The Gradient of Ecumenism and Opposition to Religious Intermarriage

Abstract

As a result of the practice in research on interreligious marriage of classifying subjects by the heterogeneous categories, Catholic, Protestant, Jew, persons who are dissimilar on important variables are placed together while those persons who are similar are separated. Important relationships may thus be confounded. This study explores differences in attitude towards religious intermarriage among respondents randomly selected from the membership lists of ecumenical, moderate, and exclusive churches in a medium-sized west coast city. Results of interviews show that ecumenical church members show the least opposition to intermarriage and members of exclusive churches the strongest opposition. Intermarriage involving an exclusive church is the most strongly opposed regardless of respondents' church affiliation. Age, sex, occupation, or education show no significant influence on the expressed opposition to intermarriage. Individual church activity, contributions, or cultural relativism have a mixed influence on attitude. It is suggested that future research on interreligious marriage give more attention to the ecumenical-exclusive dimension of churches. Interfaith marriage has been one of the most widely researched topics in the sociology of religion. For the most part the studies on interfaith marriage that have been done have focused on the three conventional divisions, Catholic, Protestant, and Jew. However, recent critiques have argued that the practice