Religious plurality is a fact of life. Every day, we encounter and interact with an increasing number of people of different faith traditions.
With Jewish neighbors, Hindu co-workers, and non-religious friends – and amidst other changes in the landscape of marriages and relationships – it is unsurprising that in the United States, interfaith marriages have been on the rise. In fact, over the past five decades, the share of couples in same-faith marriages has dropped substantially, with an increasing number opting for starting interfaith families, according to the 2022 American National Family Life Survey.
Ten years ago, Susan Katz Miller wrote a book with this demographic, and their families, in mind. Being Both introduced another world often judged, and nudged to the margins, by monochromatic religious insiders who feared or looked down upon interfaith unions. It suggested another way forward to a generation of people increasingly aware of religious plurality and living it out within their own families. Katz Miller did not shy away from the challenges interfaith family communities face, whether navigating institutional obstacles to their unions or when deciding how to include coming of age ceremonies for their children or navigate the interreligious calendar.
A decade after its first publication, I had the opportunity to ask Katz Miller some follow-up questions about the ongoing challenges interfaith families face, the evolving religious and interfaith marriage landscape, and how our very notion of what “religions” are and how we define religious communities and cultures might be challenged by the dynamics she’s witnessed in interfaith families over the years. The following is an edited version of our conversation.
After a decade, what do you feel is Being Both’s ongoing message and relevance?
PHOTO courtesy of the author.
This book is not only still relevant but perhaps more relevant than ever. So, I'm grateful that Beacon Press still has it in print in hardcover, paperback, and eBook. For the 10th anniversary, we made an audiobook and I have just come out of the studio, where I spent three days recording and narrating.
I also wrote a new author's note that puts it in perspective as a snapshot in time, ten years ago, when I think people were just becoming aware of the possibility of being an interfaith family that would educate children in both religions, and what that would look like and what the challenges and benefits are.
Now, a decade later, with demographic changes and increasing support from religious institutions, I think it's become easier to be an interfaith family; easier at being and doing both. I think as a society, we've become more educated about these issues. And there have been some important shifts as a result.
What are the challenges that interfaith families continue to face, or that have perhaps evolved, over the last ten years?
The challenges have always been more external than internal. What I mean is that you often feel more challenged by extended family who don't accept your relationship or religious institutions that don't support you. And I think that those are still the main challenges. But I do think extended family members are less likely now than they were to object to or mourn your marriage to someone of another faith. Just because it's become more common, and people are used to the idea. And maybe they've developed some confidence in seeing a generation of kids grow up and not be confused or screwed up by their interfaith family.
At the same time, institutions are becoming more welcoming and inclusive, sometimes even being led by people in interfaith families. This changes the landscape. When you have clergy who are in interfaith marriages, when you have boards that include people in those categories, then that changes the policies that might be made, and makes it more likely that these families are going to be included and welcomed. For example, since the book first came out, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College decided to accept rabbinical students who are in interfaith relationships and to ordain them. Just this year, Hebrew College in the Boston area did the same. These changes have a huge effect, I think, on the entire Jewish and interfaith family landscape.
Religious institutions like these have come to realize that interfaith families who want to claim more than one religion and educate their children in more than one religion, is part of our reality, and that it's here to stay. That was a very threatening idea to a lot of institutions a decade ago. What I'm seeing now is leaders, institutions, and communities willing to be open to the idea that there could be benefits to the interfaith family pathway.
What are some of the internal challenges that interfaith families face?
The internal challenges are the same, I think: figuring out how, and whether, to honor different aspects of your family’s religions, how, or whether, to celebrate certain holidays, and things like that. But, you know, these are the challenges all couples face. They ask, “Are we going to do Christmas your way or Christmas my way? Are going to do your kind of Hanukkah, of my kind of Hanukkah?” It doesn't really matter whether they're two religions or one religion in a family, there's still going to be differences that must be negotiated. Every couple needs to address questions like: did these religious traditions mean to me in my childhood? What were my feelings around them? What do they mean now? Has that changed? And do you want to bring that practice into your family going forward? Or not? And why?
How has the general decline in religious adherence impacted the interfaith family landscape?
That is one of the key statistics that I did update in the book. Increasingly, in my years of speaking about this book, and working with couples, I've seen a rise in the numbers of couples who are Christian and secular, Jewish and atheist. And I believe Christians with secular, or non-religious, partners, is the largest, fastest growing segment of the interfaith families worldwide. I often refer such couples to Dale McGowan’s In Faith and In Doubt, which is specifically about marriage between people who are Christian and people who are “nones.”
What might readers have to learn from your book about this thing we call “religion?”
Another trend I noticed in the past ten years is the increasing number of couples and families who have more than two religions in their heritage; some that have three or more! You’re going to have interfaith kids dating a Muslim; for example, a Jewish-Christian interfaith kid dating a Hindu. That’s three heritages in that coupledom. This makes the interfaith family even more complex – and more exciting. It is kind of refreshing as it challenges some of the binaries that we have let define American religion (e.g., the Judeo-Christian binary).
This also fits in with broader conversations about multiple religious practice, or multiple religious participation. This idea was first explored by Catholic theologians who labelled it “multiple religious belonging,” but belonging can be a complicated thing, with gatekeepers in institutions often deciding who is in and who is out. I am increasingly talking about and thinking about interfaith families who teach their children two or more religions, as part of this global reality of multiple religious practice, which goes back to the beginnings of religion. Anytime you have two spiritual or religious cultures side-by-side, you're going to have people marrying across those boundaries. So interfaith families go back to the beginning of these things we call “culture” and “religion,” influenced by forces like colonization, immigration, and the forced movement of people. Interfaith families have helped shape the traditions we believe are bounded. They were a product of contact and interfaith relationships, within and beyond marriage.
Additional Reading and Resources
• Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, by Susan Katz Miller
• “Leaps of Faiths,” a documentary by David Kovacs and Steve Ordower on interfaith families
• “Nous tous,” a film by Pierre Pirard