What happens when you marry outside your belief system, whether that be a religious belief system or a secular belief system? The answer, frequently, is trouble as ‘Til Faith Do Us Part’, a new book by Naomi Schaefer Riley from Oxford University Press makes clear.

The blurb for the book says: “Riley suggests that a devotion to diversity as well as to a romantic ideal blinds many interfaith couples to potential future problems. Even when they recognize deeply held differences, couples believe that love conquers all. As a result, they fail to ask the necessary questions about how they will reconcile their divergent worldviews-about raising children, celebrating holidays, interacting with extended families, and more. An obsession with tolerance at all costs, Riley argues, has made discussing the problems of interfaith marriage taboo.”

The above table, drawn from the book makes for fascinating and rather depressing reading. As you can see, by far the highest rates of divorce are to be found when a Mainline Protestant (Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians etc) marries someone who is non-religious (a ‘none’).

Close behind are Evangelical Protestant-none couples.

Interestingly Mainline Protestant-Catholic couples are least likely to divorce, so that kind of interfaith marriage seems to work.  Also interesting is the fact that no matter what kind of combination they are in, the rate of divorce usually falls when one spouse is a Catholic. It usually rises when one spouse (or both) is a none.

I leave you to make of this what you will.