Mixed-Up Love
Relationships, Family, and Religious Identity in the 21st Century
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Dating, commitment, kids, and family--it's all hard work, and when you come from different religious backgrounds it's even harder.
Jon, a Catholic writer, and Michal, a Reconstructionist rabbi, live out the challenges of an interfaith relationship everyday as husband and wife, and as parents to their daughter Sima, who is being raised Jewish. In MIXED-UP LOVE, the couple explores how interfaith relationships impact dating, weddings, holidays, raising children, and family functions--and how to not just cope, but thrive.
This is an engaging and practical resource for singles who are considering dating outside their own faith, couples in interfaith relationships, relatives and friends of "mixed" couples who seek information and understanding, and parents desiring a fresh perspective. With clarity, insight, and humor, Sweeney and Woll demonstrate how to engage with your partner, family, and faith like never before.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This husband-and-wife collaboration (he is Catholic, she is Jewish and a rabbi) attempts to provide a road map for other interfaith couples. Breezy and conversational, it does not live up to its title as an exploration of "relationships, family and religious identity in the 21st century." It may best be appreciated as a story of two people who share a liberal worldview and a professional life steeped in religious learning and ritual. Sweeney's life story is the more interesting of the two: he was reared in an evangelical home and attended Moody Bible Institute before switching to an Episcopal seminary and ultimately converting to Catholicism. Both came from previous marriages. The book is useful in exploring the compromises the couple made. They decide to marry in a civil ceremony, rather than mash up two different traditions (or find clergy willing to marry them). There are harder challenges too; many Jewish congregations are unwilling to hire a rabbi married to a non-Jew, for example. Interfaith marriage is no longer rare, but this book deals a death knell to the old way of marrying where one partner converts to the other's faith.
