Marrying Outside Your Tradition: A Practical and Spiritual Guide
Ebook
As membership in traditional churches or religious institutions plummets, the meaning of marriage is changing rapidly. Interfaith marriages are on the rise, creating new challenges from wedding planning to childraising. People of faith are marrying nonreligious people. Many question the institution of marriage itself. At a time when those identifying as spiritual but not religious is on the rise, Pastor Donna Schaper provides a roadmap to help readers to understand this continuing transition of marriage after both culture and religion are no longer of one voice about its meaning.
If any marriage is a complex relationship with three partners, as Donna suggests - the marital couple along with God, how much more complex that relationship becomes when each of the marital partners comes from a different faith. Through unremitting introspection into her personal experience, Donna anticipates and pries open knots that might bind and chafe a marital relationship. In doing so she lays down a path for a couple to follow to prepare for both a wedding and a marriage.
Donna provides an important and practical guide to “Marrying Outside your Tradition” as it speaks to the profound love that is experienced when we overcome a host of perceived barriers to remain united for a lifetime. Donna gets it so right when she makes clear that it is not the changing nature of marriage that is the challenge. It is the challenge that has been there from the very beginning of our existence. The realization that we can, through the power of the Spirit, make a choice about what type of marriage we truly want to experience.
It will be no surprise to anyone who has encountered Rev. Donna Schaper that she has authored this frankly adorable, irresistible, suavely radioactive book. Donna takes public a conversation that we clergy usually only share with other clergy (and then only when we know that the server who brought us our drinks is out of earshot). Yes, this is a book about marriage, but of course it is more than that, and God forbid only people considering marriage should read this book! She writes with deep wisdom about God and about our radically changed and rapidly changing world. Donna Schaper's unmistakable pastoral voice and her remorseless compassion ring out from every word of this book. She cares too much for the world to waste a syllable on bubblewrapping the holy truths we need to hear from her.
I can’t think of anyone better equipped to take on this incredibly important, timely concern. Donna gets the complexities of marriage and helps us to celebrate them. I always learn from Dr. Schaper’s wisdom and this helpful book is no exception.
This wise and pragmatic book is a godsend for anyone navigating the complexities and opportunities of interfaith relationships. Drawing on her years of professional experience offering spiritual counseling to couples of all and no religion, Schaper invites us to welcome one anothers’ differences and shows how embracing mystery is a key ingredient of love.
Rev. Dr. Schaper’s guide celebrates the potpourri of relationships that emerge from the coupling of different cultural, racial, religious, political, and economic backgrounds, including same-sex marriages. The challenge isn’t just between partners, but to the extended family and community. Her approach is inclusive, insightful, “inciteful,” and even funny. The resulting ferment challenges as well as chastises, offering ways to be appreciative and generous. She pulls the secular world back into a spiritual realm that acknowledges God.
- Title: Marrying Outside Your Tradition: A Practical and Spiritual Guide
- Author: Donna Schaper
- Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781538143537, 9781538143520, 1538143526, 1538143534
- Resource ID: LLS:9781538143537
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-06-13T15:58:44Z
Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper is senior minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York City. She is the author of numerous books and writes for National Catholic Reporter, Sojourners, Tikkun and other publications.