AS THE Revd Alan Franks and Usha Gupta, his Hindu solicitor bride, tie the knot in The Archers, fictional Ambridge may seem far away (Comment, 15 August). Interfaith marriages in Britain are on the increase, however, and may even be more likely in a village setting than a multicultural city centre.
When the Revd Clare Downing, a URC minister based in Leicester, began her dissertation on Christian/Muslim marriages for her MA in Interreligious Studies, she assumed that such couples would be well-represented in her home city. In fact, she found the reverse was true: “Where there is a large faith group, such as Leicester’s Muslim community, it tends to be more conservative, and there is more pressure not to ‘marry out’.”
But, as more young people live independently, home ties lose their immediate hold, the social circle widens, and romance may bloom across the faith and culture divide. But the consequences may be more far-reaching than the young lovers realise. Three years ago, Ashley Chisholm, a Roman Catholic, launched the website mixtogether.org to offer support for those in interfaith, race, or caste relationships. It currently has a membership of more than 200, and 50 or so contribute to its forum in the safety of anonymity.
Mr Chisholm’s initiative was a direct result of personal experience. “I wish someone had warned me what might happen before I got involved,” he says. “I was shocked by the lack of acceptance of other faiths. I was told by the Hindu father of one girlfriend that I was from the wrong caste.”
Underestimating the challenge of interfaith relationships may arise in part from different religious and cultural assumptions. Contemporary Western Christianity stresses the individual’s response, making faith a personal choice against what is seen as a separate cultural backdrop. For other minority religions in the UK, faith and culture overlap to form a community identity into which one is born: marrying out is not simply a private matter.
Heather Al-Yousuf, an Anglican married for more than 20 years to a Shia Muslim, feels that the clash between personal belief and a non-negotiable identity means having different conversations within each interfaith partner’s wider family. “I don’t think you can separate religion and culture in Islam. It’s a social religion with an understanding of marriage intrinsic to its practice. We’ve a long history in Britain of choosing our own marriage partner. The question my family asked when I got married was not ‘Does our religion allow it?’ but, ‘Will he make you wear a veil?’”
THE PRESENCE of a strong collective culture and clear-cut religious guidelines on marriage may push an interfaith relationship into secrecy. A couple may feel pressured to decide too early how serious their relationship is, if they fear that breaking the news of its existence may result in turmoil on one or both sides of the family.
Rosalind Birtwistle, the co-founder of the Interfaith Marriage Network, says that such fears are not always unfounded. Children marrying out may face being ostracised by their own parents: “Many religious communities are especially protective of women, and families can experience shame and loss of face if their daughters marry out of their faith and community.”
Reconciliation may happen later. Ms Birtwistle observes that, “when children arrive, a woman may need to get back in touch with her own mother.”
Indeed, if the interfaith couple need to work through issues regarding their own parents, becoming parents themselves may raise even more questions. These revolve around the faith in which the children are to be brought up, and may begin with decisions about whether a child is to be baptised or, if male, circumcised.
There may be expectations from the wider family of faith. In Judaism, Jewish identity is transmitted down the maternal line; in Islam, the father’s child is held to be a Muslim. Ms Al-Yousuf, who runs the Muslim/Christian Marriage Support Group in Southall, recalls being contacted by a Christian woman who was divorced from her husband but was struggling to bring up their children as Muslims.
The couple may also find that accommodating each other’s faith may evoke strong feelings. “A Christian woman wanted her children baptised,” Ms Al-Yousuf says, “but during the service she saw her Muslim husband’s eyes streaming with tears. He felt he was losing his children.”
She feels that interfaith couples need to realise how parenthood can reawaken a deeper connection with their own religious upbringing. “Sometimes, people want to do things with their children that were part of their own childhood.
If you say your children are to be brought up as Muslims, what happens at Harvest Festival?”
Many couples seek a route that incorporates an education in both faiths, with the aim of enabling their children to be what Ms Birtwistle terms “spiritually bilingual”. This may bring its own challenges, as children begin to face the outside world.
Judith Kampfner’s father is Jewish; her mother is a Christian. They decided not to be “dogmatic about religion” with their children, and Ms Kampfner recalls a childhood of Hebrew lessons alongside attendance at a Church of England school.
Things changed when the family moved to Hampstead: “On my first day at school, I saw the girls making two separate lines for assembly. I was told one line was for Jews, the other for Christians. I didn’t know which line to join, but chose the Christian one as it was longer and I’d be less conspicuous as the new girl. But I felt labelled from that moment.”
As an adult, she feels “religiously Christian and culturally Jewish. As a mixed-faith child, you can feel left out. Sometimes it felt that my parents did not give us a faith. In a way, both of them had something we children didn’t have.”
Caught between the demands and needs of two generations, and possibly under pressure from their wider faith communities, interfaith couples may seem particularly vulnerable. And yet, with little evidence to suggest that the divorce rate among them is significantly higher than for other groups, it seems that love can, and does, find a way.
FOREMOST among the ingredients for a successful interfaith marriage is a willingness to accept and actively engage with the differences. Ms Birtwistle advises couples to “take their time, to talk about everything, and get to know each other’s faith — not just from books, but by talking to community members, and visiting the place of worship if possible”.
She feels that interfaith relationships can stimulate rather than inhibit spiritual growth: “Another faith can be intriguing, and generate an appetite to learn more — which is a real positive. Outsiders may see different religions as divisive, but actually both partners are linked by a common passion for God.”
Forging a connection with the partner is far more important than seeking their conversion, whatever the push from family or faith community for a one-religion household. In Ms Birtwistle’s experience, where one partner succumbs to the other’s pressure to convert, “It may just mean a change of label, and later become a source of regret.”
Such pressure may even undermine the marriage: “I met a man who’d left his wife because he couldn’t stand her trying to get him to go to her church house group any longer,” Ms Birtwistle recalls.
Communication about areas where difficulties may arise is also paramount. Ms Downing notes that issues such as children’s upbringing and expectations of their behaviour; time spent with in-laws; the observance of festivals and holy days; and food, may need particular attention. She finds that things work best where couples identify potential conflicts and talk them through beforehand, although it is always possible to be caught out by the unexpected.
Ms Al-Yousuf underlines the need for negotiation: “The calendar is full of religious markers. You have to decide what you are going to do.” She herself takes part in some fasting at Ramadan, and her husband joins her at church at Christmas. She is aware that making adjustments to accommodate the other inevitably affects the expression of one’s faith: “Being practical means letting go of a purist approach. In effect, becoming ‘nominal’ is what happens when you marry out. It’s very hard to maintain a religious role and a happy marriage.”
WHERE an interfaith couple are unable to take full part in either faith community, they may have a particular need to connect with those who understand their situation, perhaps through the Interfaith Marriage Network, with its aim of “supporting without trying to convert”.
Ms Al-Yousuf says the contact website for her Muslim/Christian Marriage Support Group receives “a constant stream of emails from people saying it’s good to know there are others like them out there.” The group’s monthly meeting of about 20-25 people is also visited by interfaith couples who are planning to marry.
The context of interfaith marriage is one of shifting boundaries. Factors such as greater social mobility, the mutual impact of different faiths and cultures living alongside one another, and the overall decline of organised religion among the younger generation will no doubt affect the experience of interfaith couples over the years to come.
The capacity to accept the other, however, to communicate openly, and to negotiate ways forward are essential skills to all successful marriages. As Ms Downing notes from her research, “All the stories I’ve heard are quite similar to other marriages I know about. There may be a greater quantity of issues that come up, but the quality of the way couples resolve them is what really counts.”
www.interfaithmarriage.org.uk
www.mixtogether.org
www.mcmarriage.org.uk (the Muslim/Christian Marriage Support Group)
