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KLMNO A marriage of true minds, one impediment: God interfaith from B1
Jesus was a rabbi and “there is no sharp line between Judaism and Christianity”). Most families work things out, peace- fully deciding on one religion, both or nei- ther. But the fact is that conflicts such as the one between Reyes and Shapiro will probably become more common. According to the General Social Survey, 15 percent of U.S. households were mixed- faith in 1988. That number rose to 25 per- cent by 2006, and the increase shows no signs of slowing. The American Religious Identification Survey of 2001 reported that 27 percent of Jews, 23 percent of Catholics, 39 percent of Buddhists, 18 per- cent of Baptists, 21 percent of Muslims and 12 percent of Mormons were then married to a spouse with a different reli- gious identification. If you want to see what the future holds, note this: Less than a quarter of the 18- to 23-year-old re- spondents in the National Study of Youth and Religion think it’s important to marry someone of the same faith. In some ways,more interfaith marriage
is good for civic life. Such unions bring ex- tended families from diverse backgrounds into close contact. There is nothing like marriage between different groups to make society more integrated and more tolerant. As recent research by Harvard professor Robert Putnam has shown, the more Americans get to know people of other faiths, the more they seem to like them.
But the effects on the marriages them- selves can be tragic — it is an open secret among academics that tsk-tsking grand- mothers may be right. According to calcu- lations based on the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, people who had been in mixed-religion marriages
on
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were three times more likely to be di- vorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages. 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. ACatholic 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. More recent research concludes that
even differing degrees of religious belief and observance can cause trouble. For in- stance, in a 2009 paper, scholars Margaret Vaaler, Christopher Ellison and Daniel Powers of the University of Texas at Austin found higher rates of divorce when a hus- band attends religious services more fre- quently than his wife, as well as when a wife is more theologically conservative than her husband. As distinctions between Christian de-
nominations have faded somewhat dur- ing the past half-century, and as other fac- tors — such as the division of household chores when both spouses work full time —have become more important to marital happiness, there is some evidence that having the same religion as a spouse mat- ters relatively less than it used to for fami- ly stability. In addition, as our society be- comes more tolerant, interfaith families are no longer outcasts in their communi- ties.
Still, a religiously tolerant society does not a happy marriage make. As Lehrer points out, a strong or even moderate reli- gious faith will influence “many activities that husband and wife perform jointly.” Religion isn’t just church on Sunday, Lehr- er notes, but also ideas about raising chil- dren, how to spend time and money, friendships, professional networks — it can even influence where to live. The dis- agreements between husband and wife start to add up.
emember the famous counsel, the family that prays together, stays to- gether? It’s not just a come-on from preachers looking to fill pews. There is so-
R
ciological research to back it up. Modern couples seem blind to this,
however, especially because they are get- ting married later in life. And the period between when children leave their par- ents’ home and when they start a family is a religious downtime. Young people move around, date, drop in and out of school, try different jobs. They have few institutional ties, religious or otherwise. Today, the median age of marriage for American men is 27, and for women, it’s 26 — by the time wedding bells ring, many young people don’t think of themselves as religious. On top of that, the country has embraced a more ecumenical spirit. While faith-based online dating sites, such as JDate and
CatholicSingles.com, are huge- ly popular, a growing number of people don’t consider religion to be a key factor in choosing a date or a spouse. Is it any surprise that, according to psy- chologists, a lot of couples don’t even talk about religion before tying the knot? Even among those who have tough con-
versations, says Joshua Coleman, a psy- chologist and co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonpartisan re- search organization, religion can become a serious point of contention later on. One parent may agree to raise the children in the other’s faith, he says, but then that faith “becomes repellent” to him or her. Coleman doesn’t think that people get married with the intention of deceiving their spouse; “they just have no idea how powerfully unconscious religion can be.” Bridget Jack Meyers, an evangelical
Christian who lives outside Chicago, mar- ried her husband, Paul, a Mormon, only after a lot of counseling and a lot of re- search. Meyers, a student at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, jokes that there aren’t a lot of books on evangelical- Mormon marriages. So she looked at ones on Christian-Jewish relationships. “A lot of the advice was to pick a religion and raise [the kids] in one. But neither one of us wanted to give up ours,” she said. So the couple agreed to raise their children in both faiths, letting them choose their own path at some point. Shortly before their first anniversary, her husband walked out. Meyers, who writes about her interfaith family at Clob-
berBlog.com, explained in one posting: “He claimed that I had been a perfect wife and he had no complaints about me, but he was having second thoughts about a lifetime of interfaith marriage. He had de- cided that he wanted to get married in the temple and have his children be sealed to him, and he wanted to raise his children in the church, so he thought it would be best if we went our separate ways before any children entered into the union.” The two reconciled and, according to
Meyers, religion wasn’t the only issue. Still, it’s clear to her that these questions are lurking. “We didn’t account for all the ways that the different religions will affect our children,” she told me. Mormons typ- ically baptize children around age 8. But
crimination in hiring an employee or ad- mitting someone to college have morphed into rules for screening romantic part- ners. Ten years ago, the journalist Philip
Weiss wrote in the New York Observer that Jewish objections to interfaith mar- riage are “racist.” And today, some young people go to great lengths to make sure that they don’t appear to earn that label. The issue is on evangelicals’ radar as
well. In “Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage,” former megachurch pastor Lee Strobel and his wife, Leslie, write that Christians should not give the wrong im- pression when they turn down a date from a nonbeliever. “Don’t send the subtle mes- sage: ‘I’m good, you’re bad, so stay away
Remember the famous counsel, the family that prays together, stays together? It’s not just a come-on from preachers looking to fill pews.
Meyers believes that is too young. Since her daughter is only 3, she says, “I’m not getting worked up over it yet.” But she worries that if they wait too long, her child will be ostracized in the Mormon church. As for the long term, she tries not to “re- ligiously manipulate” her daughter. But Meyers knows she will be disappointed if her daughter chooses her husband’s church. The belief among young couples that love will conquer all is not exactly new. But today some young Americans seem to even pride themselves on marrying some- one very different from themselves. One woman I spoke to who was raised as a Catholic recalled her thoughts on dating when she went off to college a few years ago: “To limit yourself to only people of your own religion seemed bigoted. . . . There is a whole world of people that I don’t know.” To write them off as potential partners before she even met them “seemed rude,” she said. Her language is revealing. It’s as if our society’s institutional rules about nondis-
from me.’ ” So what does the future hold? A recent
Pew survey on the millennial generation shows that adults ages 18 to 29 are less likely than previous generations to affili- ate with a religious group and tend to pray less often than their elders. Their beliefs about the certainty of God’s existence and life after death, though, are not so differ- ent from their parents’ and grandparents’. All in all, millenials may be more suited to making interfaith marriage succeed. Maybe they will care less about the stric- tures of religion, or they won’t be as emo- tionally attached to the rituals of their reli- gious communities. And maybe their com- monly held notion that there are many paths to salvation will help them through the conflicts that arise in interfaith mar- riages. But then there is this: In the Na- tional Study of Youth and Religion, most of the respondents say they plan to be- come more religious when they get mar- ried. The question is: When do they plan to tell their future spouses?
SUNDAY, JUNE 6, 2010
URIEL SINAI/GETTY IMAGES Protesters in Tel Aviv rallied Thursday in defense of Israel’s actions days earlier, when a flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip was stopped by Israeli troops.
How Israel got to be so tone-deaf I
israel from B1
tion, and even the United States joined in a harsh statement of condemnation.Nor- mally pro-Israel editorial writers added to the chorus of ostracism. Israel has long seen itself as the Alamo,
a fortress under siege. Decades ago, a song titled “The Entire World is Against Us” hit the Israeli pop charts. At the time, there was some truth to the words: Arab states rejected Israel’s existence. An Arab economic boycott persuaded major com- panies in Europe and Asia to decline to do business in Israel. Trade with many countries had to be conducted through third parties. Indeed, Israel has faced recurring
threats to its security and existence, a re- ality reflected in a maxim I heard often during my time as U.S. ambassador there early this decade: Israel goes to sleep with memories of the Holocaust and wakes up to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this con- text, the nation’s military power was seen as a necessary response. And in turn, Is- rael’s narrative portrayed the country as a David facing an Arab Goliath. Although the 1967 war changed this re- ality, Israel’s narrative never really caught
up. Newly demonstrated military superi- ority and deepening ties with the United States provided a measure of security the country had not enjoyed before. Egypt’s President Anwar Sadatwas the first Arab leader to recognize this new strategic re- ality, and in 1979, he made peace with Is- rael.
But even as the outdated David vs. Go-
liath theme lingered in the minds of many Israelis, among other segments of the population a new, religious-national narrative that centered on settling and holding all of Eretz Israel was taking hold. Even though settlements compli- cated Israel’s relations with the Palestin- ians, and even though Israel had evacuat- ed the Sinai settlements to make peace with Egypt — a move that vitiated the ar- gument that settlements were required for security — activists such as Ariel Shar- on continued to argue that they en- hanced security. For a while, conditions allowed this
new narrative to take root: The Palestine Liberation Organization was busy attack- ing Israel from Jordan, Lebanon and the United Nations and pursuing a tactical moderation designed to lull Israel into complacency.
But soon this reality, too, began to
change. The PLO decided in 1988 to offi- cially support a two-state solution to the conflict and entered into dialogue with the United States. In 1991, Arab states participated in multilateral negotiations with Israel on water, the environment, economic development and regional se- curity. Arab and Israeli business leaders met at international conferences. Israel’s diplomatic isolation eased as China, In- dia and others established formal ties, and Israeli liaison offices opened in Mo- rocco and Arab states in the Persian Gulf. In 1994, Jordan made peace, removing the security justification for Israeli settle- ments in the West Bank. And in 2002, Arab states announced an “Arab peace initiative” offering peace and security in return for Israel’s withdrawal from lands taken in the 1967 war. But the Palestinian intifada put a brake on these developments, ushering in a decade of violence. As Palestinian terror- ists attacked not only soldiers and settlers in the occupied territories, but also civil- ians in Israeli cities, the Israeli storyline of the 1950s — David vs. Goliath — re- vived.
outweighed by the need to prevent the next suicide bombing. Whatever the con- sequences of its actions, Israel would not apologize for defending itself. Netanyahu would echo this refrain al- most a decade later, after years marked not only by the intifada but by an Israeli decision to build a security barrier. The decade saw a brutal war in Lebanon in 2006, sparked by Hezbollah’s kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers and ended by Israel’s destruction of Lebanese civil- ian infrastructure and significant civilian casualties. The decade saw Hamas’s elec- tion victory in 2006, its violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, its unrelenting rocket at- tacks against Israel in 2008 and Israel’s massive response, again involving great numbers of civilian casualties and the de- struction of infrastructure. By decade’s end, a frustrated Israel had sealed off and blockaded Gaza to try to stem the flow of arms to Hamas, but because of the wors- ening humanitarian situation there, it was losing the battle for international le- gitimacy. Narratives, as self-justifications, do lit- tle to explain the complexities, ironies and paradoxes of the Arab-Israeli con- flict. In the early 1980s, while I was as- signed to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, I met a Palestinian nationalist figure in Gaza who was unrelentingly opposed to the Israeli occupation. He shocked me one day when he said he also admired Is- rael. After a near-fatal car accident in Ga- za, his son had been evacuated to one of Israel’s leading hospitals, where doctors saved his life. My Palestinian contact hat- ed the Israel of the occupation, but he ad- mired the Israel that was blind to the na- tionality of a boy in need of care. When an Israeli military plan goes
arrived in Israel as the U.S. ambassa- dor in 2001, right after the first Pales- tinian suicide bombing, and discussed these issues often with then-Prime Min- ister Sharon, usually in the context of the choices Israel made in dealing with ter- rorism. Sharon believed that a strong and unyielding military response was all that was needed to persuade Palestinians to stop the intifada. A terrorist attack in Tel Aviv would often lead him to impose a closure on Gaza, preventing the move- ment of people and goods. A typical conversation with Sharon on this subject went something as follows: I would suggest that the closure on Gaza would be seen by the media and even friendly governments as collective pun- ishment, would shift the media’s story line from Palestinian violence to Israel’s reaction and could even drive Palestin- ians hurt by the closure into the terrorist camp. Sharon would reply that his re- sponsibility was to protect Israelis, that the Gaza closure was designed to prevent further attacks and that the media were to blame for distorting reality. His underlying point was clear: Any
impact on Israel’s image and on the long- term possibility of a widened conflict was
awry and civilians are killed — as hap- pened last week off the shores of Gaza — should Israel’s narrative take in the hu- man dimension? Should it express empa- thy for those affected by the conflict and by Israeli military actions? Marla Braver- man, an editor of Azure, an Israeli neo- conservative journal, thinks not. In the current issue, she writes that despite a longtime tendency toward self-efface- ment, “Israel must learn to adopt a clear, unapologetic stance befitting a sovereign state.” The fact is, however, that sovereign
states make mistakes, and they apologize. Sovereign states rely not only on military might and insistent rhetoric to defend their people, but also on diplomacy and values of empathy and understanding. Sovereign states can be strong while fos- tering a narrative of caring about the con- sequences of their policies. In the aftermath of the flotilla fiasco, it is not just Israel’s military tactics and its blockade of Gaza that need a thorough re- examination. Its narrative does, too. A dose of empathy might be a place to start. Israel will not break by military force and tough rhetoric alone the political and moral double standards by which the world judges its actions. But it can make its case better by tempering force with di- plomacy, by caring as much about the hu- manitarian distress among Palestinians as it does about humanitarian causes elsewhere in the world, and by devel- oping a storyline infused with the moral and ethical standards by which Israelis judge their own behavior.
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