Concepts and Terminology in Interreligious Marriage

Abstract

I NTRODUCTION. Interreligious marriage has been a matter of concern to religious leaders seemingly since the origin of different religions. Rules and their modification, polemics, and, much more recently, research have kept the subject alive. Research of any kind rests on conceptualization and precision of terminology; theories may follow later. Research on interreligious marriage has scarcely gone beyond limited surveys of rates of intermarriage; discussions tend to be partisan in nature by proponents of one religion or another. These approaches are more or less at a standstill; little that is new is being uncovered. The time is at hand for placing interreligious marriage in a conceptual framework and for developing greater precision in terminology, both for the sake of clarity and to break away from some of the inadequacies of present research. This article makes a start in that direction. It is not intended to be global; except for occasional illustrations, it is limited to the United States.