According to recent research by Naomi Schaefer Riley, the number of
interfaith marriages is increasing. 45% of all marriages in the last
decade involved couples from differing religious traditions. Riley’s
research also shows that these marriages are not easy. Although we live
in an age that is calling for increasing religious tolerance, this does
not make the daily struggles of interfaith marriage any easier to
wrestle with.
These difficulties are illustrated in
Saffron
Cross, where Dana Trent, a Christian minister with connections to the
Southern Baptist Convention, shares her experiences in an interfaith
marriage with her husband Fred, a Hindu and former monk. This is an
interesting volume that provides insights into what the partners in such
marriages experience, and it includes lessons for those outside of such
marriages. Their experiences navigating such relationships have much to
teach us in navigating religious pluralism.
The book begins
dramatically with Dana sharing her “sex-free honeymoon” in the village
of Vrindavan in India. Dana is transparent with the reader as she shares
her strong displeasure with many aspects of Indian life due to its very
different complexion as a Two Thirds World country. Everything that
Westerners, and Americans in particular, take for granted on a daily
basis, from safe driving on city streets to fresh running water to the
easy availability of toilet paper, are readily available in
poverty-stricken India. As this chapter unfolds, Dana also shares her
growing awareness of the differences between her experiences in the
Western expression of the Christian faith and that of the Eastern
religion of Hinduism. Unlike the American experience where religion is
often relegated to the private sphere of the individual, in India
religion is the center of every aspect of daily life. Beyond that, its
basic worldview assumptions, rituals, beliefs, and forms of worship, are
very different from the Southern Baptist church experience that Dana
was used to back in the U.S. After the honeymoon experience in India,
the couple’s return to North Carolina comprised the early stages of the
challenges of an interfaith marriage.
Dana and Fred met as a
result of using the eHarmony online dating service. When completing her
profile on the question “What faith(s) would you accept as a partner?”
(28), she opted for an openness to a wide variety of religious
traditions, thinking that as a self-identified Christian the chances
that the service would connect her with someone distant from her
religious preferences was unlikely. She was wrong. Soon she was
contacted by Fred, who identified himself as a religious person, and a
former monk. Dana assumed he meant something in the Roman Catholic
tradition. Instead she would learn that Fred had previously pursued the
path of the Hindu monk in the Gaudiya Vaishnavism tradition. This is
most familiar to Americans through the work of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada in the 1960s popularly known as the “Hare Krishna Movement.”
This was a little off-putting for Dana, who early on in their dating
made efforts to try to persuade Fred to be baptized and return to the
Christianity he had negative experiences with in his youth.
Fred
and Dana found great interest in each other’s religions and experiences,
and in dating they also worked through various interfaith tensions that
naturally arose. After the couple married these continued, and at one
point seriously intensified, so much so that they came to question
whether or not the marriage could survive. But Fred and Dana were just
as committed to each other as they were to their differing religious
pathways, and the book describes the challenges they faced and how they
successful navigated through them as a married couple. As a result, Dana
describes not only how she has grown closer to Fred, but also how her
Christian faith has deepened and expanded. As Dana describes it,
“Immersion into a religious tradition different from my own did not
convert me, mix me up, or derail me” (26).
As mentioned in the
introduction to this review, this volume is not only helpful for
learning about interfaith marriages, it also provides food for thought
on working through issues related to religious pluralism.
Dana
describes herself as theologically progressive, and this is evident in
several statements she makes in the book where she advocates a
pluralistic understanding of religion. She says that, “the Holy Spirit
lived and breathed in each representation of the Divine” (24), both
Hindu and Christian; speaks of grasping “Hinduism’s validity as a bona
fide spiritual path toward God” (47); says that at one point she “had no
sense that Krishna was any different from Jesus” (60); and that “God
was mercifully showing up as Jesus, Spirit, Vishnu, and Krishna” (140).
Dana’s attempt at finding similarities between Christianity and Hinduism
is laudable. And certainly these can be found. But while contrasting
the religions with interpretive and analytic humility, and taking
cultural considerations into account, we are left with the reality that
religions teach very different things at a foundational level. We have
to be careful in our search for religious unity that we don’t force this
where it is not found. As Stephen Prothero has said in his book God is
Not One, seeking religious unity in the name of tolerance that does not
recognize real religious difference can lead to “naïve theological
groupthink,”1 which he sees as dangerous rather than helpful.
This
does not mean that Christians need to embrace a form of particularism
or exclusivism that is hostile. In the book Dana shares her struggles
with reconciling Christianity and Hinduism and says, “I was one of those
Christians” (48, emphasis in original), referring to the narrow
mindedness, defensiveness, and hostility that often characterizes
Christian understandings and interactions with other religions. But this
need not be the case. As Bob Robinson reminds us, one of the most
famous Indian Christians, Sadhu Sundar Singh, was a particularist who
“combined a deeply Christocentric faith with a quite positive attitude
towards Hinduism.” 2 Christians can practice a faith identity that is
rooted in the love and example of Christ, even while recognizing
irreconcilable differences with other religions.
Saffron Cross is
an interesting story of an interfaith relationship. It promises to
reward readers who want insights into an increasing marital trend, and
thoughts for reflection on interreligious relationships in the
pluralistic public square.
____________
1. Stephen
Prothero, God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World –
and Why Their Differences Matter (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 3.
2.
Bob Robinson, “Response to Bart Abbott,” Sacred Tribes Journal 8, no. 1
(2013), special theme edition on The Ethics of Evangelism: When is
Proselytism Predatory?,” Kindle edition at http://tinyurl.com/nd3zzdc.
