Interfaith marriage

Interfaith marriage, traditionally (especially in the Catholic Church) called mixed marriage, is marriage (either religious or civil) between partners professing different religions. Some religions prohibit interfaith marriage, and while others do allow it, most restrict it.

Views of religions on interfaith marriage

Judaism

See Jewish intermarriage.

Intermarriage in Judaism is informed by three basic principles, be they of biblical or rabbinical origin. First, the child of a Jewish female is considered to be Jewish, regardless of the status of the father, while the child of a male Jew and a female non-Jew is not considered Jewish. This emphasis on matrilineal descent as the determining factor of a person's Jewishness is of biblical origin. In Deuteronomy (7:4), it is written "He [the non-Jewish father of the child] will wean your son away from God." In this passage the expression "your son" refers to the child of a Jewish mother, and it was thus concluded that in all cases children were considered Jewish if they were the offspring of a Jewish woman. However, the Torah is not consistent on this issue, as patrilineal descent has also been justified by pointing to verses in Numbers, notably 1:2 and 18:1. Second, intermarriage is discouraged in the Torah because it was viewed as potentially erosive to the monotheistic character and overall perceived cultural uniqueness of the Jewish people. In Exodus 34:16 we find a passage in support of this view: "Lest you take wives from among their [heathen] daughters for your sons, their daughters will lust after their gods and cause your sons to lust after their gods." Finally, a Jewish marriage is, by definition, a contract between two Jews (see Ketubah). Intermarriage under Jewish law is therefore not only forbidden, but technically (legally) impossible. Questions of civil intermarriage come up when rabbis are asked to officiate at civil marriage ceremonies.

Intermarriage within individual branches of Judaism

Orthodox Judaism strictly forbids interfaith marriage as well as any sexual intercourse with a member of a different faith. Secular intermarriage is seen as a deliberate rejection of Judaism, and an intermarried person is effectively cut off from most of the Orthodox community. However, some Chabad-Lubavitch and Modern Orthodox Jews do reach out to intermarried Jews.

Conservative Judaism rejects intermarriages as being a violation of halakha, and as causing severe demographic harm to the Jewish people. Conservative rabbis are not allowed to perform intermarriages. However, the Leadership Council of Conservative Judaism has a more nuanced understanding of this issue than does Orthodoxy. The Conservative movement has stated:

In the past, intermarriage...was viewed as an act of rebellion, a rejection of Judaism. Jews who intermarried were essentially excommunicated. But now, intermarriage is often the result of living in an open society....If our children end up marrying non-Jews, we should not reject them. We should continue to give our love and by that retain a measure of influence in their lives, Jewishly and otherwise. Life consists of constant growth and our adult children may yet reach a stage when Judaism has new meaning for them. However, the marriage between a Jew and non-Jew is not a celebration for the Jewish community. We therefore reach out to the couple with the hope that the non-Jewish partner will move closer to Judaism and ultimately choose to convert. Since we know that over 70 percent of children of intermarried couples are not being raised as Jews...we want to encourage the Jewish partner to maintain his/her Jewish identity, and raise their children as Jews.

Leadership Council of Conservative Judaism, Statement on Intermarriage. Adopted on March 7, 1995

Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism (known internationally as Progressive Judaism) discourage intermarriage, but, since they do not view halacha as binding, have no mechanism for legal prohibition of the practice in the manner of the Conservative and Orthodox movements. Progressive rabbinical associations have no blanket prohibition on their members officiating at intermarriages. As a result, some Progressive Rabbis do perform such weddings without fear of the sanction faced by their Conservative counterparts. Intermarried Progressive Jews are encouraged to raise their children in the Jewish faith, and to become part of the local Jewish community, even if the Gentile partner does not convert to Judaism. Gentile spouses of Jews are welcome in Progressive synagogues as long as they do not proselytise. See also: Reform views on intermarriage.

The demographic crisis

In addition to being prohibited by Jewish law and custom, intermarriage is often criticised by rabbis and other community leaders as demographically harming the Jewish people, since relatively few children of mixed marriages are raised as Jews. (See also: Silent Holocaust) In the U.S. the Jewish community has decreased dramatically due to high rates of intermarriage, low rates of Jewish education and the late ages of marriage. This last trend leads to later ages of childbirth and fewer children being born. For every 20 adult Jews, there are now only 17 Jewish children. On this topic Elliot N. Dorff writes:

[There is now] a major demographic crisis for the Jewish community. Nothing less than the future of the Jewish community and of Judaism depends upon fertile Jews having three or four children per couple. We as a people are in deep demographic trouble. We lost one-third of our numbers during the Holocaust....The current Jewish reproductive rate among American Jews between 1.6 and 1.7. That statistic means we are killing ourselves off as a people....This social imperative has made propagation arguably the most important mitzvah of our time....To refuse to try to have them, or to plan to have only one or two is to refuse to accept one of God's great gifts. It is also to renege on the duty we all have to create the next generation. . . "

This is My Friend, This is My Beloved

Jewish law prohibits conversion to Judaism merely for the purpose of marriage, but, outside of Orthodoxy, people who express a sincere interest in Judaism that was sparked by a desire to marry Jews are generally welcomed.

Samaritanism

Samaritan men are allowed to marry women outside their community, on the condition that the wife accept the Samaritans' practices. This lies short of conversion and can qualify as interfaith marriage. The decision to allow this kind of marriage has been taken in modern times to keep the Samaritan community from dying out of genetic disease.

Christianity

Many Christians believe that anyone has the freedom to choose her or his partner for life, and that love has no boundaries. This attitude is found most often among those who may be identified as progressive or liberal Christians. It is supported by 1 Corinthians 7:12-14 with the central sentence: "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband."

Some Christian denominations forbid interfaith marriage, drawing from 2 Corinthians 6:14, and in some cases Deuteronomy 7:3.

The Catholic church requires permission for mixed marriages, which it terms all unions between Catholics and baptized non-Catholics, but such marriages are valid, though illicit, without it: the pastor of the Catholic party has authority to grant such permission. Marriages between a Catholic and an unbaptized person are not sacramental, and fall under the impediment of disparity of worship and are invalid without a dispensation, for which authority lies with the ordinary of the place of marriage.

Bahá'í Faith

According to the Bahá'í Faith, all religions are inspired by God, therefore interfaith marriage is allowed. In that case, the Bahá'í ceremony should be performed, and the non-Bahá'í rite or ceremony can also be performed. If it is the case that both ceremonies are performed, the non-Bahá'í ceremony should not invalidate the Bahá'í ceremony and it should be made clear to all that the Bahá'í partner is a Bahá'í and is not accepting the religion of the other partner by going through with the ceremony. The Bahá'í partner should also abstain from undertaking any vows or statements that commit the Bahá'í to any declaration of faith in another religion or that are contrary to the principles of the Bahá'í Faith. The two ceremonies should happen on the same day, but the order is not important. The Bahá'í ceremony may be performed in the place of worship of the other religion provided that it is given equal respect to that of the non-Bahá'í ceremony and is clearly distinct from the non-Bahá'í ceremony.

Hinduism

Hinduism declares that there are always innumerable paths to God. And that one’s belief or perception of God is an individual matter and best left to the individual to decide his own path.

Thus, the Hindus have never hesitated to respect the freedom of other faiths to coexist and flourish and thus inter-religious marriages are accepted in Hindu society. It also does not put any obligation of faith on the non-Hindu partner. Inter-caste marriages were somewhat frowned upon but this too is becoming more acceptable with time. In metropolitan cities it is common to find couples with different faith, caste and regional background. There are numerous laws in the Indian legal system, safeguarding inter-faith marriage. Examples of such marriages occasionally appear in Kipling's stories. In the wake of outward conversions to other religions and lack of inward conversions into Hinduism, it lacks the vitality for growth, which is seen in almost all other religions.

Islam

Islam only allows a man to marry a non-Muslim if she is Christian (specifically Greek Orthodox) or Jewish. The wife need not adopt any Muslim laws, and the husband is not allowed to keep her from going to church or synagogue. The early jurists of the most prominent schools of Islamic jurisprudence ruled in fiqh law that the marriage of a Muslim man to a Christian or Jewish women is makruh (reprehensible) if they live in a non-Muslim country. The Caliph Umar (634–644) denied interfaith marriage for Muslim men during his command of the ummah.

Fiqh also forbids Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men, although there is nothing in the Quran nor the Sunnah (sharia) that explicitly prohibits such unions. Some Muslim scholars (ahli kitab) go so far as to state that such a marriage is an act of apostasy, but with the growing number of such marriages, this position is being questioned. In some Muslim countries, if a non-Muslim woman is married to a non-Muslim, and she converts to Islam, the marriage is suspended until her husband converts to Islam. When he converts a new marriage is not needed.

Although fiqh forbids Muslim women's marriage with non-Muslim men, there are lots of Muslim women who have married men who follow other religions. These cases are mainly observed in the Balkans and West of Turkey, West Europe, Southeast Asia, and sometimes in Syria or Lebanon. They are also becoming more common in the West.

Interfaith marriages in the Bible

Interfaith marriages in the Bible are discouraged. The marriages of the patriarchs cannot be considered interreligious, as there were not yet any "Jewish" women to marry. It is true that even for the first Hebrews it was considered proper to marry members of the same nation and the Bible disapproves of Esau and Judah, who married Canaanites instead. Joseph is recorded as marrying an Egyptian woman, but the adoption of his sons by his father Jacob insured their place among the Hebrews.

Generations later, the sons of Naomi married Ruth the Moabite and her sister. As rabbinical commentaries illustrate, it is clear that Ruth converted to Judaism before marrying Boaz, as she declared to Hebrew Naomi in Ruth 1:16: "Your God will be my God." While this verse implies some type of conversion process, it is not clear exactly how such a procedure took place and the extent to which it resembled conversion rituals today.

The Biblical character most notorious for interfaith marriages was perhaps king Solomon. Many of his 700 wives were non-Hebrew and not only continued their pagan practices, but also tempted Solomon to participate therein. Eventually, this flagrant violation of the biblical prohibition to marry non-Jews resulted in God destroying Solomon's kingdom. It would be under the rule of Solomon's son, Rehobaum, that Solomon’s empire was destroyed and divided.

Later on, in Babylonian captivity many members of aristocratic Hebrew families married local women. After some of these returned to their homeland, Ezra condemned these intermarriages and attempted to force such families to divorce. It is not clear whether he succeeded, however, many scholars agree that it was those husbands that wrote or edited the Book of Ruth.

Paul of Tarsus is often interpreted as forbidding the interfaith marriage of Christians in the sixth chapter of 2 Corinthians.

Justifications for intermarriage disapproval

Prohibitions against interfaith marriage can be justified under a number of religious-based reasons:

• Some religions view their rules on marriage as commandments from God.
• A few religions view themselves as a priestly people, with a specific mission to carry out.
• Some people believe that introducing two contradictory belief systems into a marriage is grounds for marital strife, and increases the rate of divorce.
• Some believe that having parents of two opposing religions causes psychological stress on the children in such a marriage, as they often are effectively forced to "choose" one parent's faith over another.
• Religious intolerance. A person professing a different faith is considered incompatible and not worth marrying.
• The possibility of temptation to "wrong" practices by the "outsider" spouse, as well as the possibility of the children growing up in the "other" faith, or torn between two faiths.
• Some religions, such as the Druze religion, are closed communities and do not accept new members, whether through marriage or through conversion.

When a man and a woman professing different religions want to marry, and the religious laws of the faith upheld by one of them forbid this, they might:

• abandon the relationship and seek a partner of their own faith,
• consider the Conversion of one spouse,
• live as if married with no ceremony,
• have a purely civil marriage ceremony, or
• if one of the two religions does allow interfaith marriage, hold the wedding according to the ritual of the accepting religion.

In many non-secular countries, religious rules are effective law. Nearly all states in North Africa, Middle East and South Asia have non-secular constitutions, with minor effect e.g. in Morocco, Israel and Malaysia and strong effect e.g. in Saudi Arabia and Iran. In these countries, marriage law contradicts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 16).

References

• This is My Friend, This is My Beloved: A Pastoral Letter on Human Sexuality (Jewish) Elliot N. Dorff, The Rabbinical Assembly
• It All Begins with a Date: Jewish Concerns about Intermarriage: Jewish Concerns about Intermarriage, Alan Silverstein, Jason Aronson, 1995, ISBN 1-56821-542-8
• Leadership Council of Conservative Judaism, Statement on Intermarriage. Adopted on March 7, 1995
• 'Why Marry Jewish: Surprising Reasons for Jews to Marry Jews', Doron Kornbluth, [Targum/Feldheim], 2003, ISBN 1-56871250-2
• 'Dear Rabbi, Why Can't I Marry Her?', Eliezer Shemtov, [Targum/Feldheim], 2006, ISBN 1-56871-410-6

External links

• TalkingAboutIntermarriage.com
• Catholic view of intermarriage from the Catholic Encyclopaedia
• Jewish view of intermarrige from the Jewish Encyclopaedia
• More on the Jewish view on Intermarriage
• The Marriage Imbroglio
• Resources for Interfaith Families where one partner is Jewish from Interfaithfamily.com