I was discussing this a few nights back with a friend from a church singles group, just wondering how workable relationships are between people who don’t share the same faith. The general guideline given by the church is to avoid dating non-Christians if you are a Christian. I just am not how I would react if I was with someone who was perfect in every except that they did didn’t share my faith (or lack thereof, depending on who you are) and I wanted to solicit input from the SDMB on everyone’s experience with this kind of situation.
(not sure if this is really GD material, but figured it would be safer to stick it here )
I guess it’s entirely a matter of what your personal position on faith is. An extremely liberal Christian like me, with a family of casual and liberal Christians, had no problem marrying a person of no faith at all. Since I do not believe God has any problem with it and does not send people to “hell,” it’s of no concern to me.
On the other hand, if I were a pretty serious, hard-core Catholic, that might create some issues that had to be worked out beforehand. Some Christian faiths are alright with marrying different Chistian sects; some have a problem even with that. In some cases, it might not personally bother the couple considering marriage but might cause friction with their families.
Yeah…It very much depends on the situation. I am an atheistic Jew who is living with an atheistic Christian, so no real problem. One might argue that our different experiences with guilt has been a problem…but that is more of a cultural than religious thing.
Well, I’m a Presbyterian-raised atheist married to a Catholic. My kids are going to a catholic school and that is just fine by me. I support their belief in God and am silent on my own beliefs: for now.
As for our marriage, believe me, there are more “important” conflicts to worry about.
Will the other person’s belief in something you can’t accept, or their failure to believe something you consider important, affect your level of respect for them?
Is there a chance you will come to resent the time and attention the other person spends on their religion or the people in brings them in contact with (or vice versa)?
If you eventually have kids together, what will they be taught and what traditions will they be raised with?
Do you two value the same things and have the same ideas about how a good and honorable person behaves? The answer to this might be yes or no whether or not you share the same religion. But these are the kids of things that are informed by one’s religion; and appealing to a higher authority won’t be of any value unless the two of you have the same higher authority.
Lots of Western Christians married to local Buddhists in Thailand with no ill effects. I’m not a Christian myself, NOR a Buddhist, nor any other religion; my wife is Buddhist but very laid back about it, rejecting the more superstitious aspects of the local variety.
I’m reminded of two young-adult Thai Christians, a brother and sister, who years ago, seeing me, a farang (Westerner), walked up and proudly proclaimed their Christianity to me. I told them I was not a Christian and then admonished them for turning their back on their culture. They grinned sheepishly and giggled, as is the custom here, and then slinked away quickly.
For a marriage to work, IMHO, one thing you need going in is compatible values and worldview. Sometimes different religions mean fundamentally different values and worldviews; sometimes they don’t. But I’d say the real question is whether they do or don’t in each particular instance.
As a general guideline it’s not a good idea from my understanding of the scriptures. But I think a believer should seek God to get a answer, though it will be hard to take a ‘it’s not to be’ when you are in a relationship. Trusted friends (fellow believers) can be very valuable here.
People have free will to come to God or not, God does not make us follow Him, we must chose. Marrying a non-believer is taking a chance that the non-believer will decline that opportunity and it will leave that marriage in a unstable condition, as they will be one flesh in two kingdoms.
I think that the more different two people’s cultural backgrounds are, the more difficult it is to have a successful, happy relationship. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to try, or that such couples can’t be happy, but you have to be really good at talking to each other. Two people who come from identical or nearly identical cultures will have many of the same unspoken–and perhaps unrealized–expectations for each other and for the marriage. People from very different cultures can have very different expectations that they don’t even know they have. I can easily see someone who automatically tithes 10%, say, never even mentioning that they do so to their fiance—not out of deciet, but just because it is something you do–only to discover after marriage that they spouse is very unhappy with that much of the household income going to the church instead of to, say, the couple’s children (i.e., if it comes down to cosmetic braces for Suzie or tithing, the Christian and the non-Christian might have very different expectations).
For many people, religion is not just about personal belief, it’s also about being a member of a community–showing up to pot luck dinners and visiting people in the hospital and joining bible study groups and teaching Sunday school – your friends are the members of the church. There is nothing wrong with this–many people have a strong urge to be part of a tight-knit community where people all know each other for years upon years. However, being part of such a community (and they form around things other than churches) takes a lot of time. If you are married to someone who sees that community as something that exisits on the periphery of their life and doesn’t partake in it, you will likely drift out of it over time–or end your marriage. There are exceptions (both people have a large outside interest, like 2 seperate church communities), but it does happen.
Well, since you brought in the subject of dating, I’m going to snark in with how the average person’s religious beliefs go about as far as their crotches.
A lot of kids stop going to church as they rebel against an institution that tells them that they can’t do whatever they want sexually. Then, women get tired of screwing around and want to have kids, and they want the kids to go to church so they won’t grow up to be wild apes. Guys don’t necessarily grow tired of screwing around, but the available pool of sex partners has shrunk to women who insist on church attendance, so guys go to chruch for the same reason they left it: to get laid.
There was a letter that obliquely brought this to mind in Dan Savage’s sex column a while back. A woman had rejected a guy who was a great catch except that he came out early and admitted to a harmless sexual deviancy in which he’d hoped she’d occasionally indulge him. Dan Savage said that a karmic justice will befall people like this woman, and if they reject people who are open with harmless kinks, they’ll wind up in relationships with people who hide dangerous ones.
Following this logic, the “fuck me on Saturday night but take me to church on Sunday morning” rule creates a bunch of (mostly guys) who only go to church to make their wives happy; wives who then have to take on the role of spiritual policemen in the family. This is ironic (and funny to nasty me) since traditional Christianity is set up to make the man, not the wife, the spiritual head of the family, while in liberal Christianity judging who’s a “real” Christian and who’s not isn’t very, well… Christian
So yes, inconsistancies in faith will create conflict in relationships. But then, conflicts come along in relationships anyway. People aren’t above using religion to beat the other over the head with “You Catholics are idolotrous sheep,” “How could an atheist love me when he can’t love Jesus?,” etc. However, plenty of people of the same faith slam each other with a variation of this anyway: “I’m a better Christian than you are!”
When my husband and I were first dating, many if not most of his friends were Wiccan/Neopagans. I have nothing against them; they have become my friends too! - but I would not have married him if he himself had not been Christian. There aren’t many things I considered “deal-breakers,” but that was one.
On the other hand, I know one couple who has been happily married for 20+ years where he is Jewish and she is a devout Catholic. Their two boys were raised Catholic, but they celebrate Jewish holidays as well.
In another case, he is Episcopalian, (and used to be my church’s organist and choirmaster, before he left to pursue his doctorate in Music) and his wife is Jewish. Both are devout in their respective faiths. They attend services at the synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday. Their two boys have had a baptism and a Bar Mitzvah. They’ve also been together at least 15 years.
shrug
As hard as it is to keep a marriage together in the best of circumstances, all I can say for sure is that it’s not being a problem for them!
My wife was raised a mormon and remained faithful to the LDS church until they wanted her to start performing proxy baptisms. She “graduated” to agnostism and then the UU church (I suspect so that she has someplace to belong)
I was raised atheist, our sons are agnostic I believe until they can make up their own minds.
Religion has never played a part in our relationship. She’s free to believe what she wants. She never pressures me about participation.
My girlfriend (I know it’s not as long-term as a marriage, but the OP asked about dating too) is quite devoutly Christian. I’m quite definitely atheist, without being a prick about it. We’ve discussed religion and belief and various philosophies extensively, without pressure from either side. She doesn’t ask me to participate, and I don’t put any obstacle in the way of her faith. I do challenge her, as she challenges me, because we are both adults interested in discussing this, but it’s done with affection and space for trying to really understand what the other person is saying. It works for us.
If we were to get married and have children… I don’t know. I’m not sure I would be comfortable with having children raised in religion. It would be something to discuss, and possibly a potential deal-breaker, as much as I hate that expression. Since we haven’t got to that stage yet, it’s all good. I sleep in on Sunday mornings, she goes to church. Religion doesn’t really enter into our relationship.
I’ve participated in these discussions before, so if you already knew this (or don’t care), feel free to ignore. I’m fairly devout Baha’i. My husband is an atheist. Even though he doesn’t believe in God, he has a lot of respect for the basic tenets of the Baha’i faith; I was a non-denominational Christian when we married, because I hadn’t yet found a “flavor” of Christianity that suited me.
When I found my current faith, about 11 years ago, I asked him if it was alright for me to make my Declaration. In Baha’i, unity is the most important factor, and in order for widespread unity to take hold, there must be unity in the home first. Therefore, if he had had an objection to me being Baha’i, it would have been against the principles of the faith for me to do it. He didn’t object.
I’m very low-key about my daily prayers, etc. so as not to annoy or inconvenience him. He is quite open to attending devotional gatherings and firesides hosted by the local Baha’i community, and likes the other Baha’is.
We agreed to raise the children Baha’i into adulthood (or maturity, which according to Baha’i law is age 15) at which point it is up to them what they want to do.
It works for us because we are both respectful of one another’s beliefs and positions.
Even if I had been Baha’i when we met, there is no ordinance in our Holy laws against marrying non-Baha’is.
We have been together since 87. Seems to work, I don’t feed him to the lions and he doesnt try to burn me at the stake. Last time I went to a circle and he was along, they sang a pagan version of The Lord of the Dance, and last time I went to church with him, they sang the christian version of The Lord of the Dance.
FWIW, one of my favorite things to sing is the latin version of Veni Veni Emmanuel. I love the way it resonates in my throat, and in the shower=) and I love a classic catholic mass in latin. Ceremonial anything can be fun as a spectator sport.
We’ve had a number of threads on this subject. I’m an atheist married to a Catholic. Our kids are baptized Catholic and my wife is raising them in the Church. Our oldest goes to a Catholic school and our youngest will too when she’s old enough. For the time being, I’m keeping quiet about my beliefs to my kids but I will give them “the other side” when they’re older.
I don’t interfere with my wife’s practice and she doesn’t try to convert me. It’s worked fne for 18 years and counting. Ironically, religion is one of the only things we’ve never had much conflict about.
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