One of my friends if hard-core Christian, and has had something bad to say about all of the guys I’ve gotten involved with. One of her favorite arguments is “But he’s not Christian!” But I"M NOT REALLY CHRISTIAN EITHER!!! Finally, one day, I was fed up and asked her who she thought would be a good guy for me. I got an answer that went something like this:
“Well, I’d hate for any of the people I care about, my friends or family, to date anyone who’s not Christian. But then, I’d be really disappointed in a Christian guy who dated a non-Christian girl.” What the hell? She just ruled out every guy in the world!
I also know a Jewish guy who will only date Jewish girls. I understand that dating within your religion was often practiced in the past, but isn’t it a bit outdated now?
And then there is inter-racial dating too. I have no problem with it, but I’ve noticed so many people seem to have a problem with it.
So should we keep with tradition and date only people of out own race and religion, or should we move on to the future and date whomever we want?
Regarding inter-racial dating: Date whom you’d like, understanding that in some (fortunatey dwindling number of) places you will be subjecting yourself and your date to the loud and sporadically violent reactions of idiots who object.
Regarding inter-religious dating: Date whom you’d like, understanding that dating is part of the preliminary courtship rituals of our society. There are many people who would find it very difficult to spend the rest of their lives with someone who had a seriously different belief in the deity that they did. This is not the same as a couple who differ on politics or art. For many people, religious belief is a core value and they prefer to exchange the support that comes from that belief with their life partner.
I am not arguing that inter-religious dating is wrong or harmful, only pointing out that for some individuals it is not a good idea.
Date whoever you want.
If you’re Jewish and you don’t want to date non-Jews then, obviously, you shouldn’t date non-Jews.
If differences of belief, culture or tradition cause a problem in your relationship, then it will come to an end. But I wouldn’t suggest that these differences will always cause problems, and that people should therefore avoid these relationships altogether.
Why not? If i’m interested in a relationship with someone, my requirements are my business. I’m confident in my faith, and I want to raise my children Catholic. Although I’ll be watching the priest like a hawk.
“I think we should all keep f*cking each other 'till everyones the the same color.”
-Warren Beatty in Bullworth
The real question here is “When will people shut the hell up and let me believe what I want / date who I want / etc?”
We’re all full up on idjits who think they know what’s best for everyone.
I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone else who they could or should date.
For me, I take my Christianity very seriously. The worst mistake I ever made was getting involved with someone whose take on Christianity ranged from indifferent to antagonistic. I made a vow to myself that I would only get serious with someone who shared my faith.
I am happy to report that I have found (and recently married) that very person. We look forward to growing and strengthening our faith together.
She is also of a different race/culture as me.
I get it now! Your “friend” sees a neat way to make all us awful not-really Christian types to just die off. No dating, marriage, or even sex for us!
May I recommend you tell your friend about your attitudes towards bigots and see if she can draw the correct conclusion from that?
Don’t underestimate the power of family and tradition in discouraging this kind of dating. For a personal anecdote, my mother hates the fact that my fiancée is Jewish, and her grandmothers hate the fact that I’m not. (She’s just a deist in practice, and although much of my family is very Southern Baptist, I am an atheist, so our religious beliefs or lack thereof are actually not that different.) If you don’t think it’s hard to marry someone that your family doesn’t like, you haven’t heard the constant sniping. It’s easy to say, “Just cut the bigots off,” but in real life family is critical to sanity, and I’d prefer that my parents get to eventually see their grandchildren, and so forth. Sometimes it’s easier to just go with the flow – I’m very fortunate to have met an understanding woman who’s worth all the hassle.
Also, people who are true believers just might not be able to have a family with someone who didn’t share the belief. I also imagine that many of them don’t want to explain to their children that Mommy / Daddy is, in fact, going to hell. In the situation that both parents were differing true believers, what’s a child to think? If they listen to Mom, Dad’s hellbound, and vice-versa. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, or at least lots of screaming matches. People who feel that their child needs devoted religious upbringing will probably limit themselves in choice of mates.
Your friend sounds like a real piece of work, though. You should only date Christians, but Christians shouldn’t date you? Get thee to a nunnery (Buddhist) :).
I’ve had two seperate experiences in my life which I look upon.
One in which there was a maarriage with a Black man and White woman in the mid seventies I used to hang around their kids. (Had a crush on the Girl… my first kiss at six). Aside from a few couples including, surprisingly, my parents (My father is an Archie Bunker through and through) they were ostrasized adn I had to listen to small minds tell me that the kids were not happy because tehy weren’t black or white. I didn’t see it.
The Marriage ended poorly, but it was due to one individual and his habit of being abusive and not because they were from different racial backgrounds.
Another case friend of mine had parents of the same cuture (Trinidad) and same ethnicity (West Indian with East Indian ancestory) but where he was a Muslim she was a Hindu. The Boys grew up basically atheists. But the couple is still together and fine.
I’m sure it is not easy as humans generally try to gravitate to what they consider “like” groups. But from What I have seen in my little life, there is no real reason why people shouldn’t.
If you and that special person can get over what differences you have, then do what you wish.
As far as Family and friends nagging, sooner or later you have to tell them up front to shut up, stop being selfish bags and try to be happy for you. After all you are living your life not theirs so realistically they shouldn’t be affected. If they want to save sould or the “purity” of the family line they can do it for themselves.
That’s my haypenny anyway
Don’t treat interracial and interfaith dating as if they’re the same thing.
If a black Methodist man wanted to marry a white Methodist woman, I have no problem with that, most Methodists have no problems with it, and only a few bigots will raise objections.
If a white atheist male wanted to marry a Japanese atheist female, I know of no one who’d object.
But I have severe misgivings about interfaith marriages, and so should anyone who takes his/her faith seriously.
Now, if you DON’T take your faith seriously, that’s a different story. If you’re the type of “Christian” who rarely or never goes to church, and your beloved is the type of Jew whose “faith” consists of exchanging gifts at Chanukah, well… such a coupling is likely to work out just fine. Interfaith relationships between tepid believers don’t face serious obstacles.
But if your faith IS important to you, if you envision it being an important element in your future family life, why on Earth would you marry someone who can’t or won’t share in that?
If a Jewish woman considers her faith and heritage important, if it’s something she feels obliged to pass on to her children, she’d be crazy to date a Catholic like me. And if I feel the same way about my faith, I’d be equally foolish to get involved with her. That’s doesn’t mean either of is a bad person; that doesn’t mean I think Jews are going to Hell. It merely means that if your faith means something to you, it CAN’T be a small thing.
Bottom line: if two people have compatible values/beliefs, but different skin colors, they have my blessing to date or marry. However, if two people have the same skin color but incompatible values/beliefs, I urge them to look elsewhere.
I will say this : relationships are infinitly easier when the people involved have the same expectations of what both people’s roles in the relationship are. For example, arranged marriges can work wel, provided that both people involved grew up with the exact same ideas about what each gender is supposed to do and the possiblilty of varying those roles is not seriously considered. And I’m not some academic American talking about exotic cultures either: my own Arkansas-hillbilly grandparents were a case in point: they both grew up emersed in the sensibility that everything inside the house was the domain of the woman and everything outside the house was the domain of the man, and they never had a problem til they started a store that was attached to the house–the had to actually talk out the new situation. I ntheir case, it amounted to a war over territory, and ended when my grandmother won.
When people come from different backgrounds, they have different expectations, and often those expectations are so innate, are due to such early influences, that they don’t realize that these things are even open to question–things seem self-evident when they are clearly not. It takes a great deal of commitment, of communication, of self-reflection, to unearth these expectations and talk them out. it is a long process–years, not months. The relationship is land-mined with honest misunderstandings that come from both people thinking that things are obvious when they are, in fact, arbitrary.
This is not to say that these relationships can’t work–they can, and do. But they are more diffucult, and I am not sure that they are really any more rewarding–to say that would be to belittle the many couples I’ve known that come from very similar backbgrounds who are very happy with each other. But they can work. My own parents come from very differnet backgrounds and are very happy. But I tend to feel that a prere relationships between people from very differnt backgrounds
Ack! posted accidently. The last sentence should read:
I tend to feel that a prerequisite for a successful relationship between two people of very differnet backgrounds is that they both have the ability to communicate their expectations in explicit and concrete detail, and to recognize that many of those expectations are arbitrary and open to compromise.
I concur with everyone else: race isn’t an issue.
On religion: as a Catholic, I’m free to date and marry whomever I want (although special requirements might kick in if I marry a non-Catholic, there’s no explicit statement that I can’t marry someone of another faith). However, there is a requirement that Catholics raise their children in the faith, so it’d probably be a sticky point if I wanted my children to be baptized, confirmed, etc. and she didn’t. So that’s one of those “proceed with extreme caution” areas.
As a practical matter, I’d prefer to date another Catholic. Echoing some of divemaster’s sentiments, I’ve dated two non-Catholics: one was a non-practicing protestant of some sort, the other was vaguely wiccan. In the first case, she and I really had no bond other than a physical one, so the relationship dried up pretty quickly. We could never connect on a spiritual level; her faith was entirely nonexistent at a time when mine was growing. I can’t imagine the relationship would even work today. In the second relationship, we hit some big snags over the faith split that just couldn’t be resolved.
Of course, I was younger then, and kind of a jerk about my religion. I’ve learned to separate the person from the belief these days, so I’ve actually managed to date a few non-Catholics without religion being a problem. (Still, the issue of disagreeing over any children’s upbringing makes me wary.)
I’m from an inter-racial home, and i’ve dated outside my race more than in it. Race is a non-issue for me, and any sensible person. (sadly, some of my relatives fit into the unsensible person catagory, leading to a section of the family that no longer talks to us, but that is a long story)
Religion is another thing, like most people above have stated. I am a Christian, but i don’'t go to church (i guess according to astorian that makes me a “Christian”). For me the religion wouldn’t really matter, as i wouldn’t be activally trying to convert, and wouldn’t date a woman that was actively trying to get me to worship Unholy Worm Praetor God Lthugaloo-Snorg or something. Her family might differ, my mom is cool enough that even as a more active Christian than me, she wouldn’t push away someone that i loved because she was a Buddist or something.
I am married to an Israeli jew. I am an American from New Mexico, a predominantly Baptist/Catholic area, I knew almost NO jews growing up.
Other than my wife always assuming I was a Christian because that was my upbringing we had little issue between the religions. I most emphatically am not though I think Christ had a lot of value to say. I tend to view worshipping ANYTHING over another thing as Idolatry, so worshipping Christ is idol worship to me. I tend toward a much more zen/deist view of the world. My father was trained to be a methodist minister before he converted to Zen Buddhism and then found some monk who said you cannot escape your past so he smirkingly refers to himself as a Zen Baptist. My grandparents on my mother’s side were Catholic so I got some of that from them, while my mother was episcopalian and my step-mother was a non-practicing presbyterian who’s father WAS a methodist minister, and she’d taken a certain amount of time to dabble with paganism.
So while I did have a lot of christianity assaulting me from all sides it just never made that much sense to me, except for that lapse when I was 13 and got baptised because I hoped people would accept and like me because of it.
Neither my wife or I are very devout. I am much more affirmed in my belief than she is, however she is much more into the tradition. I found that her reform jewish upbringing in Israel jived much more with my view of Christ’s teachings than anything I’d ever heard in a Christian church. So we really had not much of a problem with it except in the beginning where she was a little resistant to hearing my theories that flew in the face of her beliefs. She wanted to raise children jewish should we ever have any, and I have no problem with that because I tend to be more philisophical than religious as it is. I guess the most major problem we would run into is my iconoclasm and the fact that I believe organized religion is 99% BS, though she tended to see it more from a cultural unity perspective than a religious unity perspective, this seems to be a fairly unique trait among jews that I can see much logic in. She kind of had the idea that it doesn’t matter how you talk to god, as long as you do, and that was something that she was brought up to believe. Which is pretty antithetical to my own views of organized religion through Christianity.
However we laughed one time because we were talking about what it would have been like for my parents had she been black and from New York (I’m as white as they come) as opposed to a white Ashkenaz from Israel. We both knew that it would have been a bigger deal even though the cultural difference is much more minor than between an American and an Israeli jew. Though she had no problem voicing her opinion when she thought America was being stupid, which annoyed my father to no end. However we just found the idea amusing that had she been black it would have been a bigger deal.
I personally have no problem with interracial dating and have a very strong attraction to black women, the darker the skin the better. And as was illustrated so wordily above, I have no problem with interfaith marriage either.
Erek
Perhaps I’m just being dim/naive, but I really don’t see a problem with interfaith marriages, provided that both parties are respectful of the others beliefs. And I don’t see how two people who love and are commited to each other enough to get married wouldn’t have that.
Are you suggesting that someone who takes his/her faith seriously shouldn’t have that kind of respect?
Well, for me the issue is kids. I’m not married, but if I ever do marry, it will have to be to a man who is willing to allow the children to be raised as Christians. I don’t think I have the right or obligation to weigh in on any adult’s beliefs, but I do think I have the right and obligation to give my children a firm grounding in the faith that I believe is for me – and, I would hope, for them – the best. If the kids then choose not to be Christian, or not to be actively so (once they’re old enough to make those decisions), that would be fine – I would also raise my kids to think for themselves, make their own decisions, and develop a personal relationship with God as they understand Him.
But it is not an option for me to raise the children outside the church (because my husband is of another faith) and then expect them to “choose” later. How will they choose, if they’re raised in neither? Nor is it an option for me to raise the children in both churches, if the beliefs are not compatible – how could I teach my kids that Jesus is the Son of God, for example, while also taking them to services where He is not?
So while I could and would marry a man of a different faith and be perfectly happy, the kids question is for me a deal-breaker. If he’s not willing to raise his kids as Christians, then we have no future, because I won’t raise my kids any other way.
But I firmly agree that race is a totally different issue. I wouldn’t care about the race of the man I loved, and I would not allow it to affect my decision to marry him or have children with him. If the rest of the world has a problem with that, they can just deal.
Why is it so often that the mythologies are more important to people than the philosophies and teachings?
Erek
**
That really depends on how you look at dating. Some people date because they’re searching for someone to enter into a long term romantic relationship and perhaps marriage. It makes sense that someone would wish to share their life with someone of similiar religious and philosophical beliefs.
I think we can just leave it up to the people dating.
Marc