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.

Let Us Check More Than One Religion Box

Imagine for a moment that you are a teenager, arriving at college for your first year, and that you come from an interfaith family. Perhaps you were raised in one religion, but now, you feel drawn to explore the other religion in your family background. Or perhaps you were raised with both religions, and plan to stay connected to both. Or perhaps you were raised with neither religion, but now plan to explore both family religions, or all religions.

Now, imagine you are handed a survey and asked to choose one religion, and only one religion, as your identity. Your only other choices are to choose “none,” or “other religion,” or to skip the question altogether.

I went through this thought experiment as I read “The American Freshman,” an annual report released earlier this month, based on a survey of more than 150,000 college freshmen in the annual CIRP (Cooperative Institutional Research Program) survey, produced by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA.

The survey only allows students to pick one religion as their “religious preference.” I suggest that as a result of this restriction, the researchers are missing an opportunity to better understand the changing landscape of American religious identity. As summarized recently by Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, that landscape includes the following: one in five Americans is religiously unaffiliated, a quarter of the unaffiliated still see themselves as religious, one in six Americans follow the teachings or practices of more than one religion, and about one quarter have a spouse or partner of another religious background.

This year’s American Freshman survey found that nearly 28% of the students chose “none” as their religious preference, up from some 15% in 1971. And yet, more than 16% of these “religious nones” in 2014 rated their own spirituality as “above average” or in the highest ten percent. I asked Kevin Eagan, the director of HERI, for additional information on the students who came from interfaith families. In 1973, about 22% of students reported having parents with two different religions or denominations (or having one parent with no religion). By 2014, almost 30% had such “religiously discordant” parents.

When I asked whether the researchers had considered allowing students to check more than one religious preference, Eagan replied in an email:
“Unlike race/ethnicity, we have not heard feedback from students or institutions that respondents have felt boxed in by restricting them to just one preference for religion.” I can only reply that both my college-student daughter and my college-bound son do feel boxed in, as do I. And based on the college students I surveyed and interviewed for Being Both, my book on interfaith families, I suspect we’re not the only ones.

I also asked Eagan what he thought of the idea that students from interfaith families would check “none” if they could not check more than one box. “I would think that students who wanted to check multiple religions would either skip the question entirely (i.e., be coded as missing data) or choose the option of ‘other religion’ rather than choose ‘none’,” Eagan wrote me.

As someone who claims an identity formed by both my Jewish and my Christian heritage, I would not choose “other religion,” a category that seems designed for Sikhs or Jains or Pagans. Interfaith is not a religion: it is an identity based on the synergy and symbiosis of two distinct family religions. Often, those of us honoring both family religions are accused of trying to form a new religion. In order to avoid feeding this kind of concern, I would make a point of not checking the “other religion” box. My 18-year-old son says, “At least checking ‘other’ sends the message that they need to expand their options.” But does it send that message?

The choice to just skip the question creates the unfortunate result that people with complex religious identities from interfaith families will not be counted or included in the study results on religious identity. And we are tired of not counting. I agree that some students might just skip this question since there would be no way to express their true religious preferences within the parameters of the survey. My argument is that by allowing them to check more than one box, researchers would be able to gather data to better understand the religious identity of these students.

Why would students who feel connected to more than one religion choose “none”? Those of us who are interfaith children grow up hearing “you can’t be both” and “if you try to do both, you’re really nothing,” and being told that clergy, or religious texts, do not accept the existence of interfaith families. A survey that does not allow students to check two or more religion boxes, but does allow them to check “none,” effectively steers respondents from interfaith families to the “none” box. And yet, this is clearly an uncomfortable box for interfaith children who celebrate more than one religion. My 18-year-old son explains, ” ‘None’ strips you of your religion. They’re saying that because you don’t fit into one of our categories, you can’t have any religion.”

There’s a simple solution to all of this. Allow students to check more than one box. Allow them to check both Buddhist and Jewish. Allow them to check, whether or not you agree that it is a valid choice, Jewish and Catholic. The results will be more complex, perhaps harder to summarize. And more true.

 

This essay was first published on Huffington Post.

Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family is available now in hardcover, paperback and eBook from Beacon Press.