did a sort
of mini type ceremony. It’s like an acceptance. In the same way as you have
been accepted into the church, isn’t it, it’s an acceptance into that culture, that
religion. And I would say that it’s probably - it’s more of a blessing. For a long
life, to be prosperous and that kind of thing. But there is a religious
significance, a religious side to it, and it was probably explained to me at the
time. I’ve forgotten, because a lot of it is in Sanskrit and you can’t follow that
very easily (Interview 11).
145
In all families with a Jewish or Muslim parent, the sons were circumcised,
although circumcision does not in itself confer religious identity in the way that baptism
does.37 But it does represent the covenantal joining of the child to God and to the Jewish
people (Schneider, 1989: 174-176). Three of these families also had their children
baptised, one mother told me of an antenatal agreement to have any sons both baptised
and circumcised. But if circumcision was felt to have religious significance, this was
not mentioned. Two of the mothers, both married to Muslims, had made the
arrangements themselves, choosing medical practitioners, and it had been a clinical
procedure with no prayers and no family gathering. Two of the Jewish husbands
booked medically qualified mohels38, and one of these did not say the traditional
prayers. The other family had a traditional mohel and a small family gathering.
Schneider found that some parents accepted medical circumcision but disliked the
public ceremony, saying, for example ‘my husband is not Jewish, and while he thought
the circumcision was okay, he hated the idea of having a big fuss made because of this
‘operation’ on our baby’ (Schneider, 1989: 174).
Baptism is seen by Christians as entry into the Church. Five of the couples had
their children baptised as infants, and in four of these families, only the Christian parent
attended the baptism. One Hindu father was present at his daughters’ baptisms along
with some of his family. But consideration for their partner’s wishes influenced some
people’s decision not to have their children baptised, although it could still cause a great
deal of heart-searching:
37
Baptism is generally understood as entry into the church, not to a particular denomination. But it also
signifies acceptance into a community, and for this reason, private baptisms are often discouraged. See
Christian initiation and Church membership British Council of Churches Working party report 1988
38
Circumcisers.
146
I wanted the kids to know my religion […] they weren’t baptised; I would have
liked them to have been baptised but it would have put my husband in a difficult
situation. It would have been too cruel for him […] We took our children to be
blessed, because I thought that’s what is important – blessing. We took them to
be blessed –I have forgotten part of it - in the Church of England, because the
vicar here understood where we were. Each of them we took for a blessing and
a short service, and we also took them […] to be blessed as a Hindu. We wanted
to bless them all, and in both […] areas, to make absolutely sure! And that felt
comfortable for both of us (Interview 6).
The bigger issue was children - a far bigger issue than marriage, and a much
more difficult issue because the actual marriage, it’s two adults, you can sit there
and think about the differences. But when it’s children, it’s so much harder. I
sat and agonized about this - I remember spending a day looking at websites to
see if there was such a thing as a kind of ‘Baptism Lite’. There isn’t. You
cannot not do it. There are no ways round it, you can’t claim [a child] for the
Church and then not quite do it - there is no way round it (Interview 9).
Two other Christians who had not had their children baptised, but who nevertheless
took them to church regularly were from non-conformist traditions and were
accustomed to adult baptism.
Besides raising questions about the faith identity of children, parenthood can be
the catalyst for a renewal of faith: ‘for many couples, parenting causes their own
spiritual struggles to begin again after a period of dormancy’ (Osherson, 2001: 142).
For some of my respondents parenthood brought with it a sense of responsibility to
nurture the children in their faith:
I am responsible because I know it isn’t going to come from [my wife]. It was
only when [our son] was old enough, that I felt the sense of responsibility to take
him to church, that was when he was about two, that I started going to church
regularly, and that indirectly strengthened my own faith (Interview 8).
A woman who had not previously attended church regularly said that taking her
children stimulated her own faith:
to be honest if anything I am becoming more interested in it, but there are lots of
aspects of it which I don’t fully understand […] I’m a bit like the children,
starting off I suppose. I think it’s probably because I am in a situation where the
children are going through that experience, so it’s put me in that situation, and
147
also I think because, yes, I think I am mature enough and you get to a certain age
when you can explore (Interview 11).
Where relationships between couples and extended families were close,
grandparents also contributed to the religious nurture of children. One man said that his
mother read Bible stories to his children, and one woman said that her children
sometimes accompanied their grandfather to pujas. No-one reported grandparental
pressure to have children baptized, although some Christian parents may have worried
about whether their own parents would be upset if children were not baptized.
Children’s religious education was also discussed. The two Catholic parents
with school-age children had sent them to Catholic schools, and two more families sent
their children to local church schools. All the children who went to church also
attended some church-based children’s activities, such as Sunday school or catechism
classes. The children of the Jewish convert received a Jewish education, but otherwise
no children received any formal instruction in faiths other than Christianity. Yet most
parents wanted them to know about both faiths and some Christian mothers taught their
children about both traditions, and encouraged, where possible, engagement with
grandparents, especially if the father was not closely connected to their own community.
This was particularly likely where the mother was a professional teacher. One said that
she bought books about Sikhism and books of Indian stories for her children, stressing
that as they lived in a white area, she wanted to encourage positive black and Asian role
models.
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Couples and Communities
Given the varying views about social and community life between different faith
groups, partners of different faiths may have different perspectives of the world, the
community and their place in it. Speelman points out that because of the embeddedness
of religion in everyday life, differences in attitude, opinion and behaviour are inevitable
for mixed couples (Speelman, 2001: 127). In addition, they have already crossed over
normal boundaries by their marriages. But do divergent world views necessarily mean
marital discord? Ward argues that in a pluralistic context, the mixing of different
religious and cultural groups can lead first to confused boundaries and syncretism, and
then to a separation of issues of Truth from social identity. Consequently religious
belief becomes privatised – he insists that this is not because of either secularism or
anti-religious movements, but simply because of increased contact with and interaction
between different religious groups. In this sort of context, where individuals have to
determine matters of Truth for themselves, some continue to follow familiar and trusted
traditions, and some embrace other religious views. While secularity in southern
Europe is largely a reaction against religious privilege, American secularity can, he
argues, spring from serious positive and personal commitment to religious Truth (Ward,
2000: 106 – 107). He adds that where there is positive toleration of religious diversity,
it springs from the need of different, yet mutually dependent groups to establish fair and
respectful relationships with one another (Ward, 2000: 125). We should note that the
positive appreciation of diversity is distinct from mere tolerance, which may be
grudging.
If Ward’s analysis is correct, then mixed couples for whom a secular or neutral
‘space’ is important may be protecting this space not because faith is unimportant to
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them, but precisely because it does matter. The space may be internal (evident in
attitudes and conversations for example) or expressed externally (such as the decision to
get married in a secular venue rather than a place of worship, even where a religious
wedding would be permitted). There is a difference between mutual tolerance in the
positive sense of the word, which is intended to make the relationship more harmonious,
and the ‘bracketing’ of one’s beliefs or principles, which implies suppressing or hiding
faith. I shall return to this theme.
Tradition itself is a term which needs qualification. I have already drawn
attention to the fact that however centralised their authority appears to be, faith groups
are not monolithic. There is always some internal diversity, and it is difficult to identify
a text-book example of a Muslim, a Christian and so on, or even of a Sunni Muslim
woman from Saudi Arabia or a Southern Baptist from the United States. Although I
have referred to particular faith and cultural traditions throughout this study, it is with
an awareness of the danger of stereotyping. Breger and Hill argue that if we take it for
granted that ‘traditions’ are (or should be) continuous and unchanging, then we
oversimplify the matter. It is easy to assume that some cultural practices represent the
‘essence’ of a given group, that somewhere there is a set of ‘golden rules’ which are
accepted and practised uniformly by all members of that group. An associated
assumption is that members of the group are a cohesive, interacting and self-aware
community. This, they argue, may suit politicians, but the assumption of an ‘imagined
ethnic community’ ignores differences and divergences within a given group (Breger
and Hill, 1998: 9).
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Speelman asks how intermarried Christians and Muslims remain loyal to their
own religious traditions, in other words how do they ‘keep faith’ while remaining in a
healthy relationship? She suggests that emphasis on commonalities is one strategy, but
adds that the profound differences between Islam and Christianity cannot be ignored.
She found evidence that mixed couples developed ways of mutual communication and
stretched their religious boundaries to the point of what she describes as ‘maximal
inclusiveness’ (Speelman, 2001).
Heterogamous Christians and their churches
Among the Dutch/Egyptian couples Speelman interviewed, several of the
Christian partners had no formal church connection, although some said that they
prayed at home. But my sample was slightly different in that most of those I
interviewed were currently connected with a Christian church, whether regular attenders
or not. One had felt unable to return to her previous denomination, fearing intrusive
questions about her lifestyle and her partner, but began taking their children to a
different one after a gap of several years. Two more reported that they had changed
churches at least once, and that this was because of their relationship rather than for
some other reason such as a geographical move. One had become Catholic because she
felt the Catholic Church was more supportive in helping her bring her children up as
Christians. One couple could not settle into a worshipping community during their first
few years together; they wanted to worship together and had attended the gurdwara,
Baha’i’ meetings and the village church, before joining a Pentecostal church where they
felt accepted among other ethnically mixed couples. At the gurdwara and the village
church they felt excluded, although in different ways:
After we were married a bit, we used to go to the gurdwara, and even after our
first child was born we went. He remembers going. But you know, people were
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accepting to our face, but [my wife] was more in tune with what was going on in
the background, what people were saying, which was making her
uncomfortable.
[The church] is in a very picturesque setting, so […] is mainly used for
weddings, even people who don’t live in the parish. The main congregation are
older people, retired. It’s kind of a wealthy area. People who are retired
professors and things like that […] they had roles in the church, in the choir, the
person that carries the cross, he would come in carry it around, put it down and
go. That’s his job. A lot of people had their own roles and things, and egos
going on and power games […] people would cross each other all the time
(Interview 4).
Speelman reported that one of the reasons that inter-faith marriages are seen as a
threat by religious communities is because the families of mixed couples are unlikely to
be among the ‘core’ members of a congregation (Speelman, 2001: 4). However, several
of my respondents were actively involved in Church life, taking on a range of
administrative, liturgical and pastoral responsibilities. This may reflect my recruiting
methods, as I made contact with many of them through people involved in faith or
interfaith groups. There were communion or chalice assistants, Sunday school teachers,
a trained counsellor employed in a Christian organisation, a Parochial Church Council
member and a Methodist church steward. Others sang in choirs, acted as sides people,
or made the coffee after Sunday worship. Several joined in small groups for prayer or
Christian education, either long-term, or for a season such as Lent, and two had studied
theology to degree level or beyond. Many of the roles assumed and tasks undertaken
were not apparently connected with the fact of being in a mixed faith relationship, but in
a few instances interfaith insights were considered important and to enhance their roles.
The counsellor related how she had worked with young people of different faiths and
ethnic groups, and the youth worker with Asian boys. Both felt that being in mixed
relationships themselves, they understood their clients’ cultural issues better than might
otherwise have been the case. But even some of those who appeared to be actively
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involved in their churches reported feeling marginal at times, something which supports
Speelman’s findings.
Indeed, some said that they had been anxious before marriage about how they
and their partners would relate to their respective religious communities. For example:
my […] concern was that […] he is Muslim, and I am Christian, and I remember
when thinking ‘no’ [about marriage] the image in my head was that I would not
be able to take up a pew in church, you know to go with my family and take up a
pew, and I recognized that, I felt that I wanted that (Interview 10).
We were both very conscious of the religious differences we had. And we still
are. And they are irreconcilable. There’s no other word, they really are. […]
It’s not just a question that she doesn’t believe in religion, she thinks that
religion - stinks (Interview 9).
Further, those Christians with Muslim spouses tended to be less involved in their
churches although worship and study remained important. Some interviewees felt that
not attending church as a family affected their standing in the church. Phrases about
being ‘different’, ‘not fitting in’ and ‘not ticking the boxes’ were used, although not
everyone could specify the precise nature of the differences:
When they were younger, at church [my son] would have loved to have taken
the offertory up. But somehow we never fitted in really. Because we were
never there as a complete family, and they always wanted mother, father and
children to take the offertory up, and [he] was never allowed to do it, although
he would have loved to do it. When it was his first communion, the children did
it, but he wasn’t chosen. Perhaps I should have made more of a fuss, because
there are other children [at church] who don’t fit into this old Catholic family
thing (Interview 2).
All the Christian men took their children to church. They commented on the
difficulties of keeping toddlers contented in a service, one noting that it was unusual to
see a man in church unaccompanied by his wife, especially if he is with small children:
a man on his own in the Methodist church certainly is a bit uncommon. There
are lots of women on their own but you don’t often see a man. And I know, I
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remember whenever in spring when they hand out daffodils to the children and
say ‘go and find your mother’ [the children] would always come to me with
them. It was always a reminder of why I was there on my own. But it’s never
bothered me. I have never felt isolated or excluded by reason of the fact that I
was there on my own. No. (Interview 12).
Church-going is among other things, assert Hammond and Shibley, a
community matter (Hammond and Shibley, 1993: 42). Several spouses went to church
with the Christian partner. All the wives accompanied their husbands at least
occasionally, Christmas carol services and Midnight Mass being mentioned most.
Hindu and Sikh partners were more likely to do so than Jews or Muslims, although one
Muslim husband asked for people at church to pray for him when he was ill. One
woman said that she and her Hindu husband both led busy lives, and that attending
services gave them the opportunity to stop and reflect: ‘You don’t often get that time,
that chance’ (Interview 11). But one Jewish husband resisted even entering a church:
I find Churches a great source of history and I am always going into them when
we go on holiday. He was reluctant coming in; I got it out of him, and I said,
‘I’m not converting you […] it’s such an interesting source of history and
architecture!’ I mean I can go into Bevis Marks39 and admire it
(Interview 15).
The Catholics were the most likely of the Christian partners to be connected to a
church. There were four Catholics, two men and two women, and one former Catholic
who said that she did not ‘tick all the boxes’, having a partner who was not a Christian,
and a child who was born before their marriage. After several years she started
attending an Anglican church. The Catholic widow had remained a faithful member of
the church throughout her life.
39
Historical synagogue in the City of London
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Three women had very little current involvement in church life. Two of these
were bereaved; one having lost her husband and one her child, and the rituals
surrounding death had meant for them a closer connection with both faith communities.
The widow, whose late husband was a non-practising Jew, spoke of the warmth and
support they received when he was terminally ill and following his death. She
mentioned the local rabbi and friends in the Jewish community, and people at the parish
church where their son worshipped. The third person with no interest in church life was
the divorcée who had converted to Judaism, but had ceased to practice any faith on
separation from her husband.
Two others, both formerly regular worshippers, said they did not currently go to
church often. One had moved to a different part of the country two years previously,
and had not found a church where she felt ‘at home’. Both said that recent events in
their lives - primarily health and family difficulties rather than any cultural or religious
differences with their partners - had prompted them to question their faith. In the case
of one woman, difficulty in forgiving someone who had wronged her inhibited her
return to Church.
What of their churches responses to their partners?
It seems to have depended
on a combination of factors: the personalities involved, and their expectations as well as
the leaders and congregation of the churches. In general, interviewees had positive
experiences of clergy and church leaders:
The vicar was very helpful. He realized that [my husband] didn’t really want to
come [to their child’s baptism]. I had told him that he was Jewish really, and he
said that’s all right, he can wait in the hall and you can join him for a cup of tea
afterwards (Interview 13).
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Only one person reported a difficult encounter with a Christian minister, who, she felt,
was ‘making conditions’ before he would baptise her child. But fellow Christians could
be less sympathetic:
The worst moment [at the baptism] was in the church […] some earnest nosey
parker said to me, ‘Where’s your husband?’ You’ve got to ignore this sort of
thing. She was quite right, why didn’t I have a husband with me and I’d got
these hordes of children? (laughter) (Interview 13).
I mean - this is my big thing - in terms of friends it’s fine, there is no problem
with them. I have friends who are very adhering to their Christian faith but
[also] totally accepting. There’s no problem with them. [But] sometimes people
in the congregation, maybe they think that I’m not a complete Christian, that
there is some kind of defect in my belief. And sometimes if I say it’s the same
God, and try to say there are different pathways, different expressions, I see their
eyes glaze over. Most of the time I keep it to myself. I don’t really share or
open up. I have to some people but not to other people. And it depends on their
background too. One of the ladies is from Indian descent. And she was brought
up partly in India so she is familiar with cultural mixes and religious mixes;
intermarriages. But for someone brought up in middle England, it’s harder. I
think some people are uncomfortable with it (Interview 10).
Lack of acceptance of the relationship by other Christians could raise doubts and selfquestioning:
you know being in India and finding out really made me think about what I
believe. I found it was a wonderful experience, yes I did, but I was also
checking out, have I done the right thing? I thought well, was my father right?
He could well have been. Have I done the right thing? Well, other people
thought Hinduism was occult. And in Hinduism they have all these avatars, and
idols, and people said Hinduism was like the occult and – ‘don’t worship an
idol!’ and so for my own benefit I had to check this out (Interview 6).
Some felt less influenced by the opinions of other people:
I think that looking back we did have discussions about what people would
think, what will parents think, what will our friends think; but as you then go on
in life and achieve things – we have both achieved what we set out to achieve –
then you get your confidence and self-esteem. It is there, and quite solid. By
the time you get to our age you aren’t [looking for approval], it’s ‘like it or lump
it’ (Interview 11).
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Christians and their partners’ religious communities
One factor which affected the people I interviewed was the physical proximity
or distance of their families and faith communities. Some remarked that whether
parents, in-laws or other close kin lived in the same city or the same country made a
difference to their relationships within the family and communities. For example, two
Muslim husbands, both foreign-born, had devout Christian wives who had sought out
mosques for them, but both preferred not to attend. One wife explained that her
husband did not really interact with others from his home community, and that his
interpretation of the Qu’ran was at odds with that of people at the local Mosque:
I’ve asked him, I have told him there’s a lovely mosque [nearby]. But, not
really, he doesn’t go (Interview 10).
The other thought her husband’s reluctance to engage with other Muslims was
due to embarrassment because his family were not Muslims:
Deep down I think – because he doesn’t introduce me to that many people – they
keep ’phoning but he doesn’t ’phone them back – there are certain people that
are strict, and perhaps he is a bit embarrassed because he hasn’t managed to
convert me. There is pressure on him somehow – he doesn’t say it but I get that
feeling sometimes. They sometimes say that ‘so-and-so has converted, you
know’. We had a friend, and they couldn’t have children, it was eighteen years
they were married, and she converted to Islam and she had a baby! (laughter)
(Interview 2).
Sometimes partners did not engage with their own faith communities because they were
seen as ‘rigid’ or ‘controlling’.
A gendered difference was apparent in the way that partners related to their own
communities. Four Christian men were interviewed, and two of these men’s wives who
were foreign-born – a Hindu and a Buddhist – were described as either atheist or antireligious. Although they remained in good relationship with their natal families and
participated where possible in family occasions, they showed little desire to connect
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with a local temple or sangha. The other two wives, one Sikh and one Jewish, were
British born, and they similarly did not belong to any group from their own religious
tradition. For these women culture was expressed through such things as food and
décor in the home rather than religious practice or membership of a congregation.
Consequently the Christian husbands had little contact with their wives’ faith
communities.
The Christian wives had various experiences of connecting to their spouses’
communities. Most of them were interested in learning about the faith, culture and
practice, and demonstrated detailed knowledge of the social structures and expected
behaviour. This interest was evident in some of the homes, with paintings and other
artefacts, religious and cookery books. One of the Christian wives, a former teacher,
was actively involved in organising trips for local schools to the synagogue:
I said ‘the only way, Harold, if you’re doing it and I’m helping you, the only
way to do it is in five groups.’ So I have worked it all out for him, done a worksheet. And only I am allowed to do it, you know, as a teacher (Interview 15).
Another Christian-Jewish couple had helped a younger, secular Jewish couple organize
the celebration of their son’s birth with a brith (circumcision) and party.
In Chapter Two the concept of ‘Double Belonging’ was raised, meaning that a
couple, or perhaps their children, belong to more than one faith community. The
Association of Interchurch Families argue that their common baptism transcends the
boundaries between different Christian denominations, but inter-faith couples have no
equivalent basis for belonging to one another’s faith community. Further, no-one I
interviewed, including the two converts, wanted this kind of double belonging. The
couple who had attended several places of worship were seeking one place to worship
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together as a family. In general, although respondents found aspects of their partners’
faiths and cultures attractive, they had a clear identity. What several did emphasize was
the need for different religious communities to accept outsiders without expecting
conversion.
Summary
How can the findings about engagement with one or both faith communities be
interpreted? First, many interviewees reported subjective experiences of being different
or marginal both in their churches and in their communities. This is not surprising
given that almost all the interviewees had grown up with religious, cultural, or linguistic
diversity, or had lived in different countries either in childhood or early adulthood. All
of the couples were aware before their marriage that their different religious
backgrounds could cause difficulties, and had developed ways of coping with it.
Offering to convert was one strategy. Either a religiously neutral wedding or one which
included elements from both religions, or even two weddings, was another. These
couples were very careful to be sensitive to both religious traditions and to avoid
offence. A few couples chose to avoid attention by having quiet weddings. Another
strategy was to accompany the spouse to public worship or to family celebrations,
particularly at important religious festivals. Children’s formal religious identity was a
potential difficulty; a few had their children baptised, while most others had one or
more blessing ceremonies. Most of those who had their sons circumcised chose a
medical procedure rather than a religious one. Many parents encouraged their children
to learn about both faiths and cultures, perhaps from grandparents.
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Second, their perception of themselves as different or marginal was sometimes
reinforced by others – if not by family then by fellow worshippers. At the extreme, this
could mean being effectively disowned by parents, which had happened to two women,
one Christian and one Sikh, and sometimes lesser sanctions happened. Many of the
sample reported feeling uncomfortable in church circles on at least one occasion
because they were in a mixed faith relationship, and some had changed churches for this
reason.
But the religious marginality of these Christians may be the catalyst to a more
inclusive or creative spirituality. They were all aware to a greater or lesser extent of the
need to negotiate differences and to be sensitive to other peoples’ beliefs and values.
And those whose own parents were either indifferent about faith, or suspicious about
the religion of their partner had to work even harder at making sense of their own faith
and relationships than those whose parents were ‘devout liberals’ who accepted the
mixed faith relationships of their children.
In the next chapter I shall explore personal beliefs and practice in greater detail.
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6: Faith at Home
‘If you asked my husband about religion, religion has such a different meaning for him
than for me. Religion to me is actively going to church and taking part in a church
community, which I don’t at the moment to be honest. And religion and culture and
tradition and how he eats are all intertwined for him. So he wouldn’t dream of eating
pork. And yet apart from the last family wedding he went to, he hasn’t been to a
synagogue.’ (Interview 7)
This chapter is concerned with the impact of belief on home life and personal
practice. In the previous chapter I noted that despite their sometimes active
involvement in church life some heterogamous Christians still feel marginal. Here I
change my focus, asking how they practice their faith at home, where the balance
between the two faiths may be delicate, but where there are opportunities for individual
or family expression. I look at the impact of their partner’s faith, especially regarding
food and drink, and also at how the festivals and holy days of both faiths are celebrated.
I then ask whether they discuss their beliefs, doubts and experiences with one another or
with other people, and examine the issue of faith and doubt in the light of faith
development theory. I ask how they consider that their own faith has been affected by
life with someone of a different religion. Finally, I make two general points: one about
the responses of the churches to the issues raised by these intermarried Christians, and
one about the position of heterogamous couples as links between different religious
communities.
Western Christians, who are accustomed to being part of a majority may be
struck by how deeply embedded some faiths are within the family or group. Faith may
be expressed through public worship and through private prayer and study and everyday
behaviour, and may also be evident in home based practices, including celebrations and
mourning rituals. Western Christians do not emphasize the home as a place of worship,
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although the notion of the Christian family as ‘domestic church’ has attracted renewed
interest in the past few decades. Some homes may contain icons or crucifixes, but
whereas a traditional Jewish family welcomes the Sabbath with a ritual meal and
blessings at home, and the home of devout Hindus may include a little shrine, many
Christians tend to associate religious practice (apart from personal devotion or grace
before meals) with the church building. If other homes have shrines or are the locus for
rituals, what about the homes of mixed couples?
I met all but three of the respondents in their own homes, which afforded an
opportunity to observe décor, books and artefacts, and to ask about any religious or
cultural items on display. The home reflects the couple; Barbara, who interviewed
French/North African couples points out that while the basic furniture may be like
anybody else’s, wall hangings, musical instruments and other decorations tell a
particular story:
As far as the purely material items are concerned, everything is functional and
western. But Africa is nevertheless there, distantly, in a decorative, symbolic
and musical guise (Barbara, 1989: 74).
In some of the homes I visited, there were reminders of Africa or Asia. Some of
these things were seen as simply decorative, invested with no special religious meaning.
So a hand-woven cloth or even a little statue of Ganesh could be on display for aesthetic
reasons, an attractive souvenir from India. Sometimes when I asked about an item, I
would be told that it had sentimental significance (for example it belonged to a
grandmother). When she interviewed Jews in mixed and conversionary marriages,
Zemmel noticed that some items were more likely than others to indicate a strong
Jewish identity. Those who possessed objects such as tefillim (phylacteries) or had
separate dishes were more likely to have a strong Jewish identity than those who had
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only books or even a Chanukiah40 (Zemmel 2000:275ff). This may be because of their
connotations: a Chanukiah is an attractive and decorative object connected with a
festival, whereas tefillim are personal possessions used in orthodox prayer. Separate
dishes for meat and milk products indicate adherence to the food laws. Further, not all
apparently religious items were connected with personal devotion. One home contained
a beautifully bound set of Islamic books which, I was told, were rarely taken from the
shelf. Sometimes objects had different meanings for the two partners. One couple had
by their bedside a framed piece of Qu’ranic calligraphy and a picture of Jesus at prayer.
The Christian wife said she loved the beauty of the Qu’ran, and that her husband liked
the picture of Jesus, which, he said, portrayed him ‘as a human’.41 Although both items
were overtly religious, they were not competing for centre place.
Besides the items connected with religious practice, I asked about instances of
family devotion. Only one interviewee said that they prayed as a family, generally an
extended ‘grace before meals’ at Sunday lunch-time when they might choose a short
reading from the Hindu scriptures or the Bible, or a prayer from either tradition. In
other families, occasions for family prayer happened infrequently if ever, and tended to
be formal rituals such as the Passover Seder meal or prayers after a significant event
such as the birth of a child or news of a death. But even rituals to welcome a new child
into the world tended to be organised by grandparents, especially if Asian, and usually
took place at the grandparents’ home rather than that of the couple themselves. The
Friday evening kiddish and Sabbath dinner was not celebrated either except by the
convert to Judaism when her children had been younger, although there were vestiges of
this practice in another home, where, I was told, the telephone was switched off on a
40
41
Distinctive eight-branched menorah (candelabrum) used for celebrating the feast of Hanukah.
Muslims see Jesus, or ’Isa, as a human prophet, not as divine.
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Friday night and they had ‘a quiet relaxed meal with a bottle of wine,’ but no Sabbath
prayers. Zemmel found that when Jewish men married gentile women, they were
unlikely to light Sabbath candles or say kiddish on a regular basis (Zemmel 2000: 269278). Only one of the Jewish/Christian couples regularly held a Passover Seder at
home, although several marked the Passover season with special foods or were invited
to celebrate with Jewish relations. Some couples had no home-based rituals or practice
at all:
Do we do them? No, not really. They tend to be with the [extended] family. We
don’t do anything here like that […] but we wouldn’t sit down and say grace
before we eat. We go out to it. We go out to the church, to the Christmas
service, we will go out to pujas and it doesn’t happen here. Except for
Christmas trees and things (Interview 11).
Faith in the Kitchen
Besides religious and cultural items, special ingredients and ethnic cookery
books were sometimes visible in the houses I visited. Indeed, food frequently reveals a
particular religious background. I visited two kosher homes, something which was
evident from first stepping through the door, where there were mezuzot.42 Both women
told me how they had learned the complex rules of kashrut, about keeping milk and
meat products separate to the extent of having two sets of dishes, cookware and utensils,
and about special provision for the Passover season.43 Although the women themselves
ate non-kosher foods, including pork, outside the home, they and their husbands felt it
important to keep their homes kosher – ritually clean. Most other Christians married to
Jews reported that although they did not keep kosher they nevertheless avoided pork
42
A mezuzah is a small cylinder containing a scriptural scroll, affixed to the doorpost of a Jewish house,
in obedience to the command: ‘Write [these words] on your doorposts and your gates’ (Deuteronomy
6:9).
43
The laws of kashhrut specify separate tableware, cookware and utensils for meat and dairy products,
and meat and milk products should not be consumed at the same meal, or even within a few hours. Meat
is slaughtered in a ritual manner by a slaughterer who has satisfied himself that the animal is healthy, and
certain meats and fish are prohibited altogether. All traces of blood are removed from the meat. During
Passover, all forms of leaven are removed from the household, as are foods containing various grains
which can ferment. The precise interpretations of these rules vary slightly between different communities.
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products and shellfish at home. Only the man with a Jewish wife reported that she had
‘absolutely no hang-ups concerning food.’ But Jewish cuisine was important for several
couples and there were Jewish recipe books in some kitchens, although these foods
were simply enjoyed and conveyed no special religious significance.
Similarly, most of the wives of Muslims reported that they observed some of the
Muslim food laws, although only the convert to Islam regularly bought halal meat,
something which she had not done at the beginning of her marriage. Two wives
reported that their husbands drank alcohol in moderation, one explaining that the Qu’ran
prohibits drunkenness rather than alcohol per se. One woman said that although she
never cooked pork, her husband sometimes liked to eat salami, and another that her
husband ‘enjoyed a bacon sandwich now and again.’ While such attitudes to food laws
among Muslims and Jews appears inconsistent to the outsider, and may suggest either
that those who intermarry are less observant, or that intermarriage weakens their
adherence to the rules, there may be a particular rationale behind the thought process,
one which is not confined to inter-married people.
First, a distinction is drawn between what is prepared and consumed at home,
and what is consumed outside. Thus a couple may decide that keeping a kosher home is
important; it means that they are setting a particular standard, especially if they have
children, and also that they can entertain guests who are more religiously observant than
themselves. Home is a place of worship and the normal locus of some rituals – the
Friday evening Shabbos meal for example. But some couples who keep a kosher home
accept the hospitality of gentile friends, or eat at non-kosher restaurants. Although her
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husband would always choose vegetarian food when dining out, one respondent would
take the opportunity to eat something she could not have at home:
I come from Lincolnshire, a great pork-eating county. They all think I’m
terribly deprived! In point of fact, it makes it more fun. If we go out, I’ll say,
‘can I have ham? We never have ham at home,’ or ‘can I have crab? Do you
mind?’ You know he never worries about it, ‘you have what you want!’
(Interview 15).
The other couple who kept kosher sometimes ate non-kosher meat in restaurants,
although the husband avoided explicitly ‘forbidden’ foods. This distinction between
home and outside is not unusual among British Jews.44
Second, some people appealed to what they believed were the principles
underlying religious food laws rather than the laws themselves. The explanation about
the Qu’ran condemning drunkenness, rather than simply the consumption of alcoholic
drink exemplifies this. The original purpose of Jewish and Muslim food codes was
deemed to be based on concerns about animal welfare and human health: ‘well, why
wouldn’t you eat pork in those days? It can be extremely dangerous in a hot country’
(Interview 17). Consequently the application of these rules could, and perhaps should,
be modified in a different context; one woman felt that ‘Organic meat from the farm
down the road is going to be better for us than certified meat which has been produced I
don’t know where, and we know that the animals at that farm have been looked after
properly.’ This tendency to return to principles and ‘real meanings’ was also evident in
other ways, for example in conversations about individual people, practices and
traditions. For present purposes, we can understand it as an appeal to the ‘spirit of the
law’ rather than merely as a failure to keep inconvenient rules, or as a rationalisation of
those rules. And the fact that several of those interviewed acknowledged the validity of
44
See for example,
http://www.maidenheadsynagogue.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41%Itemid=4
8 [accessed 17 June 2010 ]
166
the rules and wanted to make sense of their individual adaptations and practices, seems
to be significant. Had these people been entirely secular in attitude, they would, I
suggest, have cheerfully ignored the food rules.
Christian Festivals
In all major faiths the year is punctuated by festivals and fasts and inter-faith
families may have to decide which events to mark and which to play down or ignore. I
asked all interviewees what they did on religious festivals and fasts. Everyone said that
they celebrated at least some of the holy days in each faith, sometimes with adaptations
and sometimes with particular meanings ascribed. A further problem can occur for
religiously mixed families when the holy days of the two faiths coincide. What do
families do when a solemn fast in one religion occurs on the same day as a joyful feast
in the other, as Good Friday and Seder night sometimes do?
Jews and Muslims may be ambivalent about occasions such as Christmas, and
feel that joining in with Christmas celebrations could be perceived as a further step
towards assimilation. The question of whether to exchange gifts, decorate the home and
so on has been dubbed the ‘December Dilemma’ by American writers on ChristianJewish families (see for example
http://www.davka.org/what/text/discussions/december_dilemma.html and
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Jennings_Ellen_717426674.aspx, both accessed 2
November 2009). But all the families celebrated Christmas, including the convert to
Judaism, who reported that:
I said at the time, ‘I don’t mind converting but I am not giving up Christmas’.
We didn’t have a tree but we still had Christmas. Now when we go to [my
sister-in-law’s] house at Christmas we all go to Midnight Mass. I like it, it is
part of Christmas (Interview 5).
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Another woman, who married a Muslim, said she could ‘never envisage giving up
Christmas and Easter’. Both women stipulated before marriage that celebrating
Christmas was important. Others remarked on the secular nature of contemporary
Christmas or pointed out that many Christmas traditions were based on a pre-Christian
winter festival:
I do find it hard to celebrate Christmas. I didn’t realize a lot of Jewish people
have a phobia about Christmas trees. We’ll go past the shop and he’ll say, ‘we
haven’t got time!’ I’ll have a Christmas tree – I do your thing, you [can] do
mine. I got this knowledge that they don’t like Christmas trees, and I said,
‘tough. It’s a pagan symbol and it’s part of my childhood. And it doesn’t have
any real significance to me, it’s just a part of what I do, and my son will have it
too.’ But [my husband] never helps me decorate it. I have to be a bit careful
with [Christmas]. And yet, when I have the strength I think, well I want it, it’s
my festival. I want it, and I do all yours so you do some for me – but he doesn’t!
(Interview 15).
Most other spouses were more comfortable with Christmas decorations and festivities.
Several couples spent Christmas with their Christian families, which could have
implications for meals:
The only time I find it difficult is at Christmas when you can’t have rashers of
bacon on the turkey! (Interview 7).
I went to my sister and I said, ‘Right. I am bringing the turkey.’ And I said to
[my husband], ‘look, I am getting a kosher turkey. Will you eat it if she is
cooking it? Although she is cooking it in her own pans, and there won’t be a
change of plates, but I think you’d look a bit funny eating it off a paper plate.’
And he said. ‘all right’ (Interview 15).
Most people went to church at Christmas, including those who rarely attended at
other times. Four couples had children who were involved in church music, and
Christmas carol services were important in those families. Several interviewees said
that their spouses came to church at Christmas. This was most likely to happen either if
their children were singing, or if they were staying with relations, when they would go

the laws of kashrut require separate utensils, crockery and cutlery for meat and milk products. Poultry is
classified as meat.
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as a family, either to Christmas morning service or to Midnight Mass. Reasons given
included ‘Because she knows I like her to come, she knows it is important to me,’ ‘he
loves coming on a Christmas morning’, ‘she enjoys the carols,’ and ‘to humour me’.
The wives of Christian men generally attended a Christmas service with their husbands,
whereas the husbands of Christian women, particularly Muslim or Jewish husbands,
tended not to, unless their children were singing. When one spouse had refused to go to
a church service with the extended family one year, this had upset the Christian partner.
It is possible that a spouse feels out of place at a major Christian festival, or wants to
resist being identified with Christianity.
Apart from commenting about the secular or pagan aspects of Christmas, people
described its meaning in various ways, but the themes of families and children, and
peace and goodwill were emphasised: ‘Christmas [has] become a peace offering hasn’t
it?’ No-one mentioned the feast being a celebration of the Incarnation. This tendency
to look for a meaning acceptable to both parties was most evident in discussions about
Christmas and Ramadan, and a similar tendency to look at the ‘real meaning’ or ‘the
heart of’ matters of faith was shown in discussions of particular people.
The religious implications of Holy Week and Easter are explicit, and
consequently more problematic for mixed couples. Christ’s passion, death and
resurrection are disputed by Muslims, and for Jews, the season was associated in the
past with accusations of blood guilt, and pogroms. In addition, the idea of redemptive
suffering makes little sense for people of many faiths. Easter does not easily lend itself
to alternative interpretations in the way that Christmas does, and was discussed less.
One interviewee said that she found Easter ‘lonely’ and would stay with relations when
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she could, and go to church with them. No-one described Easter in detail, including the
people with Jewish partners, who may have been aware of the history of Christian antiSemitism which sometimes erupted during Holy Week. One said that when Easter and
Passover coincided, Passover took precedence and although they did not normally keep
kosher, they avoided leaven at this season. The Christian who kept a kosher home
described the special preparations concerning Passover foods and tableware:
Now Passover… That’s a difficult one, because he had been used to changing
over the plates, cutlery, the napery and the whole bloody lot. I suppose because
I am always curious and I like different things. Over the years I have been given
extra pretty mugs, and I said, let’s have those for Passover, then, just you and
me, and then we had some people over, and I’d buy half-a-dozen, as you get
more affluent. And this year, this is our twenty-fourth year since we married; I
bought six dinner plates, soup bowls and knives, six and six. And I had over the
years acquired some table cloths. And they are all in the box, over there, so now
I have a Passover box (Interview 15).
Other festivals
Two of the women whose Asian husbands had family and friends in Britain said
that they were most likely to spend Sikh or Hindu festivals with other members of the
community:
he has some Asian friends over here, and [at Diwali] we would perhaps go over
to their house. Quite often it happened although I didn’t go out of my way to
make it happen (Interview 6).
We would often go down and join [the family] for festivals, particularly their
equivalent to Christmas which is around Diwali time. They don’t call it Diwali,
they call it something else (Interview 11).
But only one family paid much attention to celebrating Diwali in their own
home. This was the family who were estranged from their Asian relations, yet the Sikh
mother was eager to pass on something of their heritage:
When the children were younger we did Diwali. We did Diwali, but it’s a
cultural thing […] When you live close together you get swept up with it, like
Christmas really. We used to do rangoli patterns […] food and things. We have
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never pushed things down their throats in any way. And we won’t’ (Interview
4).
Muslim festivals are linked less to seasons than other religious calendars. Two
women said their spouses showed little interest in joining a Muslim community. One
said that while her husband sometimes attended mosque at Eid, he found the Ramadan
fasting too difficult. The other woman, whose husband had had serious health problems
and could not fast, talked of ‘joining in the spirit of’ festivals, for example Ramadan.
What did she mean?
I suppose just an awareness of it and a recognition that other people are fasting,
or maybe not. So yes, we recognize Ramadan but we don’t always have iftar45
because we aren’t fasting but we look for an opportunity to join other people in
iftar. And at Eid we try to cook a nice meal and try to do something to make
things more special. He doesn’t go to the Mosque and he doesn’t really interact
with the Egyptian community here, he isn’t really interested. So we try to do
things by ourselves or ask people to join us. To participate, to do something
nice, to do some Egyptian cooking, but it’s quite uneventful, I’m afraid
(Interview 10).
Faith, Doubt and Dilution
Little has been written about the effect of inter-faith marriages on the beliefs of
the partners involved. In the past it was sometimes assumed that the faith of those
entering an inter-faith marriage was at particular risk of dilution. I wanted to discover
whether this was indeed the case amongst the people I interviewed, bearing in mind the
claims of those involved in the practice of interfaith dialogue that close encounter with
people of other faiths can renew or transform Christian faith (Dupuis 1997: 382).
45
The meal eaten after sunset to break the fast during Ramadan.
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Speelman recorded how marriage to someone ‘different’ prompts new
exploring. One of her respondents said that if she had married someone from a
reformed church, everything might have been a matter of course, and ‘I would not have
had to reflect so much about so many things as I have now. Then I would not have
known a great many things that I have discovered now’ (Speelman 2001: 159).
And one intermarried Catholic writer has observed that:
‘marrying a Jew challenged my faith in a sense I had not foreseen. Whatever I
did, I felt to a certain extent I was doing as a Catholic before a non-Catholic
onlooker. This not only inspired me to be a better Catholic, it made me think
about Catholic issues in a new way.
And Ned actively aided me in this development. When, like a lot of other
Catholics I was confused and disaffected by the upheavals of the Vatican II
reforms, he kept after me to define what it was that was bothering me. He
helped me discover that the kernel of my religion was at the core of my being
(Rosenbaum and Rosenbaum, 1994: 25).
Zemmel found that only twenty per cent of intermarried Jews felt that their level
of practice had dropped since marriage, although sometimes their practice was minimal
before (Zemmel, 2000: 269). For some of my interviewees marriage to someone of
another tradition or belief did not mean a dilution of faith, and for several with little
previous involvement in church, it evidently stimulated a new interest in both their own
religion and that of their partner. When asked about what difference their relationship
made to their own faith and beliefs, most responded at length:
I wasn’t as ardent a Christian before I met Harry as I was afterwards. Because it
questioned my faith – do you know what I mean? I started thinking about what I
believed and what I thought. I hung in there (Interview 13).
He always challenges me on the beliefs of Christianity, and it does make me
think about it in a different way, it being a very monotheistic, ‘this is the correct
way’ type of religion, it’s very different to Hinduism [which is] rather than a
dogma more a way to live your life. And it is tolerant and accepting of other
religions. I know he struggles with the fact that Christianity is ‘This is right and
everything else is wrong.’ And it does make me think about it (Interview 3).
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Several mentioned aspects of their partner’s religion which attracted or
intrigued:
I find it fascinating anyway, but I want to know where he is coming from, the
difficulty being that he doesn’t know that much about it. They celebrate Diwali,
and Tuesday is a holy day so they don’t eat meat on Tuesdays. And special
occasions they’ll have prayers, family prayers, round at the house. I haven’t
been privy to that, in fact not at all (Interview 3).
I think it’s quite nice in that it has opened up a whole new culture for me. I
mean, I think the whole Jewish religion has a lot going for it - like the
concentration on family. I think there are very strong family feelings, and you
know, it has broadened things for me, very much (Interview 13).
I think - in terms of my own take on Christianity – it may upset some Christians
but I do think there is a value in other religions as well. There is a God but there
are different pathways to God… my theory or belief [is] that my Indian friends
are on a very different track that they were born into. I used to go to the Sikh
temple with my wife and the only question they used to ask – apart from ‘does
he eat chapattis?’ – was ‘do you understand what’s going on here?’ And I
would say, ‘well, I don’t know the words, but I know that God is here.’ Because
I did. You could tell, in the rhythm of the music and the way that people were
concentrating and the spirituality. No, I didn’t know what the words meant, but
I knew that they were praying to God (Interview 4).
Others commented on Islam’s beauty, or on the fascination they had for
Hinduism.
It would be inaccurate to assume that heterogamous Christians have either a
‘stronger’ or a ‘weaker’ faith than any other Christian simply because of their
relationship. Indeed, the terms ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ are problematic; they do not convey
attitudes, mood or flexibility, and can be used in a judgmental way. A ‘strong faith’ can
imply certainty rather than doubt, rigidity rather than elasticity. Clearly, for some,
intermarriage is the catalyst for a new and fascinating journey of exploration, while for
others religion is seen as the source of trouble and anguish, something best avoided. So
it is likely that those who agreed to speak with me about their faith were already a
biased sample, perhaps because they felt they had achieved a workable religious balance
in their lives. Further, as I made initial contact with some of those I interviewed via
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religious ministers or interfaith organisations, these respondents were already in contact
with faith communities. It is also possible that some of those who chose not to respond
to my letters did so because religion was too sensitive a topic to discuss with a stranger,
or of little interest.
Can faith development theories throw any light on the changes I heard about in
my research? Fowler (1981, 1984) argues that faith is concerned with human meaning
and is relational in that it implies trust, attachment and commitment. One of the
features of a maturing faith is an increasing capacity to cope with doubt and defeat. He
identified six main stages of faith corresponding to stages of psychological
development. Three of these stages are most commonly seen among adults: the third
(‘Synthetic-Conventional’ faith) may happen from late adolescence onwards, when a
person’s experience extends beyond their immediate family, and this faith is heavily
influenced by the expectations of others. Stage Four, which he terms ‘IndividuativeReflective’, faith may develop in the third, fourth or fifth decade of life and usually
follows a period of struggle and deep questioning of identity and faith, often
accompanied by a profound sense of loss; Fowler likens the experience of moving into
this stage to ‘leaving home’ and actual or emotional leave-taking may trigger it. There
is a sense in which exogamous Christians experience this kind of leave-taking when
they move out of their ‘comfort zone’. The fifth stage, ‘Conjunctive Faith’, is a more
integrated faith after former struggles, a time when past weaknesses and vulnerabilities
are acknowledged: ‘unusual before mid-life, Stage 5 knows the sacrament of defeat and
the reality of irrevocable commitments and acts’ (Fowler 1981: 198). According to
Fowler, a person’s transition from one stage of faith to the next is frequently
precipitated by a challenge and often accompanied by extreme anguish and
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disorientation. Several of my interviewees described their faith in terms of struggle and
wrestling.
The majority of them were women. There has been an interest, during the past
few decades in women’s religious experience, and although there is not space here to
discuss the range of feminist and womanist theology, Slee’s study of women’s
spirituality in which she takes up the theme of faith development is useful. While
concurring with Fowler’s analysis, she adds that women have characteristic ways of
experiencing and expressing faith, such as a grounding in relationships rather than a
propositional or abstract faith. The women she studied imaged God as father, husband
or lover, a constant friend in a changing world, and used metaphors of meeting,
touching, loving and weaning – a particularly maternal experience - to describe God’s
care for them (Slee, 2004).
But although the ‘fatherhood’ of God is recognised by Jews and Christians, one
woman described her Muslim husband’s reaction to the idea:
He said God is not a father! They have their own imagination on it sometimes.
I said God is not a physical father. I think in a way they are a bit sex obsessed.
That’s why they think of God as father in a physical way. I say it’s more like an
adoptive father. They think of father - it has to be a physical relationship. I said
it means the spirit of a father (Interview 2).
Several others described a ‘weakening’ of their faith, although this was not
always seen in completely negative terms, and was sometimes linked with a process of
becoming ‘less rigid’ and ‘more tolerant’. One respondent saw the experience of
learning to appreciate the spouse’s faith as a step further from the open, ecumenical
attitude of a devoutly Christian family:
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I think it has probably weakened [my faith] but that makes it sound like a bad
thing. It has certainly made me more broad-minded, and probably more open to
just letting things be if you like, I don’t worry about it so much. To begin with I
was trying to find an answer, a way through it. I think it’s made me think a lot
more about it… you know you have a lot of received truths, don’t you, from
your childhood. Now [I’m] a much worse Catholic. But as a human being I
think I have developed and changed – for the better (Interview 9).
The most emphatic about having a weaker faith were two of the younger
women, both of whom were from families who attended non-conformist, evangelical
churches. One of them linked the change in her faith directly to her relationship:
I mean, [he] always challenges me on the beliefs of Christianity, and it does
make me think about it in a different way, it being a very monotheistic, ‘this is
the correct way’ type of religion, it’s very different to Hinduism. Yes I have
probably grown weaker in my faith and I am probably in a very different place
now than when I went to University… certainly less fervent. It definitely has
less of a day-to-day impact on my life. I still go to church; I haven’t worked out
whether that’s because I want to, or feel I ought to, or because that’s what I have
always done… I do go fairly regularly, but I don’t read my Bible very often at
all, and I don’t pray as much as I used to, because I had big arguments with God
last time we spoke. Over the relationship, really, and I find it quite difficult to
separate that from the rest of my faith (Interview 3).
The other young woman who spoke of a ‘weakened’ faith did not attribute it to
religious differences, but to family difficulties:
I miss [church] for the comforting … sounds of it, but I think my faith now is
quite weak. [she described an issue which affected her faith]. But that is a huge
problem for me, but completely separate from the fact that I have married
someone of a different faith (Interview 7).
A similar nostalgia for a sharing, or for community was experienced by others:
I was very religious, deep down, before we were married, and I have felt lonely.
I think if you are really religious in a marriage it can be lonely. On the spiritual
side. The praying is all by yourself. You don’t share your faith, and when you
are a believer it is nice to share your faith. Maybe when we had the problems
we could have sorted something out, if we were the same religion we could have
shared our faith, and even if we didn’t pray together, to have gone to church
together sometimes (Interview 2).
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However, despite the longing for comfort, several people spoke of the need to be
realistic in the face of life’s difficulties:
One of my friends from school, she was from a very evangelical family. And
when I looked at some aspects of what she believed I couldn’t see how anyone
could have such a strong faith. It was such a strong faith, but a very blind faith
(Interview 7).
There’s a famous hymn about how God is just, but then I say, how can he be
just? A couple [I know] had twins, and they weren’t normal. It’s bad with one,
but sending them two! And they are not retarded, but they are so weak… dear
little babies but is it just Fate? (Interview 2).
The questions and doubts faced by heterogamous Christians are the same as those faced
by any other Christians - questions about why a just God allows the innocent to suffer,
questions of forgiveness, existential doubts:
everything is so random… so many things in life, family illnesses … it all feels
so random. I just feel that … [religion] feels like just a comfort, and it is a
comfort, but I’m asking ‘are we just fooling ourselves?’ I would still call myself
a Christian at this particular moment. And in fact, he is going through the same
process, separately. And we discuss it. And we joke about it, ‘where’s your
God?’ – that kind of thing, but it’s nothing to do with… the fact that we come
from different perspectives. I think I would be going through the same kind of
thing if I were in Christian relationship. I was telling you about that couple
using their faith, in a time of such grief, and everyone giving them support at
that particular time. And possibly if I were in a community, [a church] there
would be that sort of support there… so I would be going partly for that as well
as the actual faith itself (Interview 7).
Insights from the ‘Other’
Some Christians felt had that they had gained important insights from their
partner’s faith. One described how her husband’s trust in God through serious illness
had taught her:
just to hand it over and say, ‘God, it’s in your hands, just give me strength to
carry on,’ I think it’s matured me, definitely. Perhaps I would have matured
anyway, in some other way, but yeah […] I have travelled a long way on that
path (Interview 10).
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Some recalled stimulating discussions with relatives from the partner’s faith,
which were seen as a positive experience. Sometimes shared values were stressed:
What I would say is that the basic ideas underlying both are the same. I mean
you try to lead a good life, being good and supportive to other people and caring
for other people, you have the family and the community, you know you are part
of that, and that is all important and I would say that the [same] principles
underlie both cultures, both religions. Probably to some extent more so in the
Bengali culture (Interview 11).
Interfaith activities were also important to some of the respondents:
I love [the interfaith] group - there are some wonderful people there, and the
people who go are interested in crossing the faith lines, so you meet some broadthinking people. Very amiable, very pleasant (Interview 15).
I think it has made me a lot less rigid about things. There’s not one way of
doing things. It’s ok to do it different ways. And also that feeling about God, I
find that when we all pray together – at the [local interfaith group] we all pray
together silently, and I find that incredibly powerful. And I am thinking, ‘well
we are all praying to God in our different ways.’ It’s fine, it’s wonderful, and I
think that too much is made of the divisions between people (Interview 13).
Faith in the Margins
We have already noted that people in inter-faith relationships are more likely to
have some personal experience of diversity, in the sense of being international,
bilingual, or coming from a family where there are already members of different faiths,
and many of these people already have personal skills in coping with difference.
Nevertheless, several interviewees reported a sense of being different to others at
Church. It is possible that sometimes the feeling of not belonging is a projection, an
internalising of an exterior wilderness sensed by those who reported it. Whether or not
this is the case, when they encountered difficulties in life, their position as partners in a
mixed relationship could intensify their perceived marginal status. There seem to have
been three main ways in which this could happen. First, there was a feeling of isolation
if the Christian and their partner could not pray together:
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What I find in a mixed marriage, you are a lot by yourself. There is such a lot of
loneliness in a mixed marriage. Each has their crisis alone, they can’t pray
together when there is a crisis (Interview 2).
I have been looking at the coverage this week of the family of the little girl that
has gone missing. And they seem to be united in their faith, with what is
happening. I do wonder… you know, that probably helps them, and I know that
probably I would never have that with my husband in that way… well they have
their community, and they can go to a service together. You know, you see
them… and that is something I will never have (Interview 7).
Speelman’s ‘Anne’ recorded a similar experience:
Yes, [if you had the same religion] you could support each other more in your
religious experience. It’s different anyhow. Now, you can’t share it with each
other […] We talk about it, but this religious experience; we cannot really share
it… It is more a sort of exchange (Speelman, 2001: 156).
Second, some intermarried Christians felt distanced from fellow Christians.
Although several confided in ministers or religious, they were more reticent about
sharing problems with other members of the congregation, feeling either that it would
be disloyal to their partner, or that people at church would not understand. Some
suggested that other Christians regarded them as oddities, for example: ‘they probably
think I’m not a complete Christian’ or ‘they think “it’s her own fault for marrying
him.”’ Several interviewees reported that on at least one occasion they had ceased
attending particular churches either because they felt uncomfortable due to their
relationship, or because they believed that their church was unsupportive in some way.
Where there was some sharing, it was most likely to be with other people who were
perceived as marginal, for example people who were themselves of mixed race, or who
had lived overseas and were thought to understand diversity. The support of a Christian
community was missed particularly by the two women who now attended their churches

Madeleine Mc Cann
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only rarely, and who associated this lack of support with a ‘weakening’ of their own
faith. Both spoke wistfully about it:
I had a problem … I have a faith, but at the moment it’s under crisis really. I
feel quite bitter, and nobody has ever said sorry and I find it hard to forgive
them. And I can’t go to church really, and I can’t forgive them. I feel that if
only someone would have a conversation [about the problem]... I remember
when I was sitting here and didn’t know what to do and had no-one to talk to
(Interview 2).
I like the idea of a community. I miss it, for the comforting … sounds of it, but I
think my faith now is quite weak (Interview 7).
Third, some interviewees felt that attending church without a spouse marked
them out as visibly different. This was underlined on particular occasions, such as
Mothering Sunday, or when their spouses were absent from their children’s baptisms.
The men interviewed seemed to be less perturbed by this than some of the women,
although some men remarked that it was more unusual for a man to be alone with
children in a church than it was for a woman.
When it is difficult to share spiritual experiences, doubts or difficulties who do
these people confide in? Although there were a few anecdotes about clergy who did not
apparently understand or sympathise with the position, several respondents remembered
individuals who had been helpful when they had sought advice. Some of these were
relations, mothers and grandmothers being mentioned, and also a woman at church who
was of mixed race. Some interviewees had consulted religious professionals for various
reasons, such as for help in understanding a noumenous experience, issues surrounding
the baptism of children, or whether a mosque wedding would compromise their own
integrity. These professionals – nuns, a woman vicar, Catholic priests, a Hindu monk,
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had in several instances helped couples identify their concerns or reassured extended
families.
If the experience of marginality was painful at times, some interviewees claimed
that their own marginality made them more sensitive to the needs of other outsiders:
quite honestly, what a great deal of churches need to realize is that not
everybody who goes to church is in a family, there are a great deal who are
single. There’s quite a lot of elderly women there who are either widowed or
divorced or single. Because it’s one safe place that women can go to [on their
own] unlike pubs (Interview 13).
Fowler states that the transition from one stage of faith to another can be a
lonely and disorientating experience, as the comforting beliefs which had previously
sustained a person no longer suffice. Other writers have observed that new insights are
frequently preceded by a period of ‘darkness’. Harry Williams wrote of how the
wilderness within a person can prompt self-questioning: ‘perhaps I’ve been robbed,
robbed of my easy certainties, my unthinking convictions’ (Williams, 1965, 1974: 30).
Slee describes how for many women a period of difficulty or an experience of impasse
may lead to a new awakening, which she describes as liberating. This kind of
breakthrough is, she says, a key concept for female spirituality:
‘Without detracting from the severe psychological and spiritual damage done to
women in and through the experience of impasse, it is possible that their
marginalisation and muteness is fertile ground from which a new experience of
God, and the transformation of alienating symbols, can break through’ (Slee
2004: 107).
Summary
In the previous chapter, I noted that many of the heterogamous Christians I
interviewed reported a sense of being marginal in church because of their inter-faith
marriage, and raised the question of where they and their partners and children can feel
‘at home’. In this chapter I examined what happens at home, and whether this has any
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effect on the faith of the Christian partner. I discovered that the home of an inter-faith
couple can be the locus of worship, although Christian worship, apart from personal
prayer and study, usually happens elsewhere. But food laws were observed to a greater
or lesser extent in some of the homes, and occasionally family ceremonies. However,
several respondents said that they were more likely to join in with celebrations of the
main religious festivals with extended family.
A tendency to appeal to the principles underlying religious laws and practice
was quite marked with some interviewees. Similarly, some interpreted the meaning of
festivals, particularly Christmas, in a radically inclusive way. It appears that the doubts
and self-questioning experienced by some of these inter-married Christians prompts
them to explore these principles and meanings afresh. They are also faced with a
problem: if God is love (I John 4:7ff) then how can the love experienced through their
relationship not be of God? If it is wrong for a Christian to marry someone who is not a
Christian, why do some inter-married Christians claim that their relationship has
resulted not only in new insights into their partner’s faith, but also in a renewal of their
own?
When faced with problems in life, some respondents felt that the marginality
they felt within their churches intensified their sadness, and some talked of having a
‘weakened’ faith. Yet this marginality helped them to identify with other marginal
people, and in some cases led to a robust critique of communities which were perceived
as closed or intolerant, and those churches which they considered inward looking.
Several interviewees felt that there was an overemphasis in churches on nuclear families
which was not helpful either to people like themselves, whose spouses did not
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accompany them to church services, or to others – single people, widows, and gay
people for example – who did not attend church with a family.
Clearly, heterogamous Christians and their families who maintain a connection
with their churches are in a special position. Lamb drew attention to them as ‘a case for
care’ and urged ministers to be peacemakers, and to respect the spiritual integrity of all
concerned (Hooker and Lamb, 1986: 143-156). But it is possible that as people who
have themselves experienced marginality, and who have had to wrestle (sometimes
alone) with the dilemmas raised by profound religious differences, heterogamous
Christians and their spouses are also uniquely equipped to build bridges between
different faith communities. The questions raised for churches and the pastoral
implications of my findings will be explored further in the final chapter.
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7: Conclusions
In this project I set out to address two major questions. First, what impact does
marriage to someone of a different faith have on the beliefs and spirituality of a
Christian? Second, what can the experiences of these Christians and their partners
contribute to our understanding of inter-religious dialogue? Much of Christian marriage
theology was developed in the early centuries, yet in a largely secularised society where
religion is privatised and in which individual choice often overrides family, tribal and
faith traditions, inter-faith marriage can still be an emotive subject. For a devoutly
Christian family it can be a cause for concern on two grounds. The first is a moral
question: is it right for a Christian to marry someone who does not share his or her
faith? The second is a pragmatic one: because even marriages between people of
similar beliefs can be difficult at times, is it wise to do so?
Although religious inter-marriage has in the past been judged by church
authorities as wrong, or at least unwise, my own findings point to a number of
apparently contented couples running happy homes despite their religious differences.
Not only that, but some heterogamous Christians claim that marriage to a person of a
different faith and outlook has added a new dimension to their own.
But before drawing conclusions, a few words of caution. First, as I have already
indicated, due to methodological limitations my sample cannot be taken as a
representative cross-section of the heterogamous population. Only two had divorced or
separated from their partners. Most had a higher than average educational level and
socio-economic status, which had perhaps given them opportunities to mix with people
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of different faiths and cultures. Because many had been recruited through contacts in
churches or in interfaith organizations, they were, in most cases, not living lives remote
from religious influence. However, all had reflected on the issues they faced and were
willing to articulate their experiences.
Second, it is important to note that each person, each couple, each relationship is
unique. Although there may be characteristic tendencies or distinctive patterns of
behaviour among people in religiously mixed relationships, there are always variables
and exceptions. There is no typical heterogamous couple, or even a typical
Jewish/Christian or Christian/ Muslim couple. Because of this, the outcome of any
particular inter-faith marriage cannot be predicted, however much information we may
have about the partners’ beliefs, values and situation.
In this chapter, I summarise the main findings of this study and suggest
appropriate pastoral responses to the partners in inter-faith relationships.
Main Findings

Inter-faith marriage remains a sensitive topic, and there is still some reluctance
to discuss it. While there has been some research into cross-cultural marriages,
mainly by social scientists, there has been little research into the religious
aspects of inter-faith marriages. The difficulties I experienced in recruiting
Christians in inter-faith relationships who were willing to be interviewed,
despite assurances about confidentiality and anonymity, were not unique. Other
researchers have noted a similar reticence.
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
Many heterogamous Christians had positive attitudes towards different faiths
and cultures and had acquired the skills to cope with radical difference before
they even met their partners. Some had experienced living or working overseas,
or among people of different faiths and cultures to their own. Some already had
some religious or other diversity within the family and some were bilingual. In
many cases, the spouses also had positive attitudes and skills.

The religious background of the natal family appears to be a significant
influence on the way in which respondents adapted to life with someone of a
different faith. Those who came from families where institutional religion was a
source of tension, or where faiths other than Christianity were seen in negative
terms, tended to have a more marked personal and spiritual struggle than those
whose families were either ‘devout liberals’ or agnostic. However, even those
whose families accepted the relationship could experience tensions; the majority
described times of doubts and anguish.

Inter-faith marriage stimulated respondents to explore both their partner’s faith
and culture, and their own. Frequently it led to new insights and a renewed
commitment to their faith.

However, some respondents reported a sense of spiritual loneliness, which could
be particularly intense at times of difficulty or family crisis.

Several respondents experienced feelings of being ‘different’ or marginal in
church, despite sometimes active involvement in the life and organisation of the
church. Those who belonged to inter-faith organisations were positive about
them.
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
Respondents whose spouses observed dietary rules had different ways of
interpreting these rules, but all tended to return to what they saw as the
underlying principles behind the food laws.

Respondents developed a distinctively inclusive way of interpreting their faith
and the meanings of practices and festivals.

Respondents found that the exposure to another faith stimulated not only a
refreshed appreciation of both faiths, but also critique of their partner’s faith and
their own. Several also criticised those groups whom they saw as either insular
or intolerant of outsiders.

With the exception of the convert, those respondents with children were
bringing their children up with some knowledge of both faiths, although not all
children were baptised as infants. Where other rituals were performed,
respondents played down the religious significance of these, and those whose
babies had been circumcised had, with one exception, chosen a doctor rather
than a traditional religious circumciser.
Porous Boundaries
The respondents’ own backgrounds of diversity, either within the family of
origin or due to exposure to different religions, languages and cultures during childhood
or early adulthood helped equip them for inter-faith marriage. Most respondents
described at least one feature of diversity before they had ever met their partners, and
several had multi-layered diversity. Many partners were of similarly mixed
backgrounds, not only those who were brought up in the United Kingdom, where they
would be part of an ethnic or religious minority, but also those from countries where
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they were members of the majority faith and culture. This diversity is significant, and I
suggest that many of the heterogamous Christians in my study, and their partners too,
had already learned to negotiate boundaries, perhaps without even being conscious of
doing so. In the previous chapter I noted how several people had remarked that being in
an inter-faith marriage had made them more flexible, open-minded or tolerant. But it
seems that many were already flexible, open-minded and tolerant, something evident in
their willingness to adapt to religious food laws and complex social and kinship
systems.
Crohn argues that the choice to marry out of community and faith is rarely
completely accidental (Crohn, 1995:44) and there may be a sense in which these people,
whether consciously or unconsciously, have sought out someone who is ‘different.’ But
several who reflected on the diversity present within their own families, still reported
surprise at their own marriages, using phrases like ‘I never imagined marrying someone
who wasn’t a Christian’, and ‘I always thought I would marry in church.’ Several of
my sample were devout Christians before ever meeting their partners, thereby refuting
those writers discussed in Chapter Two who suggest that these marriages occur because
religion does not matter to those involved. Further, a number of respondents described
crises of conscience during courtship or attempts to break off the relationship, and heartsearching over the decision to marry. This would seem to counter suggestions that
those who marry ‘out’ are expressing some kind of rebellion against their own
community or faith. While this may sometimes be the case, I suggest that where there
is already family diversity, heterogamy represents a repetition of family history rather
than a rebellion against it, and therefore might not be as revolutionary as it appears. In
any case, as inter-faith marriages increase in number, they become mainstream rather
than rebellious.
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A recurrent pattern to which I have drawn attention concerns strategies for
coping with religious and cultural difference. This relates to their experiences; those
who are accustomed to diversity are likely to have developed skills which are
transferable to other situations. For example, a bilingual person can understand not only
different words and phrases, but also different concepts and mind-sets. By immersion
in another religious culture, heterogamous people become able to comprehend the
sometimes subtle differences between the different faiths, and the rationales behind
them. This does not always lead to an uncritical acceptance of the other way of
believing and thinking; some respondents were robustly critical of aspects of their
partners’ traditions, albeit generally within a context of acceptance. Thus the wife who
thought that the Muslim interpretation of Christology was too literal, because ‘in a way
they are a bit sex obsessed, they think of a physical father’ was still interested in Islam,
and enjoyed reading Muslim books.
In appraising individuals and communities, interviewees drew a distinction
between extrinsic religiosity and intrinsic spiritual and moral qualities. Qualities of
justice and fairness were respected. Several described people of their partners’ faiths
whom they admired, sometimes qualifying their remarks with phrases such as ‘he
doesn’t wear his faith on his sleeve, but…’ Strong, independent-minded Muslim women
were cited, also people who prayed quietly and privately or were generous givers of
time and money. The harshest criticism was reserved not for the religions themselves,
but for religious people who were perceived as either insular or hypocritical.
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Other investigators have noted that mixed couples tend to emphasise their
similarities and play down their differences (Cohen, 1992; Speelman, 2001). It is
possible that this happens particularly in the presence of ‘outsiders,’ for example when
asked about how they cope with their differences, they may reply that ‘they are not all
that important’, or point to similarities, such as compatible political views or a shared
sense of humour. Finding commonalities is necessary if people of different faiths are to
connect with each other at all. It is difficult to have a conversation when there is no
shared language or experience, and those involved in the dialogue have to find and learn
to use, a common language (Barnes, 2002: 23; Cornille, 2008: 5).
What impact did family acceptance or disapproval of an inter-faith marriage
have on the Christian partner’s own spirituality? In general, those with ‘devout liberal’
parents, particularly if there was already some diversity within the family, reported that
although they had some personal struggles about whether or not to marry someone who
was not a Christian, their partners were welcomed into the family. The convert to Islam
said that her parents even accepted her conversion, albeit with some initial puzzlement:
[my mother’s] reaction to me saying that I’d converted a few months ago, it was
‘oh well, God is everywhere, why do you have to be Muslim?’ I mean I didn’t
take that as an anti-religion thing, it was just change. My father, he’s amazing.
He has read every book on Islam that I’ve sent him lately (Interview 14).
In contrast, those people whose parents were observant Christians with a less inclusive
attitude towards other faiths, encountered greater opposition. This meant that they had
to struggle with both their own hesitations about their relationship and the disapproval
of parents and, sometimes, other church members. The struggle was difficult, but could
also lead to a creative outcome. Those who came from non-observant families usually
encountered less opposition, except for the one woman whose father disowned her. But
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the parents of the Jewish convert, who had been sent (but not accompanied) to Church,
were also bemused by their children’s choices:
They were ok, but they weren’t very religious anyway. My dad used to wonder
why it was that I got married to a Jewish boy and became Jewish, and [my
brother] married a Catholic, and her religion is very important for her. He
would say ‘why was it that we didn’t marry someone with no religion?’
(Interview 6).
Although faith was evident in the family lives of many respondents, they seemed
to spend little time discussing the relative merits of their different religions with their
spouses:
‘I think that the fact that we don’t have big differences and the fact that we’ve
co-existed so well together just emphasizes that you know there are things that
are important to you personally and there are things that you have to put to one
side if you are going to live in harmony with other people.’ (Interview 12)
However, all those I interviewed were aware of their sometimes profound religious and
cultural differences, which could emerge particularly at life events.
Tensions
Misunderstandings and inadequate communication can lead to difficulties in any
relationship, and within a marriage denial, suppression, or refusal to engage with major
difference is unhealthy. Tensions are an inevitable part of life, and Christianity as an
incarnational faith recognises that:
Truth is discovered in the swirl and buffeting of our existence […] in the end
there is no escape from the ambiguities of history because that is how we human
beings are, that is where we find joy and hope, anxiety and pain, truth and
falsehood, and above all that is where, in Christian terms, God is found, revealed
and yet hidden, the beyond in the midst (Ballard, 2000: 33).
Some writers have suggested that marital conflict is more likely to occur when
the partners’ religions are very different, but this oversimplifies the matter.
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Disagreements happen between people of similar faiths such as Christians and Muslims,
both monotheists, claiming the Abrahamic tradition, but with very different views of the
person and work of Jesus/’Isa; while the sometimes bitter disputes between different
Christian denominations are too well known to need description.
It seems more likely that marital harmony is maintained not where the beliefs
themselves are similar, but when attitudes, values and ways of believing are compatible.
Several of the respondents stressed similarities with their partners in general attitudes,
particularly regarding values like respect and tolerance. Some remarked on their shared
political and ethical values. Speelman observed that her couples were more likely to
develop a mutual perspective if they had similar styles of believing, whatever the
content of those beliefs. Further, those whose attitude and understanding was fairly
independent of their religious communities, and whose faith stressed values such as just
relationships tended to find mutual understanding (Speelman. 2001: 298).
When respondents encountered tensions due to their differences, humour was
said to help; ‘We joke about it, ‘where is your God?’ – kind of thing.’ (Interview 7) or,
‘we don’t fight, he makes a little joke and so do I, it’s ok and that eases it a bit, but I feel
lonely’ (Interview 2). Loneliness was mentioned by several respondents, typically
because they felt that there were spiritual aspects of their lives that they could not share
either with their spouse or with other Christians.
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Some younger respondents expressed anxiety about how their relationships
would work in the future, and whether they could balance their two traditions fairly.
Older respondents were generally more relaxed about their differences, although some
of those married to Muslims commented sadly on the contemporary polarisation
between Islam and the ‘West’:
9/11, that’s when everything changed (Interview 2).
There is a huge lack of knowledge, of understanding, a huge prejudice against
[Islam] I think particularly in the light of what has happened in the last decade,
there’s a side of Islam that isn’t necessarily the way that the majority of Muslims
would see their religion. There is a lot of beauty in it, a lot of purity in it, a lot
of wisdom (Interview 10).
Dealing with exclusive aspects of faith is a potential difficulty in a mixed
marriage, and several respondents mentioned not only difficulties with belonging in
church, but also times when they or their spouses had felt excluded from family or
religious occasions. One strategy for coping with this difficulty is to reinterpret
meanings and the third feature of these couples was the distinctive way in which
meanings were ascribed to religious faith and practice. This was evident in three main
areas: in attitudes towards religious prescriptions and proscriptions, in the meanings
ascribed to festivals, and in the appreciation of holiness in people whose faith they did
not share. In Chapter Six I described how sometimes individuals would appeal to the
principles underlying religious rules when modifying those rules, particularly those
concerning food and drink. Several spoke about the original reasons for religious food
rules, and no-one cited them as immutable divine commands46 but neither did they
dismiss them as irrelevant. One question which might therefore be raised is whether
46
in any case these commands would not be seen as compulsory for Christians, see Romans 14:14 and I
Corinthians 8:8
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those who apparently bent the rules were rationalising in order to justify their practice,
or whether they were adapting practice in keeping with what they believed were the
principles underlying the rules.
Similarly, when discussing religious festivals, individuals focussed on what they
saw as the true meanings of events like Christmas and Ramadan, talking in terms of the
‘spirit’ of festivals and seasons. In the United Kingdom, Christmas is the main secular
holiday of the year, although some religious minorities avoid celebrating it. For
Christians it celebrates the divine incarnation, but when this is emphasised it becomes
divisive, particularly where Jews and Muslims are concerned. When it is spoken of in
irenic terms – as ‘peace and goodwill to all’ – it becomes at least potentially inclusive of
everyone. All interviewees celebrated Christmas, some describing it in great detail.
Even where there was some tension (for example over Christmas trees) the festival was
observed, and several spouses accompanied their Christian partners to Christmas
services. Few talked about Easter, except to say how they spent the time; some said that
Easter was ‘more difficult’ and one that it was ‘a lonely time’ in contrast with
Christmas. Aside from the history of Christian anti-Semitism which frequently erupted
during Holy Week, the theological message of Easter is starker and cannot be reduced
to a ‘Spring Festival’ or a ‘celebration of new life.’
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Learning from the ‘Other’
There were two main ways in which heterogamous Christians felt they learned
from their relationships: theological insights and a new awareness of tolerance, and the
first can promote the second. Apart from gaining new information about the partner’s
religious tradition, several thought they had learned about trusting God by watching the
responses of partners or other family members to difficulties in life, or felt attracted to
particular practices. But learning from the partners’ religious tradition did not preclude
criticism. Insular or inward looking communities in particular were disliked. One man
stated that:
there’s a lot […] that I find baffling, inconsistent, a lot that makes me mad. A
lot of the orthodox practices that I think are quite absurd. It’s really the
insularity, the communities that are inward looking, that don’t really admit the
possibility of any wisdom outside that community (Interview 12).
But having seen the insularity of a different community, the speaker was prompted to
reflect on his own:
The Methodism I grew up with was fairly narrow […] fairly closed and
prescriptive. Sundays were a tedious time for eight or nine-year olds who
wanted to go out and play with a football. That sort of thing. Sunday followed a
set pattern and there were certain things you could do or couldn’t do on a
Sunday. Which I suppose in a way were just as restrictive as some of the Jewish
practices I find now. I was born after the Methodist churches came together, but
at one time the differences between the Primitive Methodists and the Wesleyans
were equally baffling. In the village where my mother grew up – it’s only a tiny
village but there was a Wesleyan chapel at one end and a Primitive one at the
other, and never the twain shall meet! (Interview 12)
The widow of a Muslim reflected sadly on what she saw as a growing tendency to
legalism:
One of the griefs I’ve got now, in Islam, is that some people believe in observing
the letter of the law. They were once some of the most civilised people I have
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met; they were good people, believing in decency, kindness, hospitality,
absolutely writ large. You couldn’t not be hospitable in their culture. And
kindness, real kindness, generosity, helping […] my mother-in-law believed in
zakat, in giving to the poor, et cetera. And they weren’t hung up about silly little
things. They didn’t believe in that kind of observation. As far as they were
concerned, they did believe, they were Muslims and had a huge respect for the
Qu’ran and for Arabic and Arabic culture. (Interview 17)
Faith schools were not popular either, except among Catholics, some of whom
sent their children to Catholic schools. Separate schools were seen as divisive,
examples given included schools in Northern Ireland and the Middle East.
A majority said that their marriages meant mutual support. Sometimes this was
at the level of sharing festivals, helping the partner to keep religious food laws, or at the
end of life arranging funerals in accordance with the tradition of the deceased. Several
wives said that their husbands supported them in churchgoing, or even helped them find
somewhere to worship, for example when they had moved house. However, loneliness
was a factor in several relationships, either because they felt unable to share in some
experiences, particularly when undergoing stress of some kind, or because they felt that
their relationship set them apart from other Christians.
The Desert Tradition
But is the sense of spiritual marginality experienced by some of the respondents
a significant factor in developing their abilities to be inclusive? Further, does the kind
of isolation described by some interviewees assist them in their spiritual journeys? In
classical Christianity the Wilderness paradigm indicates how the place of exile, where a
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person is exposed to danger and deprived of comfort and companionship, can become
the place of encounter with God. The desert was the locus of Moses’ encounter with the
burning bush, Elijah’s despair and subsequent theophany, of Jesus’ temptation, of John
the Baptist’s ministry. It was where the children of Israel learned dependence on God
before reaching the Promised Land. The eremitic Abbas and Ammas fled the cities to
the Egyptian desert to fast, meditate and pray, to struggle with demons and learn
holiness. There were solitaries and cenobites, and also women, like Theodora and
Tauris ‘female monk-renouncers’ some of whom may have stayed in their own homes
living frugally and offering service and hospitality to visitors (Petersen, 1996: 20 – 21,
Harmless, 2004). Ward writes of these early ascetics that ‘their influence was as vital to
Christian life as the theology of the ‘fathers’ but … grew out of the desert and solitude
rather than out of the debates of councils and bishops’ (Ward, 2003: x).
Returning to the stories of the three royal ladies in Chapter One, their experience
of intermarriage was also one of exile. Esther was already an exile and an orphan when
she was recruited into the king’s harem. Aethelburh and the Princess of Tars were sent
far away from home to marry. The Auchinleck manuscript and the Greek versions of
the Esther story record their heroines suffering substantial personal anguish. Further,
during exile their faith was a private matter and each was alone except for a mentor,
who proved crucial to the plot – Esther had Mordecai, Aethelburh bishop Paulinus, and
the princess of Tars had the imprisoned priest Cleophas. But the exile itself was
integral to the final resolution; in one case the salvation of the Jewish people and in two
the conversion of rulers, and consequently the salvation of their kingdoms.
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There are significant differences between the stories of the ammas and abbas,
the royal ladies and the twenty-first century heterogamous Christians. The ammas and
abbas lived simply, sometimes enduring physical hardship, while the respondents in this
study were generally affluent. The Christian queens were married for dynastic reasons
or political expediency at times when aristocratic women (whether real or legendary)
would have little choice in the matter. In the first part of her story Esther was passive
and acquiescent and Ahasuerus decided on the match. But those Christians whose
stories I heard had married for love, and although they had positive appreciation of the
faith and culture of the ‘Other’, their stories also hint at struggle, at wrestling, and at
spiritual exile. Is the idea of exile helpful in understanding Christian heterogamy?
Some of the people interviewed felt either exiled from their churches or
marginal within them, often because of a perceived ideal of a Christian family,
something to which they (and others, such as gay people and single-parent families) did
not and could not conform. Their feeling of divergence from the norm was further
underlined, for example either by not having their children baptized, or by not having
both parents present at a child’s baptism. While churches may not be consciously
promoting a particular model of Christian family life, sometimes structures seem to
privilege the family, for example, in churches where it is usually a family of two parents
and their children who take up the offertory or lead intercessions.
Some used the language of struggle to describe their lives and relationships with
God. When doubts and problems arose, typically issues of undeserved suffering or
other family difficulties, it could cause a sense of loneliness for both partners if their
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approaches were different. Moreover, some of the Christian partners felt unable to
access support from other Christians. Whether or not their fellow Christians saw them
as significantly different is unclear, but most of those interviewed said that they were at
the margins of Church life at least sometimes, or described a solitary spirituality. While
some joined in groups for prayer or study, a number felt it was difficult to talk about
their faith, and worried that other Christians would not understand.
Questions and Recommendations for the Churches
Several suggested ways in which the churches could become more welcoming
and inclusive, usually involving a recognition that besides heterogamous Christians,
there are many others in churches who do not match a supposed Christian family
stereotype.
This raises ecclesiological questions – what do we mean by the Church, who
belongs to it, and even whether it is possible for someone to belong to more than one
religious group. Given that the children of several of these couples were not baptized
and yet were regular members of Christian congregations, there is no simple answer to
the question of belonging. Some chose to be baptized in late childhood or adolescence,
and yet many concurrently identified with the faith of the other parent. Why is the idea
of belonging - even if only partially belonging (Dupuis, 2000: 55) - to more than one
religious group so much more controversial than other kinds of dual identity such as
bilingualism or dual nationality (Bassett, 2000: 22-23)?
The term ‘double belonging’, which has caused interpretive problems (Reardon,
2006) is generally taken to refer to a couple who retain membership of their individual
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churches and worship, and participate in one another’s church community, finding that
both churches nourish them as a couple and as a family. There is a difficulty here;
while this ‘double belonging’ has a sacramental basis – that of their common baptism
and of their marriage – it still raises serious ecclesiological questions for the churches.
Reardon adds that the experience of ‘double belonging’ is different for interchurch
couples and for their children.
Could Christians in inter-faith relationships experience a similar ‘belonging’ to
more than one religious community? (This is not the same as using practices from
another religious tradition, such as meditation techniques or of ‘borrowing’ prayers or
readings from another faith). We should clarify here about the different possible uses of
the word ‘belonging’. It could convey a subjective sense of being accepted, even if only
partially, into a faith community other than one’s own. It could also mean a sense of
loyalty to another path. However, those in my sample seemed to have a clear sense of
boundary; they were positive about their separate identities and with one possible
exception did not want to blur their religious identities. As the ‘double belonging’
model of inter-church families is based on the sacrament of common baptism, it does
not lend itself to an equivalent among inter-faith families. ‘Associate membership’ of
some religious communities may be one solution, but most intermarried couples seemed
to want simply a welcome and understanding from both their religious communities.
A further question concerns the level of knowledge and interest in some
churches about faiths other than Christianity. A few respondents complained about
hurtful remarks made by fellow worshippers, and felt that the cause was a lack of
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understanding about other faiths. Most respondents spoke more warmly about religious
professionals who understood, or attempted to understand their situation. This was
important, particularly at times of stress and bereavement, when sensitive help was
appreciated. Both widows said that prayers had been said for their late husbands in both
the local Mosque or Synagogue, and at the Church, and that this was valued. While
most couples had married in civil ceremonies, those who had had religious weddings
spoke of the help given by officiating clergy. It seems that the intelligent interpretation
of canon law and sensitive attention to liturgy were especially helpful both for couples
and for their families.
Bearing in mind the experiences described by these sincere Christians who find
that their faith is enhanced by relationship, and yet who sometimes find the institutional
church unsupportive of their spiritual journey, what specific suggestions can we make
for the churches?

While many churches encourage those about to marry to attend a preparation
course, and the Catholic Church insists on it, most inter-faith couples have no
form of marriage preparation, especially if they choose a civil wedding. And yet
many of these couples would benefit greatly from marriage preparation. If the
churches could develop marriage preparation materials suitable for inter-faith
couples, whether or not they have a church wedding, it could be an important
form of pastoral support.

Hospitality is a significant form of Christian witness. Both clergy and
congregations need to be aware of the importance of welcoming everyone
wholeheartedly. Many of those interviewed described a sense of being marginal
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or an oddity in the church, but when they and their spouses were made welcome
either at worship or at social events, it was appreciated.

If churches are to be hospitable to inter-faith families, they also need to
challenge the sometimes unquestioned suppositions about families in general.
The negative connotations of ‘family’ which were discussed in Chapter Two
should be borne in mind here. While the metaphor of church as ‘family’ or
‘household of God’ is both ancient and valid, an overemphasis on nuclear
families can be experienced as exclusionary by those who feel they do not match
the profile.

Underlying assumptions about interfaith marriages also affect church responses
to those involved. In Chapter Two I drew attention to Cahill’s distinction
between the ‘stunting’ approach, in which interfaith marriages are seen as
problematic, and the more optimistic ‘liberating’ approach. If church members
regard intermarried Christians as being odd or as having ‘defective’ beliefs, and
their children as being potentially confused, these families are likely to feel
marginal. If, on the other hand, there is a willingness to ‘celebrate’ difference
and listen to the insights and experiences of interfaith families, the outcome for
both church and individual families is likely to be more positive.

Some local churches need to be clear about the distinction between hospitality as
a form of Christian witness, and mission. While proclamation of the gospel is a
proper function of the church, if Christians in inter-faith marriages and their
spouses believe that they are being targeted for conversion to Christian faith,
they are likely to avoid further contact with those involved.

People involved in pastoral care, whether lay or clerical, may need education if
they are to be supportive of Christians in inter-faith relationships, their spouses
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and their families. Pastoral sensitivity at times of stress, particularly
bereavement, was appreciated by those on the receiving end. Those
interviewees who recalled hurtful incidents at felt that these were caused by
ignorance and misconceptions rather than malice. A detailed knowledge of
different faiths is not required, rather a willingness to listen and to learn and to
realize that there may be wisdom and virtue and beauty in faiths other than
Christianity.

Several interviewees described experiences of doubt and spiritual disorientation,
or of wrestling with their faith, sometimes coupled with nostalgia for the faith
that they felt they had lost. If such experiences may indicate a period of growth
and development, the accompanying distress could be alleviated by those
undergoing it being helped to understand the process which is happening. Some
of those interviewed described how much they valued the counsel of particular
people, often clergy or religious. The church’s expertise in spiritual guidance
and in mentoring could be a useful resource here.

However, the experience either of exile or marginality, or of being challenged by
a relationship with someone who is radically different, appears to have been
important in prompting the interviewees to explore and interrogate their own
faith. While the churches have a role to play in welcoming and guidance, it is
also important to allow this process to occur.
At present, much inter-faith dialogue takes place between religious leaders,
under the auspices of national organisations or the meetings of local interfaith groups,
where boundaries are respected. But interfaith couples can be bridge-builders between
communities, because they have had to face unavoidable questions, and have direct
access to, and understanding of both communities. They can be interpreters and
203
mediators, even catalysts for interfaith dialogue (Basset, 2000:22-23). Religious
intermarriage may be seen as a form of interfaith dialogue, albeit an atypical one. Like
conversion from one faith to another, it means that boundaries become muddled, and in
some inter-faith settings, discussion of intermarriage can cause awkwardness and
embarrassment. Yet as inter-faith dialogue is an inter-personal encounter, which
happens ‘where people meet’, the insights of those meeting within marriage and family
life are invaluable. Far from being an aberration interfaith marriage is indeed for some,
an ‘extraordinary vocation’.
204
Appendix 1: Table C0400 –Religion of Married Couples
NB: Scottish statistics from the 2001 census available in Table A1478 ‘Religion,
current, households where not all members are the same’ are recorded in a different
manner, and are less useful for this study. See http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/en/
205
Appendix 2: Letter to Interfaith Contacts
Dear
My name is Rosalind Birtwistle, and I am a research student at Heythrop College,
University of London, investigating the beliefs, identity and spirituality of Christians in
mixed-faith marriages. My supervisor is Dr Michael Barnes
([email protected]). I am writing to give you information in the hope that you
can put me in touch with Christians who are in mixed marriages or long-term
relationships with someone of a different faith. I would like to interview them as part of
my M Phil research. The discussions will be so that I can understand more about:
 How mixed couples meet each other, and the issues they face in deciding
whether to marry.
 How these couples fit in with the wider family and within the faith communities.
 How couples deal with religion at home – for example what festivals they
celebrate, and whether they follow special food laws.
 How they decide about the religious identity and education of their children
 How the Christian partner is affected by the close relationship with someone of
another faith and background; for example does it have an impact on their own
beliefs, values or spirituality?
The focus of this study will be on the partner of Christian background. However, I am
not only looking for people who are members of churches, but also at those who
identify as Christian. I am also interested in interviewing people who were brought up
within the Christian tradition, and who have converted to their partner’s faith.
If you know of anyone who may be willing to be interviewed as part of this study, I
would be grateful to hear from you.
Yours sincerely,
Rosalind Birtwistle
206
Appendix 3: Letter sent to potential interviewees
(This letter was forwarded to potential interviewees by the contact person, not sent
directly by me).
My name is Rosalind Birtwistle, and I am a research student at Heythrop College,
University of London, investigating the beliefs, identity and spirituality of Christians in
mixed-faith marriages. My supervisor is Dr Michael Barnes
([email protected]). I am writing to give you information in the hope that you
will participate in a study as part of my M Phil research. I would like to interview
Christians who are in mixed marriages or long-term relationships with someone of a
different faith. The discussions will be so that I can understand more about:
 How mixed couples meet each other, and the issues they face in deciding
whether to marry.
 How these couples fit in with the wider family and within the faith communities.
 How couples deal with religion at home – for example what festivals they
celebrate, and whether they follow special food laws.
 How they decide about the religious identity and education of their children
 How the Christian partner is affected by the close relationship with someone of
another faith and background; for example does it have an impact on their own
beliefs, values or spirituality?
The focus of this study will be on the partner of Christian background. However, I am
not only looking for people who are currently members of churches, but also at those
who identify as Christian. I am also interested in interviewing people who have
converted to their partner’s faith.
Participation in this study is entirely voluntary. It will involve an interview of between
an hour and ninety minutes, at a time and place convenient to you. I would like to tape
the interview, but you may switch the recorder off at any time, or decide not to answer
any of the interview questions if you wish. You may also decide to withdraw from this
study at any time by telling me. All data related to your participation will be destroyed
as soon as possible if you withdraw.
The information you provide will be considered confidential, except that with your
permission quotations may be used. Your name and any other personal identifying
information will not appear in my thesis; neither will there be anything to identify your
place of work or personal circumstances. If you request confidentiality beyond this,
information you provide will be treated only as a source of background research,
alongside book and web-based research and interviews with others.
I may ask for clarification of some points some time after the interview, but you will not
be obliged in any way to clarify or participate further. Beyond that I will not seek any
more interviews or make any further contact with you about this after the interview
unless you ask me to.
207
Notes collected during this study will be retained securely until I complete my thesis
and then destroyed, if you request. I shall erase the recordings as soon as practical after
transcribing them. I shall also keep your contact details separately from the records of
the interviews, and only I will be able to match names with interviews. Although my
thesis will be kept in a university library and therefore accessible to the public, and
although I may present my findings in seminars or other gatherings, only my supervisor
and I will have access to the interview data itself. Other people will not be able to read
any data I keep on my computer which is password protected. However, I cannot know
in advance how the findings will be interpreted or used by anyone who reads my thesis.
If you have any questions regarding this study or would like additional information
please ask me before, during, or after the interview. If you feel you would like to help
me, please reply by post, telephone or email and I will contact you.
Yours sincerely,
Rosalind Birtwistle
208
Appendix 4: Consent Form
Research Project on the beliefs, identity and spirituality of Christians in mixed marriages
Researcher: Rosalind Birtwistle
e-mail:[email protected]
Supervisor: Dr Michael Barnes, SJ
e-mail: [email protected]
Data Protection:
This information will be held and processed for the purpose of research on the subject of
Christians in mixed marriages. I understand that any information I provide is confidential, and
that no information that could lead to the identification of any individual will be disclosed in
any reports on the project, or to any other party. No identifiable personal data will be published.
The identifiable data will not be shared with any other organisation.
Please answer each statement concerning the collection and use of the data.
I have read and understood the information in the letter.
Yes □ No □
I have been given the opportunity to ask questions about the study.
Yes □ No □
I understand that I can withdraw at any time from the study without having to give an
explanation.
Yes □ No □
I agree to the interview being taped.
Yes □ No □
I would like to see a copy of the transcript of my interview.
Yes □ No □
I understand that my name and any details which would identify me will be removed from the
study.
Yes □ No □
Signature:
Date:
Name (please print)
Your contact details:
Address
Telephone
E-mail
Please return one copy of this form to Rosalind Birtwistle, in the envelope provided.
Should you have cause for complaint about this research, please address your concerns to the
Chair of the Research Ethics Committee, Heythrop College, Kensington Square, London W8
5HQ
209
Appendix 5: Prompting Questions
These are samples of the questions I asked interviewees. I aimed to have conversational
interviews, with a sense of coherence. Thus the questions were prompts, and not used
in a linear fashion; some were not required in all of the interviews, or were adapted to fit
the flow of the conversation. I also asked supplementary questions if a respondent
brought up a subject which I had not anticipated but which was likely to be relevant to
the study. However, the main focus was on the following four broad subject areas: the
interviewee’s own faith background, events surrounding their decision to marry (if
applicable) and the wedding itself, the way in which the couple and any children relate
to their wider families and faith communities, and the interviewee’s current spirituality
and practice.
Biographical data (asked at the beginning of the interview, while establishing
rapport):
 Age range of interviewee and partner
 Education and occupations
 How and where they met –brief details
 Whether either partner was born/brought up abroad, if so length of time in U.K.
 Religious affiliation of both partners
 Marital status/how long they have been married
 Whether there are any children; if so what age(s)?
The following issues were explored mainly through semi-structured interviews:
Religious background of interviewee
I aimed to discover who/what influenced the interviewee during childhood and
adolescence, whether they received any formal religious education and nurture, and
what place faith had in the family of origin. I listened for stories and anecdotes to
illustrate this. Also what contact they had with other faiths while they were growing up,
and any significant religious changes or events.
Prompting questions included:
Tell me, please, about your childhood …
How important was religion in your family?
This could lead to questions about whether they were baptised, confirmed, etc., church
attendance and attitudes to faith within the family and whether the interviewee had any
religious education.
Can you remember any early experiences of religion?
Both positive and negative experiences/attitudes were recalled.
Was there anyone who was a special influence while you were growing up?
210
Are you the same religion now as your family?
This could lead to a straightforward answer about religious/denominational change,
differences within the family, and perhaps to a discussion on the way their faith has
developed.
Wedding and associated events
Prompting questions could include: (If already married or planning to)
When did you decide to get married?
How did everyone receive the news of your marriage?
This should elicit details of how they told people, who they discussed it with, and of they
avoided telling some people. Details of whether the courtship/marriage was
clandestine, low key or elaborate… who was supportive and who was anxious or
hostile.
Did anyone want either of you to convert because of the marriage?
This could lead to discussion on family approval, pressure, sanctions and conditions
being applied as well as their understanding of both faiths.
Is this is the first marriage for both of you?
If not, was the previous partner same or different faith – brief details; any children etc.
Tell me about your wedding …
Brief details of ceremony, civil, religious or both … who was invited, who came. How
they came to their decisions about the wedding.
Some people say that you shouldn’t marry somebody of a different religion to yourself.
What would you answer them?
Could lead into discussion of whether it is morally right or wrong to do so, also whether
it is wise (in terms of stability, harmony, etc.) Could also open a conversation about
how accepting or tolerant other people are of these relationships.
Family, Children and Community
Prompting questions could include:
Tell me about your life together now…
(If there are children) What about your children?
Should elicit basic details, age, gender and perhaps how they see the religious identity
of their children
When they were born, did you have any special celebrations?
Could lead to discussion of reception or otherwise into religious communities, perhaps
also role/influence of other relatives. What religious nurture and education, do the
children receive, either at home or school, religious institution or other clubs or
classes. How they decided on the children’s religious identity. Also how they feel about
all this – their hopes and aspirations. Any regrets or hesitations? Are there unresolved
issues?
211
What about day-to-day things like what you eat and drink … do you keep Kosher?
(or equivalent question about religiously proscribed food and drink) Domestic
religious observance including rules about food and alcohol: Are these rules observed
outside the home?
Also whether they have scriptures, prayer books, or other books about the faith,
religious jewellery or other items at home. Use of them, and the meanings ascribed to
them.
What do you do about celebrating the various festivals and holy days?
Details of family festivals, e.g. Seder/Diwali/Eid/Easter/Christmas Do they keep one or
more sets of festivals? What it means to everyone. Do they celebrate at home, as an
individual, with family or with worshipping community? Are there difficulties and
conflicts? Anything they would prefer not to have at home, e.g. Christmas trees, cribs?
I wonder how you and your partner fit in with each other’s families now … Encourage
stories about family events such as weddings, bereavement and funerals, duties towards
extended family members. If there have been tensions in the past, has there been
subsequent reconciliation? What helped?
Interviewee’s current spirituality and practice
This took up the most time in many interviews, and had to be done sensitively partly
because of the possible shyness of some people when discussing faith (see for example
http://www.ctbi.org.uk/downloads/ccom/documents/0008%20David%20Hay%20Final
%20Report.doc section 5:2) and partly because many people do not have the language
to express what they want to say. I aimed for a discussion on religious identity,
spiritual practice, belonging to or attending a church – frequency of worship or visits.
Do they pray or meditate apart from formal or public worship? How and when?
Whether their practice is basically Christian, whether it is influenced or informed by
other tradition(s). Concept of God, language used to describe God.
Listening for experience of a sense of God, Higher Power/ Sacred Presence. When and
where?
Prompting questions could include:
Are you currently connected with a church or a Christian community?
Listening for a sense of believing and/or belonging. If they are connected, the level of
contact and involvement.
Do you visit the Mosque/ Synagogue/ Gurdwara?
Whether this is for special occasions or more often, and for worship, for social events.
How comfortable/accepted they feel there… How involved the partner is with their faith
community. If the interviewee attends church, whether the partner visits with them.
What about the children… do they go to one, both or neither?
Do you ever experience a sense of God or a ‘Higher Presence’?
212
Do you ever have a sense of being somewhere that is a special or a sacred space?
For example, a church building, the countryside, etc. If so, encourage conversation
about where and when, their response, and how do they nurture or keep this experience
alive.
What about when life is difficult – does this affect your sense of God/ ‘Higher Presence’
(or whatever words they use to describe this)?
Listening for either positive or negative response to difficulties and suffering, for
example a sense of being helped or protected/also for attitudes towards suffering.
How would you describe your own faith now?
Would you say that being married to … has influenced your own beliefs and values? In
what way? Can you give any examples?
Aiming to elicit whether/how the faith of a Christian may be stimulated by contact with
the ‘Other.’
If someone who was planning to get married to someone of a different religion came to
you for advice, what would you say to them?
213
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