denominations - probably (assuming it was a compatible denomination.)
I actually know more than a few couples who have done this. It’s kind of like both people moving to a new house/apartment rather than one moving into the other’s house/apartment (especially if both people have spent the majority of their lives in their churches).
religions, I doubt it. I’d also think more than twice about anyone who changed religions to be with me. Faith is more important than that to me and it’s something I consider important in an SO.
If she was the type to force me to change religions, I probably wouldn’t be with her in the first place.
That said, if her family or the other people at her place of worship were giving her crap over her being with someone of a different religion, I’d change to make her life easier. It wouldn’t change what I believe in my heart and as long as she knew that and was okay with that, what the hell.
As a Catholic who married a non-Catholic (and non-Christian) in 1987, I can tell you what the requirements were then. I had to promise to do everything I could to raise the children Catholic. He had to know that I made this promise. He didn’t have to convert, or make any promises himself.
As for the OP, I wouldn’t switch, but in my experience it’s not uncommon for people to change the denomination where they attend services without changing their beliefs , even without marriage being involved.
My great grandmother was involved with a guy for a long time but wouldn’t get married to him unless he converted to Judaism. So he did the whole 6 year thing complete with getting circumsized as an adult (and this is 1900’s so ouch!). Then she changed her mind and decided to break up with him.
Anyhoo, for me I probably would, in body if not in spirit. I’m agnostic so I’m indifferent rather than antagonistic to religion. I figure that if I love someone enough to marry them then I’ll love them enough to participate in whatever services they want to attend.
No. It seems wrong. It seems like putting your partner above your God (even if that “god” is atheist belief), and that seems to me to fundamentally strike against the heart of what religion - or faith - is about. Switches between churches of the same religion may be a slightly different matter.
I’m with everyone who’s said that one shouldn’t be required to convert or change beliefs for an SO. That said, however, aren’t some Unitarians athiests as well? I mean, couldn’t you technically participate in your SO’s church life without changing your beliefs (again, not saying I think you should)?
I guess I just feel like one’s religion/beliefs are such a personal matter–not personal in that you should keep them secret like you would a festering boil on your genitalia, but personal in that these are decisions that everyone should make for him/herself, and not for any other person. Y’know?
And, while UUism can be a very satisfying place for an athiest, some people I think are just not comfortable in a religious environment, or don’t find it important, whatever the trappings.
So the answer to your question is, technically, yes, but I think your second paragraph is really the key here. It’s a personal thing, so one should do whatever he/she wants in regards to religion.
Anyway, to answer the OP:
I would, depending. As already said, I’m a UU and an athiest. I could not become any kind of Christian, but I could “convert” to Judaism. My father’s side of the family is Jewish, and I was brought up semi-Jewish (no bar mitzvah or hebrew school or temple or anyting though).
So, even though I don’t believe in God, I feel like I’d be comfortable questioning God and exploring life/religion from a Jewish standpoint (as I probably do in a lot of ways anyway). So, if it were really important for an SO (and we’re talking serious SO) for me to go to temple regularly, I’d do it. If it were a deal-breaker as far as the relationship goes, I’d be less likely, though.
And, I still would be an athiest at heart. Philosophising about God is one thing, but truely believing in his existance is another.
I converted to Russian Orthodox last May for my wedding. My understanding was that inorder to be married in the Russian Orthodox church (big deal to my fiance) that I needed to convert. I didn’t think twice about it.
My background includes Catholism then good old fashioned non-denominational, Jack Chick tracts in the foyer fundamentalism, followed my militant anti-religion “I hate God” years, to a more general disregard for what fools do in God’s name. To my current view, different denominations are merely the trappings of how one interacts or worships with God, not a violation of the belief in God. Thus to me, converting to Russian Orthodox, although very different from anything I’ve experienced before, was no more than agreeing to worship what I already believed in a different way than I’d previously been aware.
Now, to me the answer would be “No” if it involved converting to a belief system in opposition to the general Judeo-Christian theme… i.e. Church of Scientology, etc.
That’s it. I could, for that very reason. If I’m willing to make enough of a committment to a person to consider marrying them, then I have to consider what’s important to them as well. My church doesn’t change who I am, just how I practice, and if my SO cared enough to ask me to convert, then it must be a very important thing to them.
Thanks, Eonwe. My (athiest) SO and I have batted around the idea of attending a local UU church, mostly out of curiosity. Weirdly enough, I keep finding myself in conversations about UUism (most of which arise when I tell people that we may have found the ideal officiant for our wedding: an athiest UU minister who used to visit my elementary school about once a year and sing silly songs to us), and I don’t really know squat, but somehow I’m supposed to provide the answers!
But people I know keep asking questions about how this whole UU thing works, so what better way to find out . . . ?
I have to say (in regard to the OP) that if I were an athiest, I might be willing to participate in UU church activities with my SO. I mean, it’d kind of be like attending your SO’s office party or something; you might not be enthusiastic about going, but hell, you get to be with your SO, and make him/her happy, and who knows . . . ? You might meet someone really groovy, get drunk, and run off to Xerox your faces together.
Never. I am a non-practicing Congregationalist daughter of a minister. My husband is the son of practicing Catholics and considers himself Catholic. My mother in law said that if her church did not recognize our marriage, neither would she. Still, I refused to submit to the pre-nuptial investigation that her church was handing out and I refused to go to those classes. Her other DIL did all that. She was raised a non-practicing Catholic and actually got all caught up on her sacraments in preparation for marriage. I always feel smug that her marriage didn’t take and mine did.
Anyway, we found a secular priest in a magazine who didn’t require anything but $400 and he and my dad performed the ceremony.
My wife is Catholic and I was until I was emancipated. I accepted Christ some years later and now attend a non-denominational, evangelistic Protestant church situated in S Barrington, IL, for the benefit of the congnoscenti among us.
Back to the OP. I attend mass with my wife every Saturday evening. I am a reader, usher and lector in her church but do not participate in the Catholic sacraments nor consider myself a Catholic, although the one time my mother-in-law suggested I should go to confession before my sister-in-law’s wedding, I did take her up on it because a priest was available and the line wasn’t too long, oddly enough. Absolution is very cool.
My wife doesn’t regularly attend church with me. She’s quite adept at remembering what is taught when she’s there, though, and liberally uses it against me whenever necessary. “Honey, don’t they teach in your church that…”
If they particularly wanted me to, I’d go to services etc.
But, (as I don’t believe in a God or suchlike) I wouldn’t be able to suddenly believe in something simply because I wanted to or someone else wanted me to.
If necessary I could pretend (to evil family members or whoever) that I had switched.
Answer —no. I would not convert. If the person truly loved me, he wouldn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do.
I am officially a Lutheran, but my belief in God is unique in that it means all monothietic religions. Allah, God, Buddha, it all means the Guy Upstairs. I think that to believe in God (by whatever name) and live as well as you can (being a good person, being honest, responsible, helping others, you know) is enough. As a result, I do not attend church, and I only pray if I feel deeply threatened. It’s not a bad thing, I just feel like you don’t need churches and bells and confirmation just to ‘officially’ believe in God.
What this means for me is a tolerance of all religions, pagan or Christian or whatever. It’s not my place to judge people. So if I were going to marry someone, I would keep my religion. They would keep theirs. If they were Islamic or Jewish or athiest or Wiccan, fine, whatever, let them pray and sing and dance like the Hari Krishnas for all it bothers me. If they loved me, it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter at all.
However, I will contradict myself in one regard —if I were somehow to fall in love with a devout, deeply religious Catholic with a fundamentalist viewpoint (which I absolutely cannot fathom, but we’re talking hypotheticals here) then I do not think I could stay with them, let alone convert. That’s the only type of religion I cannot tolerate.
No I would not. I am LDS and have never had success dating non-LDS girls no matter how devout they were in their own Christianity. There are just some things that don’t click together.
I kind of did this. Once we had been dating for several years, I decided that I would check out the SO’s faith (Catholic). At the time I was standardly Pagan and had not been raised in any particular religion. I enrolled in an adult pre-conversion type class at his church. I found it horribly lacking in detail, but well-meaning. He attended it with me toward the end and explained things as well as he could.
I did, however, go through with the baptism, which then made me “officially” Catholic. I still wasn’t sure that it meant much to me, but I was “trying it out” so to speak. I still retained most of my original beliefs.
Over time, I came to recognize many similarities in the belief systems of the two faiths, though they were expressed differently. I got involved with “his” church and learned by asking MANY questions.
Last November, we got married in the Catholic church, complete with pre-cana counseling, etc. While I still retain many practices and ideas from my “former” religion, I DO call myself, by and large, Catholic. I have no problems with the blending of the two faiths.
d_redguy has definitely asserted his desire to raise our future children as Catholics. I have no problem with that. We have also tenatively agreed that it would be alright for me to teach them about the practices of my original faith- say at certain important holidays such as Samhain or Yule- and to explain how the Christian religions have adopted many things from ancient Pagan religions.
So far, we are doing fine. We go to church, celebrate Christian holidays, and are, for the most part, a pretty run-of-the-mill Catholic couple. When I see fit, I quietly practice certain aspects of the Pagan tradition. We have discussed what he is comfortable with me doing in our home and what he is not. I respect his wishes. It is working out fine thus far, and I do not feel “cheated” or repressed at all.
But I can’t resist telling a horror story on the subject:
Very scary nutcase girl of my acquaintance once insisted that her fiance convert to Judaism before she’d marry him. Among other things, this means that he had to be circumcised. A few hours after his bris, as he lay on his bed of pain, Nutcase Girl came over to his place and said, “We have to talk. I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and I’ve decided that things just aren’t working out between the two of us . . .”
I figure that this thread’s only been inactive for a couple days, so giving it a little shove can’t be too much of a crime, right? Right.
I’ve looked at the thread again & I’ve decided to amend my answer somewhat. I originally said that I wouldn’t want to:
to/in the practices of my whatever-he-is’s UU church - or any religion, for that matter. It also occured to me that I forgot to mention he’s an atheist - kind of a big thing to forget, I know. :o
After having thought it over, I’ve come around to the feeling that I’d attend services with an SO (even if it were a strictly theistic religion) if it were important to him, but I’d refrain from participating in any rituals. Realistically, though, I don’t see myself getting involved with someone who has a deep belief in some higher power (i.e. God(s)).
I don’t think I could love anyone that thought having the same faith was that important. I mean, if it’s a matter of “Join my religion or I’m leaving you”, what exactly do you have to lose by saying, “Screw you”? Otherwise, I’d be quite content dating/marrying anyone of any faith.
