How do those of us who form families across religious (or secular/humanist/atheist) differences find other families like us?
How do we share resources and support each other?
How do we talk about our identities, advocate for our right to exist, create space at all the tables, and encourage the academic study of our experiences?
To search, google, connect to each other, and join relevant conversations, we use the term interfaith families.
I have been using that term since I was born into an interfaith family in 1961. I have been using that term for more than a decade of blogging, writing books, and posting on social media on this topic. And I used it in founding the Network of Interfaith Family Groups.
As I have acknowledged in the past, the term is imperfect. For instance, "faith" is more central for Christians and Muslims than it is for Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, or (obviously) atheists. But the alternative often used in Jewish contexts, intermarriage, is loaded with all kinds of problematic linguistic baggage, as I wrote here.
So, why write about this now?
Today, the longtime Jewish organization doing outreach to interfaith families, interfaithfamily.com, unveiled a rebranding, moving away from the term "interfaith family" in their title. They are now " 18Doors: Unlocking Jewish." Of course, to explain the purpose of the organization, the "About" section refers to interfaith couples, families, and "Jewish interfaith relationships." To my point, interfaith families looking for help are not going to find this organization, or understand that it is meant for them, without explicit use of the term "interfaith families."
Interfaithfamily.com has always encouraged Jewish institutions to be more welcoming and inclusive, and has always supported interfaith families practicing Judaism. Thus, they play an important progressive role in Jewish institutional spaces. That is why I have worked on occasion with interfaithfamily.com since its inception, providing essays and reviews, and most recently, speaking to their rabbinic fellows.
On the other hand, it has been awkward, at times, having a Jewish organization devoted to a relatively narrow slice of interfaith families (those "making Jewish choices") claim all rights to the language "interfaith family." Interfaith families include families that don't make Jewish choices-or any religious choices at all. Interfaith families also include Hindu and Muslim families, and Pagan and atheist families, and families celebrating Catholicism and spiritual practices of the African diaspora, and many more permutations. My work now is to support all interfaith families, of any or all religions or none. The Interfaith Family Journal takes this expansive and global approach to the interfaith family landscape. This approach, my approach, is more about creating and leading, and less about hoping for inclusion or to be welcomed, or hoping for any particular religious outcome.
With the change to 18Doors, the organization formerly known as interfaithfamily.com claims a hip, clever, and more explicitly Jewish title, leaving more space for all of the rest of us from the kaleidoscope of interfaith families worldwide to use the "interfaith family" language as the term of art.
Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of The Interfaith Family Journal, and Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family.
