Interfaith Marriages
Interfaith marriages are rising fast, but they're failing fast too:
When Joseph Reyes and Rebecca Shapiro got married in 2004, they had a Jewish wedding ceremony. He was Catholic but converted to Judaism after they married, and they agreed to raise any children in the Jewish faith. However, after their daughter Ela was born, Reyes began to worry about the fact that she had not been baptized. "If, God forbid, something happened to her, she wouldn't be in heaven," he told me.
Today, two years after the Illinois couple's bitter divorce battle began, the fight over Ela's religious upbringing involves criminal charges. The fight escalated in November, when Reyes had Ela baptized in a Catholic church and e-mailed his estranged wife a photo. She filed a complaint, and a judge barred Reyes from exposing his daughter to "any other religion other than the Jewish religion." In January, Reyes violated the judge's order and brought Ela to church again, with a camera crew in tow.
The divorce was settled in April. Reyes is once again allowed to take his daughter to church. But he faces up to six months in jail.
The Reyes-Shapiro divorce is about as ugly as the end of a marriage can get. Some of the sparring is an example of the bad ways people act when a union unravels. But the fight over Ela's religion illustrates the particular hardships and poor track record of interfaith marriages: They fail at higher rates than same-faith marriages. But couples don't want to hear that, and no one really wants to tell them.
According to the General Social Survey, 15 percent of U.S. households were mixed-faith in 1988. That number rose to 25 percent 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 percent of Baptists, 21 percent of Muslims and 12 percent of Mormons were then married to a spouse with a different religious identification. If
When Joseph Reyes and Rebecca Shapiro got married in 2004, they had a Jewish wedding ceremony. He was Catholic but converted to Judaism after they married, and they agreed to raise any children in the Jewish faith. However, after their daughter Ela was born, Reyes began to worry about the fact that she had not been baptized. "If, God forbid, something happened to her, she wouldn't be in heaven," he told me.
Today, two years after the Illinois couple's bitter divorce battle began, the fight over Ela's religious upbringing involves criminal charges. The fight escalated in November, when Reyes had Ela baptized in a Catholic church and e-mailed his estranged wife a photo. She filed a complaint, and a judge barred Reyes from exposing his daughter to "any other religion other than the Jewish religion." In January, Reyes violated the judge's order and brought Ela to church again, with a camera crew in tow.
The divorce was settled in April. Reyes is once again allowed to take his daughter to church. But he faces up to six months in jail.
The Reyes-Shapiro divorce is about as ugly as the end of a marriage can get. Some of the sparring is an example of the bad ways people act when a union unravels. But the fight over Ela's religion illustrates the particular hardships and poor track record of interfaith marriages: They fail at higher rates than same-faith marriages. But couples don't want to hear that, and no one really wants to tell them.
According to the General Social Survey, 15 percent of U.S. households were mixed-faith in 1988. That number rose to 25 percent 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 percent of Baptists, 21 percent of Muslims and 12 percent of Mormons were then married to a spouse with a different religious identification. If