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Couples cope with differences in faith

By Ilse Sedlmair
The Daily Cougar

On a campus as diverse as UH, relationships are bound to form between people with different ethnicities, cultural backgrounds and religions.

If a relationship between people who have different religious beliefs turns into a long-term commitment, a minister at the A.D. Bruce Religion Center warns that the couple may face problems.

"If a couple wants to marry," said Edward Pennington, a Church of Christ campus minister, "the more in common, the better."

Working from a Catholic background, the Religion Center offers interfaith marriage counseling for students who come from different religious backgrounds.

Pennington said many interfaith marriages face problems because culture and religion are inseparable.

"Neither Islam and Christianity nor Islam and Judaism are a good match," he said. "The spouses come from greatly diverse cultural backgrounds trying to combine their traditions.

"When ... they fight about a personal problem, it's really about their cultural backgrounds, and they fight a cultural revolution."

He advised that couples must compromise to overcome their differences.

But interfaith relationships are not fated to fail, according to Diana Shankar, the coordinator of the Religion Center.

People in interfaith relationships face differences and conflicts because of their cultural diversity, Shankar said, but said all the interfaith couples she knows are highly educated people who value their religious diversity and see great merit in other religions.

Their marriages continue happily, she said, because the spouses compromise.

"The continuous curiosity for the other half's different ethnicity within an interfaith marriage knots the marital bonds tighter and adds stability to a married life," she said.

Interfaith couples, to a greater extent, are opting to forge their own paths in the spiritual realm, she said, by combining aspects of both religions rather than relying on the strict guidelines promoted by either organized religion.

"People make choices and have to live with their consequences," she said. "The religions' universal laws are our duties toward humanity to be kind and to reflect our creator's law to each other and (be) kind to our fellow men, especially in marriage."

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