Children - Religious and Cultural Identity

  
  When you are in an interfaith relationship, one question that everyone seems to ask is ‘what will the children be?’ You may be still working out your own beliefs, loyalties and identity, or you may have decided that we are all people, and that religious and cultural labels aren’t important, while personal qualities are. People may warn you that if your children don’t have a firm religious identity, they will be ‘confused’ or you may want them to experience both faiths and wonder how you are going to achieve this balance.

But faiths frequently give the message that religious identities must be clear-cut and distinct. Believers in different traditions usually feel a moral imperative to identify with their faith in what they do as well as what they believe. It can seem therefore that the choice interfaith couples have about children’s identity and nurture is simple: either you have one faith as the main pole of identity for your children and family or you have neither.

However the experience of identity, even religious identity, in a home where parents have different faiths or faith backgrounds is not quite like that. Children of a mixed marriage, even those who have been brought up in a single faith, often report feeling a strong connection to the other faith, in other words they don’t experience their identity as monolithic. Parents and other figures in their lives contribute in a whole variety of ways to a child’s sense of who they are and where they belong. In modern societies it’s common for people to feel and acknowledge positively that they have hybrid roots in cultural and ethnic terms, but when it comes to religious identity it can be more difficult to express.

While religious identity is both subjective (who the children think they are) and also to do with what faith communities think they are, there’s another aspect for families to consider: what religious teaching and nurture they receive. This includes formal religious instruction, but also the informal ways in which life is lived at home: food, festivals, celebrations and relationships with other people, and so on. Hyphenated identity (eg ‘Asian-British, Scottish-Muslim) is a more nuanced way of describing how many people see themselves.

Although children will ultimately decide for themselves what religion, if any, to follow, some couples feel it is better to give them a clear religious identity, while others want them to learn about both faiths. 		 
     
  What do the faith communities say?  
 

Children are recognised as Jewish by the Jewish community if their mother is Jewish. Some progressive synagogues now also welcome inter faith families, including those where the father is Jewish and the mother gentile, and if the children are brought up and educated as Jews, their formal conversion to Judaism is relatively simple. If the children's father is a Muslim, then the Muslim community will consider them to be Muslims too, even if their mother is a practising Christian. Circumcision is expected for Jewish and Muslim boys.

Membership of Christian Churches is generally through baptism (christening), although some Churches only baptise older children and adults, and may offer a dedication or blessing ceremony for young children. A baptism service involves the parents and godparents making a public declaration of Christian faith, both for themselves and on behalf of the child, and promising to bring the child up in the faith. Clearly, this could be a painful and alienating experience for the parent who is not a Christian. Some parents who are not Christians decide not to go to their child’s christening; if this is the case it helps to have a sympathetic minister who understands and accepts the situation. The Roman Catholic Church used to insist that the children of a mixed marriage were baptised and brought up as Catholics, but many Catholic priests and marriage workers are now more relaxed, not wanting to avoid put pressure on the Catholic partner if this would threaten the stability of the marriage. Most Churches offer a service of thanksgiving after childbirth or adoption, which may be more acceptable than baptism for an inter faith couple.