Photo Susan Katz Miller Happy birthday dear blog!
It has now been a decade since I created this virtual space for interfaith families.
Over ten years, I have posted 358 essays here. In that time 184,192 people have visited, and viewed these pages 347,715 times.
I like to think that together we have created a virtual global village of people who form families across religious lines. Thousands of people have visited this blog from the US, Canada, UK, India, Australia, South Africa, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Over 1000 people have visited from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore, Indonesia, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates. And hundreds of visitors have found this community from Sweden, Russia, Pakistan, New Zealand, Ireland, Brazil, Hong Kong, Spain, Nigeria, Turkey, Norway, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Belgium, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Japan, Bangladesh, Poland, Denmark, Finland, Ghana, Trinidad & Tobago, South Korea, Qatar, Argentina, Romania, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Greece, and Thailand.
In ten years, what has changed? In my own work, I published two books on interfaith families. I spoke about how we can be interfaith educators, ambassadors, bridge-builders and peacemakers, at seminaries, conferences, festivals, universities, churches, and synagogues, around the country. I created the Network of Interfaith Family Groups to connect families of any or all religions "doing both" wherever they live. I helped inspire a lively Muslim/Christian interfaith families group (and welcomed the creation of a Muslim/Jewish group as well). And I began coaching interfaith couples online, as well as leading workshops for interfaith families, clergy, and religious educators.
This decade saw the publication of many other important new books in our nascent field, including those on the history of interfaith marriage in the US, on global multiple religious practice, on the different ways people come to be multiple religious practitioners, on how Jewish and Christian interfaith families choose to practice in the US, on what it is like being a rabbi married to a Catholic, on what it is like being a minister married to a Hindu, and on the inclusion of interfaith families in the American Jewish community.
In the Jewish world, one of the most significant changes for interfaith families was the decision of the fourth-largest movement, Reconstructing Judaism, to decide to accept, and ordain, rabbinical students in interfaith relationships. And in the Conservative movement, we are beginning to see a strong challenge from within, led by rabbis and congregants, to the policy forbidding Conservative rabbis from officiating at interfaith marriages.
Meanwhile, in this decade, a dramatic decline in American (and European) religious affiliation (and increase in "religious nones") has encouraged many Christian denominations and other religious leaders to finally engage with the reality of interfaith families and the growth of multiple religious practice. These demographics also mean more of my work has been with families spanning religious and humanist/agnostic/atheist identities. And we have moved in this decade beyond the dominant Christian/Jewish interfaith family discourse, to engage with interfaith families with Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Pagan, African diasporic, and indigenous religious affiliations, among others. That's why my new book, The Interfaith Family Journal , was designed to support people of any religion, all religions, or no religions.
Around the world, we still see, far too often, religious intolerance and misunderstanding leading to violence, including violent attacks on interfaith couples and families. And there are still far too many countries where religious authorities control the right to marriage (and burial), marginalizing or effectively prohibiting interfaith families (and LGBTQ+ relationships). We still have work to do to raise awareness, protect each other, and to see that love prevails over hate.
Sometimes in our cosmopolitan American and European cities, it feels like traditional religious identities are fading away, and perhaps interfaith families no longer need support, or my calls for new research and activism. But then, I get an email from a young couple-for instance, a Hindu dating a Catholic. They are seeking out a more neutral advisor, or a more positive outlook, as they struggle with society and extended family. And I realize, once again, how much I am learning from this couple-about their hopes and dreams-while simultaneously helping them. I realize, once again, that they have the potential to go beyond being okay. Through their relationship they can bring inspiration and interfaith education to their extended families and their communities, and to the world.
And then I think, maybe I will go ahead and keep blogging for one more decade?
Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and a workbook, The Interfaith Family Journal (2019).
