Naomi Schaefer Riley is a former Wall Street Journal editor and writer whose work focuses on higher education, religion, philanthropy, and culture. In this fascinating book, she takes a hard look at the rapidly growing number of mixed-faith families in America. She sees this development as a positive sign of increased tolerance and openness toward all religions. But at the same time, she has discovered that interfaith couples have many hurdles to master in order to make their marriages work and that certain combinations of religion are bound to lead to divorce.
The 2002 American Religious Identification Survey found that 27 percent of Jews, 23 percent of Catholics, 39 percent of Buddhists, 18 percent of Baptists, 21 percent of Muslims, and 12 percent of Mormons were married to a spouse with a different religious identification. In her own survey, Riley discovered an interfaith marriage rate of 42 percent. These unions were most popular in the region the Census Bureau calls the Pacific (California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii).
Ministers performing a wedding for an interfaith couple are privy to the complications which arise in trying to do justice to two religious traditions and to balance them fairly. Deciding how to raise children is the major question interfaith parents face; Riley does a good job explaining how couples struggle with this question. Various religions can take a cue from Unitarian Universalist churches who have been quite successful in attracting interfaith families.
'Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage Is Transforming America leaves us with the message that interfaith couples will find it is in their own best interests to discuss the complicated and paradoxical challenges of their religion before marriage rather than postponing such conversations to a later date such as at the birth of a child. They are exploring new frontiers by holding on to multiple spiritual affiliations.
