The Interfaith Family Journal, for Everyone

A rabbi, a Baptist minister married to a Hindu, a Unitarian Universalist Muslim, and a Sikh and Muslim interfaith kid all…recommend a book. (Because not everyone walks into bars, and this book is all about inclusion). As you may have guessed by now, the book they recommend is The Interfaith Family Journal. And you can read their lovely endorsements on my author website here.

And new this week, for the growing number of people who do not identify as religious, interfaith and Secular Humanist speaker and activist Miranda Hovemeyer gave The Interfaith Family Journal its latest five-star review:

My husband and I are both non-religious. I am a Secular Humanist and he identifies as Atheist, but we both grew up in households where there was some kind of religious practice. The book contains so much material that we can use ourselves to talk about our family and non-religious identification now, as well as how we grew up, and what we want for any future children we may have.

In my last blog post, I explained why two family members (spouses, partners, a parent and teen child, a guardian and a family mentor, etc) need two copies of The Interfaith Family Journal to go through the five-week process together. But just a week later, I am actually rethinking that proclamation. My readers have convinced me to recant.

What has perhaps surprised me the most, since the publication of the book just a few weeks ago, is the number of people who say they are finding The Interfaith Family Journal useful, as individuals. From the start, I knew this book would help clergy and therapists in counseling congregants and clients. But I had not anticipated that a friend who leads community engagement and diversity trainings with parents and children would find the book inspiring, and plan to use it in her work in the community, even though religion is not the topic of her work. In another case, a reviewer noted that while the book is an “amazing tool” for interfaith families,“one can also use it as a personal workbook to dig deeper into one’s most cherished but unarticulated commitments.”

It honestly had not occurred to me, until I started getting this feedback from readers, that individuals, even individuals who may not see themselves as part of an interfaith family, would benefit from the Journal. Now I am realizing that for some couples, one partner may be more interested in working through the issues of their religious and spiritual and cultural history, and will find support in the writing prompts and activities in the Journal, even if the other partner has no interest in the topic. But more broadly, any person, regardless of their family connections, could find the Journal useful in discerning how their family background, present beliefs, and dreams for the future are interwoven.

Whether you consider yourself part of an interfaith family or not, come out and tell us about your religious, spiritual or secular journey, or just gather ideas and inspiration, next week in DC at the Northeast Neighborhood Library, on Wednesday June 5^th at 7pm. There will be copies of The Interfaith Family Journal for sale and signing. You might just need one for, well, anyone and everyone.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of The Interfaith Family Journal (2019), and Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2013). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

The Interfaith Family Journal: Why You Need Two

The Interfaith Family Journal is available now. And as with any book launch, there’s a lot going on:

• I look forward to speaking in the coming weeks in DC, Washington state, and North Carolina. (Contact me now to set up a talk at your library, university, bookstore, or house of worship).
• You can read recent Q&As on the book at the websites Killing the Buddha, and Deborah Kalb Books. Both of these interviews touch on how the book is useful for families who identify as non-religious or atheist or secular humanist.
• Meanwhile, you can see me in Leaps of Faiths, a new documentary on interfaith families just released for streaming.
• And I have a new paper, “Eat, Sing, Love: How Interfaith Families Model Interfaith Engagement,” about the use of the five senses in interfaith family communities, published in an academic journal, CrossCurrents.

As I am out and about, explaining this new book to the world, one of the questions I get most frequently is:

Wait, what? I need two copies of this book to do this process with my partner?

In short, yes. The Interfaith Family Journal takes you through a process of delving deep into your background and current beliefs and practices, and making a plan based on your dreams for the future. And in order to engage in this process with a family member or friend/mentor (spouse, partner, older child, or a Journal partner you choose for this process), you will each need a copy of the book. That’s because you write in your Journal, and then trade books to read what your Journal partner has written, and then engage in conversation and activities based on that interactive process. So if you are giving the Journal as an engagement or wedding gift, I recommend giving two copies. (The price of two Journals, I will point out, is going to be far, far less than a single hour of online coaching with me or anyone else, or a therapy session with a counselor, or one date night. Although you might want to do all of those things as well).

So does everyone who buys this book need two copies?

Well, no. I want to get this book into the hands of every clergy member in the country and around the world. And every therapist and counselor. And every Student Life professional in colleges and universities. These professionals only need one copy, in order to read the book (it takes less than an hour) and understand the power of The Interfaith Family Journal as a resource and tool for them. So if you want to help all interfaith families everywhere, give a copy to your favorite clergy person, or your favorite therapist or counselor. And then let them take it from there, to use the book with clients or congregants, to support more families, and support more love.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of The Interfaith Family Journal (2019), and Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2013). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

The Interfaith Family Journal: It Takes a Village

The Interfaith Family Journal

The publication date for The Interfaith Family Journal is less just a month away!

On March 31st, you can hold in your hands an interactive book designed to support interfaith families including Atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Daoists, Ethiopian Orthodox…the whole alphabet of religions and worldviews.

The Journal draws on decades of personal experience, surveys of hundreds of interfaith family members, years of facilitating workshops and coaching couples around the world, and conversations with all of you in person and online. Interfaith families helped to test drive the manuscript, spending hours working through the questions and exercises. Your feedback helped create a more perfect Journal. And your first reactions were humbling:

• caused me to think deeply about why I think something or why a certain tradition is important to me
• allowed self-reflection, helped us focus on issues in manageable segments, and encouraged us to really listen to each other’s viewpoint
• helped us understand how we envision expressing our faiths to both ourselves and each other
• invited us to have a conversation instead of leading us to choose a side.
• had the feel of an unbiased, safe, non-judgmental couples’ counseling workshop

The test drivers thought the questions and exercises in the Journal were…

• very helpful in determining what parts of our religious background are spiritually based vs culturally based, which was invaluable for us
• a good mix of practical and deep
• helpful because they covered so much ground and approached issues from a number of angles
• a great tool for periodically checking in on growth or development in the course of the interfaith relationship (and especially during times of change, such as welcoming a child)

Different test drivers found different parts of the Journal particularly valuable, whether it was the interactive questions at the start of each chapter, the framework for talking about celebrations of life and death, the exercises designed to engage with extended family, or the creative family activities at the end of each chapter.

• Something about answering a high number of questions in relatively quick succession felt very productive.
• The Journal led to us calling our parents and grandparents to talk about their religious lives growing up. It was quite fascinating
• We had never talked about death as it pertains to our religions. This section opened us up to that conversation for the first time.
• We loved the creative sections. We were huge fans of the religions ancestry tree exercise. That is one that we plan on doing again when our children are old enough to participate.

This is the moment to pre-order copies for yourself and your interfaith family members, and to let friends and family know about the book by sending them a link to this page. My goal with this book has always been to help as many interfaith families as I can, around the country and the world, and I need your help to reach them.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (forthcoming in 2019). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

https://www.facebook.com/SusanKatzMiller/

Breakthrough! Interfaith Families, Interfaith Engagement

For years now, I have been advocating for interfaith families to be included in interfaith activism and conversation. Since 9/11, an inspiring interfaith movement has been growing, including interfaith activism on campuses. And just in the past couple of years, atheists and agnostics and secular humanists have been welcomed by many of these interfaith organizations, in recognition of the growth of these communities, and the idea that you do not have to have a faith to want to join the interfaith movement. All of this is good—very, very good.

But for those of us from interfaith families, the new focus on interfaith activism has raised two tricky (and intertwined) issues. The first challenge is linguistic. Interfaith families have always used the word “interfaith” to describe who we are. The pioneering intermarriage of my parents occurred in 1960. And since at least the 1980s, some of us have been raising interfaith children with both religions, and some of those children use “interfaith” as an identity label. So the word “interfaith” is being used both at a macro level to describe engagement between people of different faiths, and on a micro level to describe, well, engagement and marriage and identity in interfaith families. I don’t know if we should have or could have had different terminology to distinguish these two phenomena, but we don’t.

The second issue is that official interfaith conversations between representatives of different religious institutions have not always welcomed interfaith families and those with interfaith or dual-faith or multifaith identity. We represent a blurring of boundaries, and that ambiguity can sometimes make people uncomfortable.  And yet, people from interfaith families have skills to contribute to interfaith conversations and programs. We practice the art of communicating across religious divides, day and night, throughout our marriages, or throughout our lifetimes if we are born into interfaith families.

This week, I felt like I witnessed a breakthrough. I was invited by interfaith activist Sana Saeed to co-sponsor a twitter chat, alongside a group of interfaith organizers, leading up to a DC Young Adult Faith Leaders Summit tomorrow, organized by Faith in Action DC.  (Note: You can follow the Summit on twitter at #DCFaith). I started to buzz with excitement when I saw that the Summit will include people who “belong to traditional religious institutions, have multiple affiliations, no affiliations, or are somewhere in-between.” In other words, the summit is inclusive, on a whole new level.

In the twitter chat, I dove in and asked two questions: What can people from interfaith families, or who claim more than one religion, bring to interfaith activism and conversation? And, what are the challenges of including people with dual-faith or multiple-faith identities in interfaith conversation?

It was thrilling to read the responses from people who work full-time on interfaith engagement. Usra Ghazi of the Interfaith Youth Core tweeted that “interfaith families are like religiously diverse communities: great places for interfaith literacy.” Bud Heckman of Religions for Peace USA agreed that people from interfaith families bring their “lived daily experience” to the conversation, “But also assumptions/positions that are threatening to ‘single faith’ others. Benefit & barrier.”

And so, on to those challenges. Ghazi tweeted that interfaith conversations “tend to put people in a box. You can’t do that with ‘seekers’ and multi-faith identities.” InterfaithYouthCore responded that people with dual-faith or multifaith identities challenge “the norm that certain faiths are exclusive of others.” Faith in Action DC confided that, while organizing tomorrow’s Summit, they had the “challenge of placing multifaith participants. Which group are they in? So we created “Multi” category! #simple!” I am not sure everyone will find it that simple. But this chat felt like the beginning of a beautiful, and radically inclusive, conversation.

(Note: Some twitter abbreviations have been expanded in this post, to ensure greater comprehension by those over 30)

Atheist, Plays Well With Others…

Most of us are consumed with the election today. It also happens to be the publication date of a boundary-defying and yet somehow sweetly patriotic memoir from my publisher, Beacon Press, entitled Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious. While still in his 20s, Chris Stedman has written a brave and moving account of how he became an evangelical Christian, realized he was gay, left Christianity for atheism, and now devotes himself to interfaith dialogue with religious people.

Faithiest will appeal to many interfaith families, as an intimate chronicle of an “atypical” religious (and non-religious) formation, illuminating the intertwining influences of family and society on religious identity. Stedman quotes my favorite Buddhist thinker, Thic Nhat Han: “If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors.” For those of us who are heirs to two or more family religions, this statement has deep resonance.

Stedman seems to have written one of the very first memoirs by anyone in his generation. So I was fascinated to note that the idea of being raised with both religions appears early on, and in a positive light. Stedman writes of his childhood friendship with a neighborhood girl who “…celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas, Passover and Easter, and maintained practices from both traditions…” He goes on to describe his own brief infatuation with Judaism as a result of this encounter.

A longing for community drives Stedman, as a tween, to a Christian youth group. The tension between evangelical Christianity and being gay eventually drives him away. But after he becomes an atheist, that same longing for community alienates him from the strident, anti-religious “New Atheism,” and eventually sends him into the arms of the kinder and gentler community of secular humanists.

Secular humanism has long provided a safe haven for interfaith families who agree to put aside the question of God. So Stedman’s description of his discovery of the benefits of humanism will interest many secular interfaith families.

More broadly, those of us in the movement to educate our children in both family religions find ourselves arrayed across the entire religious and non-religious spectrum: religious, spiritual but not religious, skeptics, agnostics, atheists.

Whether we identify with no religion, two religions, or many religions, those of us in interfaith families who do not belong to a synagogue or church find ourselves grouped with Stedman by demographers as part of the fast-growing “religious nones,” the statistical category for those without religious affiliation. As “religious nones,” we are a complex, rich, and varied group on the rise, just beginning to discover each other, and I am very pleased to share this space with a mensch like Chris Stedman.

By the end of his memoir, Stedman finds twin interwoven missions–convincing interfaith activists to welcome atheists, and convincing atheists to engage in interfaith activism, and join college campus groups (such as Eboo Patel’s Interfaith Youth Core) in performing community service together.

Stedman and others have achieved notable success in making a place for secularists, alongside Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others, at the interfaith roundtable. But is there a place at that table for intermarried people or interfaith children claiming our ties to more than one religion? Or is our presence so disturbing, our blurred boundaries so threatening, that we are left off the guest list?

The dogma of interfaith dialogue has long been that you cannot engage with the “other” unless and until you have a strong and singular religious identity. Stedman successfully makes the case that the non-religious should be exempt from this requirement. I am making the case that those who marry into or are born into a state of interfaithness should also be exempt, and welcomed as people with unique qualifications for interfaith dialogue.

Stedman writes, “Interfaith dialogue strives to usher in religious pluralism, and it is realized primarily through the personal stories of its practitioners.” Members of interfaith families in general, and adult interfaith children in particular, want to tell their stories, whether they currently identify with one, two, many or no religions. As people who engage deeply with the “other” on a daily basis, whether that “other” is a spouse or partner or sibling or parent or a part of our own being, we bring unique skills and perspectives to more formal interfaith encounters. We want to be part of the quest for greater interfaith understanding and an end to religious violence, through interfaith education. As members of interfaith families, we are already on that quest, whether or not our role is recognized by those from monofaith backgrounds. I am hoping that those of us from interfaith families can be as convincing as Chris Stedman in articulating our desire to be included in the movement for interfaith cooperation.

New Religious Knowledge Survey: Interfaith Perspective

Atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons scored higher on a survey of religious knowledge than Protestants or Catholics did, according to a report released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The survey emphasized religious history and the practice of the major world religions. So what does this survey reveal to me as someone with an interfaith identity, living in an interfaith family?

One of my primary goals in choosing an interfaith education for my children was to make sure they were not ignorant about either of the religions in their family tree. So, I am pleased to report that my sixteen-year-old daughter took the 15-question online version of the Pew survey, and, as she put it, she “beasted it.” In adult-speak, that means she got 14 out of 15 questions right. For this success, I credit our interfaith Sunday School, in which we spend an entire year on the history and evolution of the different Jewish and Christian movements and denominations. My daughter points out that she also picked up some of the answers from her AP US History class, and from the dinner-table conversations in our household, where we are somewhat obsessed with comparative religion. But I like to think that we have inspired her, in our interfaith religious education program, to soak up religious knowledge.

Most interfaith couples cite education as the most important reason they made the controversial decision to throw in their lot with a community of other interfaith families, rather than (or in addition to) joining a synagogue or church. To see my data on why these families chose interfaith education, you’ll have to wait for my book. The Pew survey, of course, did not create a category for respondents who self-identified as “Interfaith” or “Jewish/Christian.” As always, those with an interfaith identity were forced to check one box. The choices, beyond Jewish, Christian, and Atheist/Agnostic, included the tone-deaf and dismissive “Nothing in Particular.”

If I had been called by the pollsters and asked to pick one religious identity, I would not have labeled my passion for religious history and ideas and spiritual practice as “Nothing in Particular.” I guess I would have chosen Jewish, though many Jews would argue with my right to that label, and I myself feel reduced and misrepresented by it.

Why did Jews do so well on the survey? I got to thinking about how Jews are a minority in our Christian culture, but also about how the majority of Jews now have Christians in their extended families, with 80% intermarrying in some cities. I think this helps to explain why Jews might be more knowledgeable about other religions, and about Christianity in particular. Many of the folks who chose “Jewish” as their label in this survey are married to Christians, have a Christian parent, might even have chosen both Judaism and Christianity if the pollsters had let them. So it is not surprising, in fact it is statistically obvious to me, that they might be able to answer a question about Martin Luther. On the other hand, the vast majority of Christians are not from interfaith families, and thus have no intimate acquaintance with which to answer a question about Maimonides.

The “check one box” problem haunts this survey in yet another way. Did Jewish atheists check Jewish, or atheist as their identity box? How many of the Jews are also atheists? At High Holy Days this year, a friend who went to shul did his own informal survey, making a game of trying to find a Jew who would whole-heartedly claim belief in God. Reader, he did not find even one. And this was among Jews who went to services. The high proportion of atheists among practicing Jews, Jews who go to synagogue and recite prayers, is well-known among fellow Jews, but still confounding to Christians. I believe it may well have confounded some of the results in this survey.

Our community of interfaith families includes a large proportion of atheists and agnostics (to find out the percentage, you’ll have to wait for my book). It may seem counterintuitive for Atheists to take interest in, or want their children to learn about, world religions. One cynical theory (already in the blogosphere) to explain the exceptional religious knowledge of atheists is that reading holy books like the Bible creates atheists. However, the atheists who join our interfaith community and put their children in our interfaith Sunday School want their children to study religion. In fact, they want their children to have double the information, to understand both family religions, as an important part of cultural literacy, despite their atheism.

Ten Things I Love About Judaism

Three out of four of my children’s grandparents grew up as Christians. So why am I insisting on raising my children with Judaism as well as Christianity? The philosophical, political and psychological reasons recur as themes throughout this blog. But since I recently posted the Christian stuff I love, I thought I should also list some of the things, big and small, I love about Judaism:

1. The Music. Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin,  the Klezmatics and Shlomo Carlebach, Regina Spektor and Matisyahu. I feel a kinesthetic rush of communal joy when dancing in a circle, singing ancient, minor melodies.
2. The Middle East Connection. Even though Israel is deeply problematic for interfaith families, I feel the pull of the Mediterranean. I belly dance, I pine for my estranged Arab sisters, I hold eggplants over the burners of my stove to make baba ghanoush from scratch.
3. Hebrew. It’s diabolically difficult, but exposing our children to it makes their neurons sprout, right? Personally, I enjoyed puzzling it out as a child. The idea is that Hebrew will stimulate their potential for both math and mysticism.
4. Feasting. I’m not just talking about Ashkenazi deli food here, though I admit to eating chopped liver straight out of the container, like peanut butter. I’m talking about the way food is central to Jewish practice. The sensuality of the perfumes and textures and rituals surrounding food—bitter herbs and haroset, the Tu Bishvat seder and the braided challah.  Food to Jews is both sacred symbol (thus food for the intellect), and primal earthly delight.
5. Bibliophilia. As the publishing industry collapses in on itself like a dying star, Jews will be the last to forsake investigative reporting, editing, newsprint, reading books. I suppose it’s because the Torah is so central to Jewish practice. I intend to stand with my people and be the last one to cancel my newspaper subscriptions.
6. Tikkun Olam. Every religion stresses community service. It’s one of the most defensible aspects of religion. But I find particularly evocative and mysterious the Kabbalistic concept of a broken world that needs to be put back together, the impulse to gather and fit together the shards of a shattered vessel. Although the original story ends with the termination of the material world: kind of a downer.
7. Thirst for Justice. From Jewish support for civil rights in the twentieth century, to Jewish lawyers working pro bono on LGBT equality cases today, the thirst for justice creates good in our world. Is it the ancient memory of slavery? The recent memory of deadly persecution? It doesn’t matter why, it’s a good thing.
8. Minority Empathy. On a related note, it builds character to grow up as an outsider in America: to empathize with other minority groups, to cultivate the stance of critical, thoughtful observer. To stand out is to invite discrimination, but to withstand discrimination is to become stronger.
9. Compatibility with Atheism. I love a religion that includes a significant contingent of practicing adherents who don’t even believe in God. Personally, I’m agnostic. But I find very appealing the idea that ritual, a sense of community, even spirituality, can all be accessed by doubters and even rowdy nay-sayers.
10. Shabbat. Turn off your cellphone, log off facebook, say no to the essential meeting. Sit and eat with family. Give thanks for light, and wine and bread. Sing, and smell the spices. All children crave this peace: Christian children, Jewish children, interfaith children.

ALSO READ: Ten Things I Love About Islam

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (2019). Follow her on Twitter @susankatzmiller.