Following Jennifer Palmer’s April 5 letter, “Coming out as Christian on Easter,” in which she wrote that “only recently have I even been fully transparent about the depth of my Christian identity with my husband, who is Jewish in the Reform tradition,” Post Opinions asked readers: “Are you in a relationship with someone who holds different religious beliefs? If so, how do you make it work? Any upsides or downsides?” Here are some of the responses.
My husband and I have been happily married for 47 years. We both started our relationship as devout Catholics. But over the past 30-plus years, I lost my faith and am now an atheist, while he remains a devout Catholic. We’ve learned to live with this reality by respecting our differences. I still accompany him to Mass, where I’m mostly a bored spectator. He reads the novels I’ve written on how religion taints our every decision and makes women second-class vessels, no questions asked. We have occasional discussions on touchy matters, e.g., abortion, Satan, whether Jesus was the savior depicted in the Bible, the Bible itself, etc. But in general, we live our lives peacefully with our grown children and grandchildren surrounding us and keeping us grounded in what really matters: health, happiness and wisdom.
Marcy Salazar, Austin
My wife and I have been married for over 41 years. We met in Baltimore when we were helping a friend move into her newly purchased row house near Memorial Stadium. Over time, as we fell in love and realized we were right for each other, we started planning our wedding and our future together. My wife is Jewish (Reform). My faith is Serbian Eastern Orthodox. I had no desire to change my faith but understood the importance of raising our family with a good religious foundation. The rabbi who agreed to marry us stipulated that we raise our children Jewish. We both embraced these terms and raised two children, one daughter and one son.
The upsides: learning more about my own faith through readings of the Torah and the Old Testament (Tanakh). A sense of belonging that our synagogue promoted. Taking part in family/synagogue holiday traditions. Taking an active role in raising a Jewish family.
The downsides: difficulty pronouncing Hebrew words during services.
Milan Savkovich, Louisville
How did my interfaith relationship go? Well, I was married to a Christian, and now I am a hard atheist.
Thomas H. Fields, Washington
My wife has been an agnostic or atheist most of her life. Her reasoning is basically that an all-powerful, all-loving God wouldn’t allow all the terrible things that happen in the world both today and especially in the past. Therefore, He must not exist. That said, she had no objection to our raising our children as Christians and even taught Sunday school. She’s been a wonderful wife and mother for our 53 years of marriage. Now that we are helping care for young grandchildren, the topic of religion or God does not come up.
Joe Hensley, Columbia, Maryland
In the small, rural, Midwestern, mostly Lutheran community where I grew up 80 years ago, Catholics were considered the enemy. I could have brought home a Jew, an African American or a gay man who would have been more readily accepted than a Catholic. I even attended a Lutheran college. So you can imagine what happened when I brought home a Catholic I had met in Washington, D.C., and told my parents we were getting engaged. Horrors! But once they saw how intelligent he was, how polite and how much he cared for me, acceptance set in, and the vocalized hatred for Catholics disappeared over the years. From this, I learned that people “hate” or dislike what they don’t understand, who’s different, or those they were told to hate for whatever reason. And now, how fitting it seems when so many of us have forgotten those religious labels and are united in hatred for the president!
Kathy A. Megyeri, Washington
I am Jewish (Reform). My wife is strongly Christian, from a denomination generally thought to be evangelical and very conservative. (Her political beliefs make her an outlier in her congregation.) I am very conflicted about my religious beliefs, but there is no conflict at all about my identity as Jewish (which I have proudly, perhaps annoyingly, proclaimed to my wife’s congregations).
How have we made this relationship work for 47 years? The primary requirement for a mixed-faith relationship, as for any relationship, is love. True love does not guarantee a successful marriage, but its absence will doom a relationship no matter how much you have in common.
Early in our marriage, my wife told me it was important to her that I go to church with her on Sunday morning. I neither knew nor cared whether this was because she hoped I would convert or whether as a married woman she would be uncomfortable going to church without her husband. What I knew was that because I loved and respected her, I had to agree. I have since “integrated” congregations in Virginia, Oklahoma, Germany, Ohio and now Texas, and she has gone with me to synagogue whenever I have asked. Perhaps the oddest situation was our time in Ohio, when we would go to church on Sunday morning, then leave after Communion for a Torah study at my synagogue.
In addition to love, an interfaith marriage requires respect by and for the congregants of the spouse’s congregation. In all these decades, there has never been an objection to my attendance at church services, church classes or church social events. I have never been pushed to convert. The vast majority of the church members are true Christians, striving to follow the values taught by their religion. What this has taught me is that just as all Jews should not be judged by the extreme views and intolerance of the ultra-Orthodox in Israel, all Christians should not be judged by the extreme views and intolerance of Christian nationalists.
Walter Pupko, Leander, Texas
I am in a relationship with a Christian man (I am atheist), and a large mitigating factor is that his parents are no longer religious. He believes I have Judeo-Christian values despite my lack of faith, and I find his commitment to faith a sign that he is principled and reliable. We often discuss our opinions on faith, and he does not mind that I feel as though I will never seek it out due to personal and family reasons. I enjoy asking his perspective on matters of belief, and we are always able either to find middle ground or to identify the crux of our disagreement and accept it as a difference of faith. I think his perspective allows me to be a more understanding person and mine challenges his existing beliefs.
Amy Smith, Annapolis
My wife is a nonbeliever. I attended a Catholic seminary before our marriage. To make things easier, I no longer go to Sunday services. But today’s politics have brought her around to a degree. She now hopes there is a hell because she believes many political officeholders qualify for that destination. We are now one step more compatible in our beliefs.
Patrick Garvey, Bethesda
I’m an atheist, and my wife is a believing Jew. Early in our dating, she told me she could not marry me unless I would agree to our children being raised as Jews. I agreed. We honor the Sabbath, practice Passover and attend shul on the High Holy Days. Our two children were bat and bar mitzvahed. No problems. Love and respect are the keys. We have been married 60 years.
John Buckmaster, Lincolnshire, Illinois
I am a strong (inevitably disrespectful) atheist who has been married to a Christian for 31 years. It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but the love, support and respect persist. If I had to guess what makes it work, I’d say it’s that we allow each other to be different, allow each other space to be ourselves, listen to each other for as long as possible, and know when to stop, relax, joke and talk about something else. There are moments when I realize the differences make us a better us.
Todd Parker, New Orleans
Post Opinions wants to know: In the May 10 letters package “Mother knows best,” readers shared sayings from their mothers that have stayed with them into adulthood. Now, it’s dads’ turn. What unforgettable things did your father say? Share your response, and it might be published as a letter to the editor. wapo.st/father_knows_best
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