Ibn warraq,
Wow…I’m afraid you lost us on that one…my question was totally open ended, asking about interfaith marriage and your talking about black men f*** white women ? 
Even Sven,
This seems to tie in with what zpg zealot wrote
Even if you’re right, nobody (but you) is talking about what some bigot, some where, might think. The question is about how well it would work for the two people getting married, who presumably do not shit their pants at the idea of marrying out of their faith.
what happens? the best action movie ever made by Samuel L. Bronkowitz. warning, may contain boobies.
Thank you for clarifying this Tony Sinclair. I didn’t see anyone here ‘shitting their pants over a Christian woman marrying a Muslim,’ or people pissing themselves over black men f**** white women, I have no clue where he got this. So far for everyone else its been a very amicable thread about how people of different faiths make a relationship work
Although neither of us were very religious, I was raised in a Jewish family, and my wife Catholic. When we lived in New York marriages of that sort were all over the place. For highly religious people I can see potential problems, but for the average American ‘only on major holiday’ types it hardly seems to be a problem.
Lol, I thought of another possible scenario, how about a devout vegan falling in love with the CEO of in and out burgers? Or a cattle rancher?
A little different. I think you can be quite serious about your faith without necessarily having an issue with other faiths. Being devote doesn’t have to mean being intolerant, and plenty of true believers embrace a “many paths to one truth” philosophy. Likewise, plenty of people are casual about their religion while still happily spouting bigotry against other faiths.
This could apply to jobs too…if you were struggling financially would you ever consider a job that is opposite your beliefs?. Like a prolife person working in an abortion clinic ? Or a vegan flipping burgers? Or …how about an environmentalist activist working for the corporate office at a refinery, etc.
Being in a relationship with someone of a different faith doesn’t require you to act against your own beliefs. That might be the case for an orthodox or fundamentalist-type believer, but not for people who are less doctrinaire.
I didn’t see anything really intolerant in zpg zealots post, it seemed to tie in with your comment, but if not that’s ok…li think he was saying that a person with strong beliefs who’s life is based on those, it would be hard to blend those with someone who feels the opposite. To me, an atheist and a baptist preacher, could be pretty challenging to blend those two opposing core beliefs, something akin to a pro life preacher marrying a woman who is the director of abortion services at a clinic. Or a vegan who feels strongly its wrong to kill animals for meat, marrying the CEO of Burger King? My friends husband is jewish and she’s Christian and its been a bit rocky, although he describes himself as a cultural Jew, he’s not religious, but they but heads over things, and it goes both ways, they both sometimes get upset at the other partner for things that go counter to what they believe
I think it can work for some and for some really wonderfully so. For those I think it can be a really rich experience
The spouse and I have kind of a weird “interfaith” marriage. When we got married 24 years ago, both of us were sort of middling Christians (he was raised in a very Christian family but wasn’t as devout as most of the rest of them, I was raised as a middling Christian and hadn’t been to church in years, though I still identified as a Christian). Over the years we drifted in two different directions: He rediscovered his faith and is now an active member of his church, while I realized that I was just fooling myself and the whole Christian thing had never resonated with me at all, and pretty much drifted into agnosticism.
We’re fine with it, though; the only issue we ever have about it is that occasionally he’ll tell me that it makes him a little sad that I can’t share something so important with him, or I’ll tell him that I’m not really thrilled with the amount of money he gives to the church (which we can easily afford, so it’s not really a big deal). Other than that, we just live and let live. We haven’t come out and told his very Christian family that I’m the “family heathen,” but I think they’ve figured it out, and they never give me grief about it.
No kids to muddy the waters, thank goodness.
It works so long as the two parties involved are conscious of the issues and willing to talk about them, negotiate where needed, and abide by negotiated solutions (this doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to renegotiate). If the partners hadn’t even thought about child-rearing until a baby drops into their laps then yeah, there’s going to be a problem.
Same as differences in notions about discipline, or about spending, or about when and where to watch TV.
Unmitigated bullshit.
Having matching skin tones is unnecessary to a good relationship. Having matching ethnic histories is unnecessary to a good relationship. But having compatible values is central to a good relationship, and values are at the heart of most religions.
There’s really no way that two skin tones, however different, could doom a marriage. But it’s hard to imagine how a secular humanist and a dominionist Christian could be happy in a marriage.
That doesn’t mean that no interfaith marriage could work; that’d be obviously stupid to say. Such a marriage can work if the values the couple take from their different religions are compatible.
Ibn, you need to rethink your nonsense and back away from it.
I gather you meant to say “he wanted her to have a bat mitzvah” (I’m unclear on how a baptism would matter) because truncated like this, the father sounds like he wanted his daughter raised Satanist.
Someone is grossly ignorant of history because until extremely recently everyone would disagree.
I can speak from family experience.
I’d recommend reading up on history, particularly American history.
I’m guessing you’re a westerner because outside of the west, and even then only certain parts of the west religious histories and ethnic histories are considered interchangeable.
And I recommend you learn more about world history, particularly non-western history before making such obnoxious statements.
If I ever get married I’ll almost certainly have to do it, although I’d rather not. But I think every guy I’ve dated has been at least nominally Christian. Well, except that Muslim guy, but I’d never date a Muslim again. A Christian is okay as long as they’re not too annoying about it. Which my boyfriend is. He wants us to start going to church, which I don’t want to (he said “it can even be a white church!” like that was my objection to it). I said I’d try a Unitarian church but he’s not feeling that.
I think he’s irrational and hypocritical and he’s worried about my soul and blames a lot of our problems on us not going to church, which makes it my fault.
Anyway, there’s a difference between different beliefs and conflicting beliefs. Not every religion thinks it’s the One True Religion. If one person (or both) is devout and does believe there way is the only right way then that’s very likely to cause problems.
Let me take a devil’s advocate position for a moment. I’d argue that if a couple with two fundamentally conflicting faiths are willing to marry and raise children in some manner that isn’t consistent those faiths, their faith is basically window dressing, and that they really aren’t true believers in the first place.
In theory, at least for many religions, their faithfulness to their religious creed determines their future for … eternity. So, are they sacrificing their eternity, and perhaps even their children’s eternity, for the sake of love during a relatively brief span of their lifetime, or are they in reality just paying lip service to their so-called faith and are they practical enough to understand that the conflicting bullshits of their religious practices shouldn’t hold them back from real world relationships?
My own mom converted from a Lutheran to a Catholic when she married my dad, a fact that I didn’t even know about until long after her death. I see this as an equally or even more confusing situation than the OP. Really, you’re supposed to revise your entire vision of the nature of God and faith to get along better with your spouse? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
Or he had hopes his daughter had a future in baseball. Or he wanted to take a bath with his daughter, but cut himself off because it sounded so creepy.
In many cases, I think that’s true, but never underestimate people’s ability to lie to themselves. They might think their spouse will eventually convert. A lot of Christians seem to think that their way is so obviously the right one that non-Christians will come to their senses if given the chance. And I think with Muslims it’s considered acceptable for men to marry non-Muslims since he can lead them to the right path since men are the boss and everything, but women can’t marry non-Muslim men.