When Two Traditions Wed

Interfaith marriages have helped spread religious tolerance in society but can present intractable problems for some couples.

Interfaith marriage has never been so visible or so popular in America as it is today. Steve and Cokie Roberts, Larry and Shawn King, Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky: Interfaith couples occupy a prominent place on the public stage, not to mention a prominent role in the private lives of Americans. Almost one in two marriages in the U.S. are between people from different faiths, a historic high.

The rise of interfaith marriage can be read as but the latest success story in the continuing American Experiment, wherein differences of all sorts are fused into a single, vibrant polity. As Naomi Schaefer Riley notes in " 'Til Faith Do Us," most Americans see interfaith marriage "as a confirmation of American tolerance, of our progress as a society." To judge by Ms. Riley's engaging and incisive account—combining clear-eyed analysis with polling data and the details of more than a hundred interviews—interfaith marriage has indeed brought about a wider acceptance of America's many religions and religious backgrounds even if, as she shows, it has created a few problems of its own.

Millions of Americans, it is clear, have learned from their own spouses—or from the marriages of friends and family members—about faiths other than the ones they were born into. In doing so, they have come to value or at least understand otherwise alien rituals and doctrines. If differences between religious traditions are no longer a source of serious social division in the United States these days, Ms. Riley argues, one reason appears to be that couples bridge the divide themselves.

As one might expect, there are many reasons for the rise of interfaith marriage. They range from the ever-greater frequency of children going off to college—an experience that brings Americans from diverse backgrounds together—to the growing power of American individualism, which puts a premium on choice over collective identity. In recent years, Ms. Riley notes, what might be called the "soul mate" model of marriage has grown more popular as well, increasing the possibility of people from different faiths choosing to make a life together. According to this model, marriage is primarily an expressive connection rather than an institution that bundles romantic love, children, religious faith and mutual aid (material and social).

Thus many Americans begin their marriages believing that love will conquer all, including religious differences. But when the honeymoon is over, love proves less than omnipotent, and religious differences may reassert themselves, especially after children arrive. "Deciding how to raise children," Ms. Riley writes, "is probably the highest hurdle interfaith parents face."

Are the kids to be raised Muslim or Mormon? Is a Christmas tree appropriate in a half-Jewish home? Should Johnny be sent to both the (evangelical) Young Life group and (Catholic) religious education? One Jewish-Catholic couple interviewed by Ms. Riley (a former member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial-page staff) found themselves arguing over whether to baptize their daughter. Questions like these can "tear at the fabric of a marriage," Ms. Riley says; this particular couple ended up in divorce court because of their religious disagreement about child-rearing. Ms. Riley notes that couples from different faiths would do well, in the courtship phase of their relations, to discuss child-rearing's religious dimensions.

And perhaps life's other religious dimensions. On average, Ms. Riley says, interfaith couples are less likely to be happy in their marriages and—in some combinations—more likely to divorce than couples who share the same faith. There may be a religious cost as well—for the married couple, a loss of steadiness in observance and belief. Meanwhile, the children raised in interfaith homes are more likely than the children of same-faith homes to reject their parents' faiths. " 'Til Faith Do Us Part" finds that the children of interfaith couples, in their early years, are less likely to attend religious services and less likely, as adults, to affiliate themselves with a religious tradition. A record-setting 32% of young adults say that they have no religious affiliation, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The rise of interfaith marriage may well be a cause.

It turns out, then, that interfaith marriage shores up the American Experiment in certain ways, fostering tolerance and reciprocal regard, and yet undermines it in others, weakening the family and the religious ties that have long bound Americans to one another. Religious groups in particular have reason to be concerned, as the chain of belief and affiliation, from one generation to the next, is broken. But what can they do in a society as pluralistic and tolerant as America has become?

Ms. Riley concludes her reporting and analysis by suggesting that religious communities strike a delicate balance in their approach to interfaith marriages and families. On the one hand, they must welcome them if they wish to keep up a connection with the believing spouse and his or her children. But they must also provide a strong sense of community and a gracious but confident expression of their own religious worldview. "Regularly engaging nonmember spouses in conversations about the faith is important," she writes, noting that such engagement, if done with a soft touch, may bring the spouse into the fold. Finally, religious communities must focus more on reaching young adults, giving them a venue where they can engage their religious faith in a new way and meet a "soul mate" who draws them closer to the fold rather than leading them away from it.

—Mr. Wilcox is the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

A version of this article appeared March 23, 2013, on page C6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: When Two Traditions Wed.

Stephens: Muslims, Mormons and Liberals Why is it OK to mock one religion but not another?

• By BRET STEPHENS

'Hasa Diga Eebowai" is the hit number in Broadway's hit musical "The Book of Mormon," which won nine Tony awards last year. What does the phrase mean? I can't tell you, because it's unprintable in a family newspaper.

On the other hand, if you can afford to shell out several hundred bucks for a seat, then you can watch a Mormon missionary get his holy book stuffed—well, I can't tell you about that, either. Let's just say it has New York City audiences roaring with laughter.

  The "Book of Mormon"—a performance of which Hillary Clinton attended last year, without registering a complaint—comes to mind as the administration falls over itself denouncing "Innocence of Muslims." This is a film that may or may not exist; whose makers are likely not who they say they are; whose actors claim to have known neither the plot nor purpose of the film; and which has never been seen by any member of the public except as a video clip on the Internet.

No matter. The film, the administration says, is "hateful and offensive" (Susan Rice), "reprehensible and disgusting" (Jay Carney) and, in a twist, "disgusting and reprehensible" (Hillary Clinton). Mr. Carney, the White House spokesman, also lays sole blame on the film for inciting the riots that have swept the Muslim world and claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his staff in Libya.

So let's get this straight: In the consensus view of modern American liberalism, it is hilarious to mock Mormons and Mormonism but outrageous to mock Muslims and Islam. Why? Maybe it's because nobody has ever been harmed, much less killed, making fun of Mormons.

Here's what else we learned this week about the emerging liberal consensus: That it's okay to denounce a movie you haven't seen, which is like trashing a book you haven't read. That it's okay to give perp-walk treatment to the alleged—and no doubt terrified—maker of the film on legally flimsy and politically motivated grounds of parole violation. That it's okay for the federal government publicly to call on Google to pull the video clip from YouTube in an attempt to mollify rampaging Islamists. That it's okay to concede the fundamentalist premise that religious belief ought to be entitled to the highest possible degree of social deference—except when Mormons and sundry Christian rubes are concerned.

  And, finally, this: That the most "progressive" administration in recent U.S. history will make no principled defense of free speech to a Muslim world that could stand hearing such a defense. After the debut of "The Book of Mormon" musical, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints responded with this statement: "The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ."

That was it. The People's Front for the Liberation of Provo will not be gunning for a theater near you. Is it asking too much of religious and political leaders in Muslim communities to adopt a similar attitude?

It needn't be. A principled defense of free speech could start by quoting the Quran: "And it has already come down to you in the Book that when you hear the verses of Allah [recited], they are denied [by them] and ridiculed; so do not sit with them until they enter into another conversation." In this light, the true test of religious conviction is indifference, not susceptibility, to mockery.

The defense could add that a great religion surely cannot be goaded into frenetic mob violence on the slimmest provocation. Yet to watch the images coming out of Benghazi, Cairo, Tunis and Sana'a is to witness some significant portion of a civilization being transformed into Travis Bickle, the character Robert De Niro made unforgettable in Taxi Driver. "You talkin' to me?"

A defense would also point out that an Islamic world that insists on a measure of religious respect needs also to offer that respect in turn. When Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi—the closest thing Sunni Islam has to a pope—praises Hitler for exacting "divine punishment" on the Jews, that respect isn't exactly apparent. Nor has it been especially apparent in the waves of Islamist-instigated pogroms that have swept Egypt's Coptic community in recent years.

Finally, it need be said that the whole purpose of free speech is to protect unpopular, heretical, vulgar and stupid views. So far, the Obama administration's approach to free speech is that it's fine so long as it's cheap and exacts no political price. This is free speech as pizza.

President Obama came to office promising that he would start a new conversation with the Muslim world, one that lectured less and listened more. After nearly four years of listening, we can now hear more clearly where the U.S. stands in the estimation of that world: equally despised but considerably less feared. Just imagine what four more years of instinctive deference will do.

On the bright side, dear liberals, you'll still be able to mock Mormons. They tend not to punch back, which is part of what makes so many of them so successful in life.

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A version of this article appeared September 18, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Muslims, Mormons and Liberals.