Abstract
The American religious landscape is in the midst of transformation. A historically Protestant country has morphed into one characterized not only as Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, but also Muslim, Hindu, and nonbelieving, to borrow from President Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural address.1 Another era in the religious history of the nation is dawning. Although Christianity remains the dominant religion in the United States, minority religious traditions are contributing to the mosaic of marriages and families in neighborhoods throughout the country. All the while, they are contributing to the redefinition of religion and the transformation of Christianity.
“We need the courage as well as the inclination to consult, and profit from, the ‘wisdom traditions of mankind.’”
E. F. Schumacher
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World and Why Their Differences Matter (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).
John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004);
Paul Heck, Common Ground: Islam, Christianity, and Religious Pluralism (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009).
See Kate McCarthy, Interfaith Encounters in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007).
See John L. Esposito, Darrell J. Fasching, and Todd Lewis, World Religions Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002);
Huston Smith, The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions, 50th anniversary ed. (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2009).
Harold Netland, Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith and Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 24.
Kieran Scott and Michael Warren, Perspectives on Marriage: A Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 451.
Michael G. Lawler, Marriage and the Catholic Church: Disputed Questions (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 15.
Michel Meslin, “Baptism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987).
Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Catholic-Muslim Marriage: A Pastoral Resource (Washington, DC: USCCB Office of Publishing and Promotion Services, 2011).
Michael S. Kogan, “Toward a Pluralist Theology of Judaism,” in The Myth of Religious Superiority: A Multifaith Exploration, ed. Paul F. Knitter (Marvknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), 108.
Jacob Neusner, ed., World Religions in America, 4th ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 126.
Rodney Mariner, “Conversion to Judaism: A Tale of the Good, the Bad and the Ungrateful,” in Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and Controversies, ed. Christopher Lamb and M. Darrol Bryant (London: Cassell, 1999), 99.
David Novak, “Jewish Marriage: Nature, Covenant, and Contract,” in Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective, ed. John Witte, Jr. and Eliza Ellison (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 26–27. Novak quotes Maimonides: Mishneh Torah, 12 vols., ed. S. Frankel (B’nai Brak: Shabse Frankel, 2001): Marriage, 1.1.
David Novak defines it as “a sacrament, which is a relationship initiated and conducted before God in the presence of the representatives of the covenanted community.” Novak, “Jewish Marriage,” 31–32. Note that the word qiddushin is also used to mean betrothal. Kieran Scott and Michael Warren, Perspectives on Marriage: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 384.
George P. Monger, Marriage Customs of the World: From Henna to Honeymoons (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004), 176–178.
Scott and Warren, Perspectives on Marriage (1993), 398.
Dutton Yasin, “Conversion to Islam: The Qur’anic Paradigm,” in Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and Controversies, ed. Christopher Lamb and M. Darrol Bryant (London: Cassell, 1999), 153–154.
Jane I. Smith, “Islam and the Family in North America,” in American Religions and the Family: How Faith Traditions Cope with Modernization and Democracy, ed. Don S. Browning and David A. Clairmont (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 212.
Scott and Warren, Perspectives on Marriage (1993), 404.
Azizah al-Hibri and Raja’ M. El Habiti, “Islam,” in Sex, Marriage, and Family in World Religions, ed. Don S. Browning, M. Christian Green, and John Witte Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 152.
Scott and Warren, Perspectives on Marriaae (1993), 399.
Scott and Warren, Perspectives on Marriage (1993), 401;
Abdullahi A. An-Na’im, ed., Inter-Religious Marriages Among Muslims: Negotiating Religious and Social Identity in Family and Community (New Delhi, India: Global Media Publications, 2005), 25; Leeman, “Interfaith Marriage in Islam,” 755.
Paul B. Courtright, “Hinduism,” in Sex, Marriage, and Family in World Religions, ed. Don S. Browning, M. Christian Green, and John Witte Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 228.
Ibid., 8. Also see, Ekta Singh, Caste System in India: A Historical Perspective (Delhi: Kalpaz Publications, 2005).
Brian K. Smith, Classifying the Universe: The Ancient Indian Varna System and the Origins of Caste (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3, 14, 27.
For an explanation of the importance of this stage of life for all Hindus, regardless of class, see Scott and Warren, Perspectives on Marriage (1993), 412–413.
Edith Turner and Pamela R. Frese, “Marriage,” Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987).
Ralph W. Nicholas, “The Effectiveness of the Hindu Sacrament (Samskāra): Caste, Marriage, and Divorce in Bengali Culture,” in From the Margins of Hindu Marriage, ed. Lindsey Harlan and Paul B. Courtright (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 140.
Lindsey Harlan and Paul B. Courtright, eds., From the Margins of Hindu Marriage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 8.
For a detailed explanation of traditional Hindu marriage rituals that solidify the literal transformation of the woman, see Ariel Glucklich, The Sense of Adharma (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Gail Hinich Sutherland, “The Wedding Pavilion: Performing, Recreating, and Regendering Hindu Identity in Houston,” International Journal of Hindu Studies 7, no. 1/3 (Feb. 2003): 121.
For an analysis of 20 cross-cultural Hindu-English and Hindu-American marriages, see Mary Sissons Joshi and Meena Krishna, “English and North American Daughters-in-Law in the Hindu Joint Family,” in Cross-Cultural Marriage: Identity and Choice, ed. Rosemary Breger and Rosanna Hill (Oxford: Berg, 1998), 171–186.
Mattison Mines and Jayaraj Priyanka, “Hindus at the Edge: Self-Awareness among Adult Children of Interfaith Marriages in Chennai, South India,” International journal of Hindu Studies 2, no. 2 (Aug. 1998): 227.
For a concise explanation of anatman, see Charles S. Prebish and Damien Keown, Introducing Buddhism (New York: Routledge, 2006), 55–58;
Merv Fowler, Buddhism: Beliefs and Practices (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 1999), 37.
Alan Cole, “Buddhism,” in Sex, Marriage, and Family in World Religions, ed. Don S. Browning, M. Christian Green, and John Witte Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 304.
Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 4. Asad is discussing Charles Taylor’s use of the phrase “imagined community,”
José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 21.
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 2.
José Casanova, “Immigration and the New Religious Pluralism: A European Union/United States Comparison,” in Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism, ed. Thomas Banchoff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 72–73.
Cohabitation, single parenting, gay marriage, and gay parenting are only a few examples of the issues that conservative and progressive religious and political groups debate. See Allan Carlson, Conjugal America: On the Public Purposes of Marriage (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007);
Michael J. Rosenfeld, The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions, and the Changing American Family (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).
Warren S. Goldstein, “Secularization Patterns in the Old Paradigm,” Sociology of Religion 70, no. 2 (2009): 157–178.
Ibid., 166. Goldstein cites Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1967)
and Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affiliation (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1979).
Rodney Stark, “Secularization, R.I.P.,” Sociology of Religion 60 (Fall 1999): 252.
Loren D. Marks, “How Does Religion Influence Marriage? Christian, Jewish, Mormon, and Muslim Perspectives,” Marriage and Family Review 38, no. 1 (2005): 85–111.
Nathaniel. M. Lambert and David C. Dollahite, “How Religiosity Helps Couples Prevent, Resolve, and Overcome Marital Conflict,” Family Relations 55, no. 4 (Oct. 2006): 439–449.
Copyright information
© 2012 Erika B. Seamon
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Seamon, E.B. (2012). Definitions and Parameters: Normative Boundaries among Religions and between the Religious and Secular. In: Interfaith Marriage in America. Palgrave Macmillan’s Christianities of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137014856_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137014856_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-43695-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-01485-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)