Christian Science Monitor: Interfaith America: 'Being both' is a rising trend in the US

[LiberalElite]

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2014/1123/Interfaith-America-Being-both-is-a-rising-trend-in-the-US?cmpid=editorpicks&google_editors_picks=true

KENSINGTON, MD. — Jean Tutt was a freshman at Harper College in Palatine, Ill., when she met Brian Saucier. He was not at all her type, she recalls – but not because of their different religions. He had long hair and wore a denim jacket with skulls on it; she had more the button-down cardigan style. He was a member of the College Republicans, while she was a fairly uninterested Democrat. Considering all this, the fact that she was Jewish and he was Roman Catholic barely registered.

Then the two got to know each other better. Jean realized she liked Brian’s sarcastic sense of humor and found him to be incredibly kind. They started dating, and by the time they graduated, they’d decided to marry.

And then, the religions did matter. While they hadn’t cared much about their faith differences while dating – the attitude still held by the majority of Americans under 35 – they wanted to get a better sense of how their mixed family would work before they tied the knot. Neither wanted to convert – the standard solution a generation ago when people of different faiths wanted to get married. And neither wanted to drop his or her religious affiliations, which is another typical path today for the rapidly growing number of American interfaith couples.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. My Jewish mother and my Anglican-in-the-process-of-converting-to-Catholic father

Were married in 1947. My father may have converted, but my mother did not. Admittedly, my mother is not a practicing Jew, she does not keep kosher, and the last time she was in a synagogue was for the wedding of a cousin about 40 years ago. But there is no question in anyone's mind that she is a Jew.

Judaism plays a small part in my life. I hold a seder every year, and on Yom Kippur, I fast, read Lamentations and pray the Kaddish for my family who were killed in the Holocaust and for the men I commanded in Vietnam. I own a very nice menorah -- a present from my Catholic wife -- but I do not actually use it. I have a mezuzah on the frame of my front door. I am familiar with many of the laws of the Talmud, and I can explain Kashrut if called on to do so. (A couple of years ago, I attended a Jewish wedding, and was surprised to see that cold shrimp was the first course at the reception dinner.)

[carolinayellowdog]

2. In an increasingly pluralistic society, conversion at marriage becomes unnecessary

I've always juggled several different spiritual affiliations along with agnosticism, but think in the future families will be more typically Interfaith than all of one affiliation.