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Statistics show that 37 percent of Americans have a spouse of a different faith.
Statistics also show that couples in interfaith marriages are "three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages."
Is interfaith marriage good for American society? Is it good for religion? What is lost -and gained -when religious people intermarry?
Statistics indicate that a growing number of Americans are marrying someone from outside their own religious commitments. Is this a trend we should encourage? Not if you are committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The statistical trend is clear enough, but the question is more complex than may first appear. The Washington Post reported on June 6, 2010 that 25 percent of American households were mixed-faith in 2006, according to the General Social Survey. That represents a significant increase from the 15 percent of such households in 1988.
But, what does mixed-faith mean? It could mean the mixing of relatively similar Christian denominations, or it might mean the mixing of two very different systems of belief.
As Naomi Schaefer Riley reported, "In a paper published in 1993, Evelyn Lehrer, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that if members of two mainline Christian denominations marry, they have a one in five chance of being divorced in five years. A Catholic and a member of an evangelical denomination have a one in three chance. And a Jew and a Christian who marry have a greater than 40 percent chance of being divorced in five years."
That paper by Professor Lehrer is truly interesting. In "Religious Intermarriage in the United States: Determinants and Trends," published in the journal Social Science Research, Lehrer acknowledged that the span of differences "corresponds to a continuous variable." In other words, there is a huge difference between a marriage where a Presbyterian marries an Anglican and one in which a Baptist marries a Mormon.
Lehrer defined a couple as religiously intermarried if, for example, an Evangelical marries a Roman Catholic, or a spouse allied with a liberal Protestant denomination marries someone from "an exclusivist group." She then allowed, "Unions involving members of two ecumenical Protestant denominations are treated as homogamous."
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SOURCE: The Washington Post | On Faith
