Interreligious affiliation marriages

(This is the first and last time I will feature a picture of Chelsea Clinton on my blog. )

USA Today and many other media outlets raised some interesting questions about the wedding between Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky, focusing on the idea of interfaith marriages. At one time that was quite a taboo. Heck, people were hesitant to marry outside of their ethnicity much less their religion, but as matters of faith drift further into the realm of of personal preference the walls between religious affiliation that prevented marriage in the past are tumbling down.

Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding reflects mix of religions in USA

Chelsea Clinton, a Methodist, and Marc Mezvinsky, a Conservative Jew, had their very private wedding on Saturday. But the public may not be done peering through the shrubbery at their lives.

Like it or not, the famous bride and groom will continue to be the focus of scrutiny for their religiously mixed marriage — a category that's growing rapidly among U.S. couples.

Two decades ago, 25% of U.S. couples didn't share the same faith. That was up to 31% by 2006-08, according to the General Social Surveyby the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The number was even higher, 37%, in the 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Both surveys included people who crossed major traditions, such as Jewish-Protestant, believers married to the unaffiliated, and Protestants of different denominations, such as former president Bill Clinton, a Baptist, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Methodist.

(If I were snarky, I would point out that for most people they are not really intermixing religion because frankly most people belong to the same religion worshipping the triune god: Me, Myself and I. If I were snarky.)

Is this not symptomatic of the prevailing cultural winds, where religion (I won’t say faith) is an intensely private matter, where we are not beholden to our community of like-minded religious adherents more than a mere verbal assent (Sure, I am a Christian) and occasional visits to the religious dispenser called church or synagogue or mosque? Is this not also a direct result of reducing faith to "church membership" and attendance at weekly "worship services"?

Of course there is a world of difference between marking “Christian” on a census form and showing up every now and again to a church building and actually being a Christian. I don’t know much about Marc Mezvinsky, whether is an observant Jew or not, but as far as Chelsea Clinton goes I have never heard mention of her faith. At the risk (how often do I write those three words?!) of being judgmental, if your faith in Christ is not at the center of what you do and who you are, what sort of a Christian are you? That is not a shot at Chelsea Clinton in particular but rather a serious question to be asked about anyone who lives in a western culture and makes vague religious claims that have no discernable impact on their lives. Do people really think God is going to be fooled into believing they are a Christian because they label themselves “Baptist” or “Methodist”?

When you read stuff like these examples from the article, it shines a pretty clear light on what interfaith marriage is all about (emphasis added in two spots):

Saqib Ali, who is Muslim, and his Christian wife, Susan, eloped to a nearby mosque for their Muslim wedding 11 years ago, since "neither set of parents was interested in our getting married," Ali says.

"A few months later, when everyone settled down, we had a Christian ceremony and a big reception," says Ali, of Gaithersburg, Md. They are rearing their two young daughters in Islam, while still going to Susan's Presbyterian USA church on Christmas and Easter.

"I don't try to force my religion on her and she doesn't force hers on me," he says.

"You have to be a pretty flexible person. If one of you is more rigidly religious, no matter what the religion is, it's a whole lot harder," says Cathy Dee of Fort Wayne, Ind., a Methodist who married a committed Catholic 35 years ago. Although their two children grew up Catholic, both now attend Protestant church with Dee's grandchildren.

What is a whole lot harder? Being married? Getting married? That is why we apply the “don’t be unequally yoked” passage to marriage and rightly so. How does one carry out their responsibility as a Christian parent to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord when they are permitting them to be raised in Islam with false beliefs about a false god? What kind of a muddled message is that, raising your kids and teaching them about Allah and then taking them to a church on Easter and Christmas. Is Allah not a god those days? Is Jesus not resurrected the rest of the year?

Even among committed Christians, the pressure to marry outside of the faith is pretty strong. We have some close friends who got married fairly late in life because they were adamant about getting married to committed Christians. That is hard when society says you should marry whoever “makes you happy” and within the church it becomes harder and harder as you get older to find a spouse. The desire to be married and have children can override the principle of not being unequally yoked especially for young women who are surrounded by smiling couples with babies.

I might have mentioned before that it is so vital for Christian parents to impart the importance of marrying a fellow Christian to their children who profess Christ. I can think of nothing other than a firm grounding in the faith that is more important to children entering adulthood.