Defending Interfaith Families

 

A tidal wave of new interfaith blogposts is washing through the internet. This is a good thing, even though I don’t agree with some of the postings. I  have been paddling around the cyber-ocean for the last day or two, frantically commenting here and there, and it seemed like time to gather some of the recent links for my readers in one place.

One impetus for all the new blog posts  is the impending interfaith wedding (at the end of this month) of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky. Who will officiate? What choices will they make as an interfaith couple (and eventually, as interfaith parents)? One of the longer and more thoughtful pieces, by a religion blogger on Politics Daily, was marred by a link to the recent shoddy and very slanted Washington Post opinion piece  attacking interfaith marriages, by an affiliate of a think tank called the “Institue for American Values” (though the Post did not even acknowledge this affiliation).

 The Post piece purported to show that divorce is higher among interfaith couples, by twisting the flimsy research to fit this assertion, and the Politics Daily blogger repeated the assertion as fact. One really lousy opinion piece, now linked and held up as proof that interfaith marriages fail. It makes me nostalgic (I am a former Newsweek fact-checker) for the rigor and standards of old-school print journalism.

Meanwhile, apparently coincidentally,  a piece defending raising children with both religions by one Kate Fridkis appeared in the Huffington Post. The author is an interfaith child who chose Judaism and is engaged to a Christian. Apparently, she got to know the Interfaith Community in New York City as a teacher in their religious education program. Unfortunately, her blog post had that breezy, cute tone many young bloggers seem to favor. Partly as a result, her post fell prey to an attack from Ed Case of interfaithfamily.com (a website encouraging “Jewish choices”).

Case offers nothing but anecdotal evidence to assert the superiority of choosing one religion over choosing both. And he makes a serious misstep in this paragraph:

Fridkis writes that “a growing number of people are unwilling to give up their religious tradition just because their partner has a different one.” I question whether she has any data to back up that statement. She may be right that there is a trend in that direction – but I hope she isn’t. 
 

Oops. It’s one thing to argue that interfaith couples should choose Judaism for their children. It’s another thing to say you hope people will give up their religion when they intermarry–that’s not the usual stance, in my experience, at interfaithfamily.com.

Case’s post, in turn, stimulated a passionate defense of the “both” option from a (sadly, anonymous) blogger over at a site called fiftypercenters.com, written by a collective of interfaith bloggers (some born as interfaith children, some intermarried). In the past, I have found their orientation to be far more than 50% Jewish. So I was delighted when the blogger known as “Princess Max” posted a detailed rebuttal to Case, calling his post patronizing.  Though I also understand that interfaithfamily.com is caught between a rock (Jewish institutional acceptance and support) and a hard place (the reality of the growing and thriving independent interfaith communities movement).

Anyway, if you are raising your happy children with both religions, or if you are simply in a happy interfaith marriage, I encourage you to go out and post your own comments on any, or all, of these blogs. If we do not want to be ignored, or patronized, or mischaracterized, or misunderstood, we have to continue to speak up.