All My Children

Communicating with a child about your religion and background is seldom clear and uncomplicated, but sometimes it is especially challenging. This is often true for interfaith couples. They live in a world of difficult decisions, especially once children come along, and compromise about religion may be their way of life. This situation is increasingly common in America among Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and many others as more people choose marital partners without regard to religious background.

Continuing increases in interfaith marriages could mean changes in the shape of religious worship as we know it, and will certainly have significant implications for the religious education of children.

Bringing up a child in an interfaith family is a special phenomenon worthy of careful consideration. The interfaith couple today is in a peculiar situation. Husband and wife frequently face moral dilemmas in speaking to their children about religion, but often have little formal religious or psychological guidelines to rely upon. While every interfaith family is unique, the basic challenge in most cases is similar: to bring together two diverse histories, to satisfactorily encourage a child to have faith, and to explore many possibilities of faith.

The most obvious concern for an interfaith couple is the separate set of perspectives they bring to family life. Coming from different religious backgrounds, husband and wife are faced with the formidable task of integrating those views into a coherent theological view in the home. For example, a Catholic parent is brought up to believe that baptism is necessary for salvation; a Jewish spouse may see baptism as a betrayal of his or her faith. When it comes to bringing up a child, the challenge is even more imposing. How can parents of different religious backgrounds teach their children about religious beliefs, practices, and the notion of God?

“The hardest thing,” says thirty-one-year-old Audrey, a Protestant married to a Hindu, “is to explain together what you believe in and what we are worshipping. Coming from different religions can give you an unusual vantage point at times, but it’s not always conducive to talking about God. Since my husband was brought up with an Eastern way of looking at things, it may be a little more necessary for us to spell things out for our daughter about how we’re similar,” Audrey concludes.

As Audrey and other interfaith parents attest, the central issues for most couples of dissimilar religions are quickly apparent once children reach three or four years of age, if not much sooner. Couples must determine what religion or religious beliefs to offer to their children and what to tell their children about God. These are the core concerns which in large part will determine the shape and success of an interfaith family.

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