A Question For Certain Religious Converts

In My Humble Opinion
1

By “certain religious converts” I guess I mean the kind that converted for someone else, in particular, those who converted at marriage.

My question is, since your conversion, do you honestly believe in the doctrines of your new faith or do you go through the motions for the sake of family? What made me think of this is reading a story about the president of our local synagogue. She is a woman who was raised Catholic, but converted to Judaism when she married a Jewish man. Obviously, she takes her conversion seriously - she is, after all, the president of the synagogue. But I wonder how easy it was for her to stop thinking as a Christian - I don’t mean a values thing, but just in the way she considers Jesus and symbols and whatnot.

Also, there are a couple in an offshoot of my family who compromised his Catholicism and her being Baptist by both becoming Lutheran - it’s not Catholic, but it’s more ritualistic than the Baptist Church is their logic. I find it hard to believe that either one of them feels like a real Lutheran, whatever that means. What with the consubstantiation for him and the infant baptism for her, it must be a real mind blower.

I get the impression that there are some converts who fall in love with the lifestyle and “beauty” of the religion without ever stating that they have fallen in love with the belief system.

This subject is one of my strange little obsessions and I would love to hear people’s experiences.

2

I often wonder this myself. A couple of my Hindu girlfriends converted to Islam when they married a Muslim guy. That one really threw me for a loop - Islam is more like Christianity than it ever is like Hinduism. They are hugely different, in other words. I always questioned (silently) how loyal they really were to the new religion.

3

Actually, you made me remember that I had a friend from high school who married a Muslim man and converted to Islam. I haven’t seen her since before she married him, but there was never any doubt in her mind that she would convert. Meanwhile, growing up she was very accepting of all that she learned in religious education and was a real by-the-book Catholic.

4

[QUOTE=Caricci]
By “certain religious converts” I guess I mean the kind that converted for someone else, in particular, those who converted at marriage.

My question is, since your conversion, do you honestly believe in the doctrines of your new faith or do you go through the motions for the sake of family? What made me think of this is reading a story about the president of our local synagogue. She is a woman who was raised Catholic, but converted to Judaism when she married a Jewish man. Obviously, she takes her conversion seriously - she is, after all, the president of the synagogue. But I wonder how easy it was for her to stop thinking as a Christian - I don’t mean a values thing, but just in the way she considers Jesus and symbols and whatnot.
[/QUOTE]

OK, I can answer this one. I converted to Judaism shortly before I married Mr. Neville.

I was raised Methodist, though I actually gave up believing in Christianity as a teenager. I went through the motions of Christianity (including going to church every week) while I lived at home, though, to keep the peace between me and my mother. After I moved out to go to college, I never went to church again, except for someone else’s wedding or something like that. I was planning this from before I moved out, too.

I pretty much didn’t do anything religious while I was in college, though I did still believe in God. I also didn’t say anything to my family about not being a Christian any more- we, as a family, prefer to ignore stuff like that rather than talk about it.

At one point when I was in college, I met up with a guy I had known from church as a kid (and had a bit of a crush on then). I actually decided not to go out with him, because he was Christian and I wasn’t- I decided I wouldn’t have felt comfortable in a relationship with anyone who was actually (as opposed to nominally) Christian. Bear in mind that I hate dating (with the fire of 10[sup]11[/sup] suns) but like being in a long-term relationship, so I wouldn’t go out with anyone if I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship with them.

I started learning about Judaism when I met Mr. Neville. But I wasn’t willing to convert and practice a religion for the sake of him or his family- before I decided I wanted to marry him, I had to convince myself that I would still want to be Jewish even if my relationship with him ended. Once I felt sure about that, I was willing to formally convert.

If (God forbid) anything were to happen to Mr. Neville and I found myself single again, I would still believe in and practice Judaism. If I had kids with someone else, I’m pretty sure I’d want to raise them Jewish.

I doubt I’ll ever be president of a synagogue, though, because I’m just not the type who seeks out leadership positions in organizations (unless I’m getting paid to do it).

If you’d known me when I was younger, unless you knew me very well, you might have thought I was a by-the-book Protestant Christian. I didn’t go around talking about how I didn’t believe in Christianity (mostly so it wouldn’t get back to my mother and start a huge fight). I mostly only talked to other Jewish people about what I was learning about Judaism, too. My point is, you don’t always know what’s going on in someone else’s mind or soul.

5

I should also say: it’s rather common for people (particularly women) to convert to Judaism because they’re getting married. I don’t think of that as the main reason why I converted, but I don’t bother to tell that to everybody I meet. I wait to hear if they’re interested before boring them with the details :slight_smile:

6

Thanks, Anne Neville ! Now I have another thing to wonder about, when considering people who convert - did they decide they could observe the new religion without the relationship.

May I ask, did your husband seem to assume you would convert? Do you think you would have gotten married if you had not?

In my own family, my husband’s brother required that his first wife go through all the sacrements she’d missed as a non-practicing Catholic. I’m not Catholic, so I’m very glad that my husband wasn’t the same way because that would have been a deal breaker.

7

Sorry I took a while getting back on this- I’ve been away for a while.

I can’t speak for everyone who converted to a new faith, of course- only for myself. Maybe some people don’t worry about that sort of thing.

I suspect that it’s less common these days to convert just for the sake of appearances, because it’s become much more socially acceptable than it used to be to have a family where the parents have different religions, or to have a family that doesn’t affiliate with any particular religion.

We wouldn’t have gotten married if I hadn’t converted.

We want kids someday, and neither of us thinks much of the “four holidays” version of raising kids both Jewish and Christian (they typically celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Passover, and Easter, and have little or no other involvement with either Judaism or Christianity). Also, we’re Conservative, which doesn’t recognize the children of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother as Jewish.

He keeps kosher, and you can’t really have a house where one person keeps kosher and the other doesn’t (at least not if you keep kosher to the degree that we do now and he did before we were married- two sets of dishes).

I would have converted had I not married him, though- I found not having a religion to be personally unfulfilling.

Which sacraments did she have to do?