A factor that many couples consider before getting married is religious compatibility. Couples who share similar religious beliefs often feel that those beliefs are among the most important bonds that will tie them together through life’s myriad challenges. It’s probably safe to say that many couples to whom religion is important never imagine that their beliefs will alter to such an extent that their marriages may be threatened. If anything, they imagine that their faith will continue to grow upward and outward, stronger and deeper, individually and communally, throughout their lives. Any other possibilities – one partner converts from Christianity to Judaism, or from Islam to Christianity, or from Hinduism to Buddhism, or from some religion to no religion – are unfathomable.
What got me thinking about this topic is a passage from the penultimate chapter of Leaving Islam. It was written by an apostate American Muslim woman who, as far as she knows, is married to a true believer:
A few weeks ago, my husband told me a story about a man who lived to a very old age and died twenty years ago. All his life this man preached Islam and was even the one who called the Adhan (Muslim call to prayer) in his little town every day until his final illness. On his deathbed, he asked for his family – he had had several sons and daughters who in turn had families of their own. After his family came to him, he asked for a copy of the Koran. He had tears in his eyes, so his family thought that he was going to recite a part of the Koran for one last time, as they had seen him do so many times in the past. But when they put it in his hands, he said, “I hereby renounce everything written in this book. It is a lie.” And then the man died.
I was speechless when I heard this. I could see myself in this man, hopelessly “trapped” in the role carved out for him, afraid to tell others that he had found out the truth. I also wondered when this happened, exactly. Did he find out at the end of his life? Or did he go through decades of torturous pretense?
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I am in the process of assessing my relationship with my husband. I know that I cannot tell him without divorcing him, and I need to consider not only myself by my children as well. My husband is not a malicious person, but who knows what he might do if he is provoked by the realization that I have apostated and do not wish to go back to Islam? I might gather up enough courage to run and build a life where I should not hide my belief. Or it may well be that I, too, will be like that old man, brave enough to tell the truth only on my deathbed.
Coming out to one’s spouse as an apostate can be terrifying. The woman I quoted above may have good reasons for believing that her husband will divorce her if he learns her secret. Then again, if she can find the courage and means to come out to him, she may discover, as I did, that his thinking is much closer to her own than she realizes. I can’t help wondering why he told her the story. Was he feeling out her response in order to gauge how he should frame his own? Still, I understand her fear because I once felt it. So did the deacon. Some couples, like the deacon and me, discover that their beliefs have evolved on similar, parallel tracks. Other couples find that the beliefs they once shared are no longer common grounds for bonding. Some couples who unexpectedly find themselves on opposite different sides of the religious divide cannot salvage their marriages. Sadly, their religious differences create (or, sometimes perhaps, exacerbate) relational chasms that cannot be bridged. Other couples find ways to retain their connections, but doing so requires intense effort on the part of both partners. All marriages require intense commitments, obviously, but significant religious differences create tensions that many couples never anticipate confronting. Such differences force couples to think long and hard about what the phrase, “for better, or for worse” really means. They also force couples to assess their marriages in their entirety and discover exactly what bonds they share that keep them together despite holding strikingly different worldviews.
Religion doesn’t poison marriage any more than it poisons anything else. For religious people whose beliefs grow in similar ways over their lives, religion provides a strong bond. I know scores of people for whom this is true. For once-religious people whose views shift dramatically or reverse over time, those shifts and reversals can be a source of bonding and reflection – once they are openly acknowledged. The situation in which religion can poison a marriage is when partners’ views diverge, when one partner loses religion completely or converts to a different religion. Do philosophical differences between marriage partners have the same effects on their relationships? Would a Platonic idealist be able to marry, or remain married to, an Aristotelian empiricist? I honestly don’t know. Would a Marxist be unable to marry, or remain married to, a capitalist? In this case, it’s conceivable to me that the answer easily could be no. The problem I’ve been discussing throughout this post is ideology, not religion, per se. It just happens that religion is a prominent example of ideology that affects (infects?) many people deeply, so it’s one we commonly see at play.
The conclusion I draw from these thoughts is that people should be careful not to become so married to beliefs of any kind that their marriages to flesh-and-blood companions become secondary. At dinnertime, on long walks in the park or along the beach, and on winter nights, the deacon will always be much more satisfying company than The God Delusion.
– the chaplain
