BOB ABERNETHY, host: Finally, a love story about two old friends, Ginny Shedd and Wil Bloom, both in their seventies, both strongly religious. Both had lost their spouses. They fell in love and wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. But getting married turned out to be a problem, and they did not want to just live together. So they found another way.

It’s called a ceremony of commitment. It’s a completely religious wedding-like service, with no legal involvement by the state. No marriage license. No official recognition. No use of the words “marriage” or “husband” or “wife.”

REV. ANN ABERNETHY: In the presence of God and in the name of love, you—Ginny and Wil—come to have your union blessed by God and by this congregation.

BOB ABERNETHY: Ginny Shedd and Wil Bloom met 60 years ago at the Northern Baptist, now American Baptist conference center in Green Lake, Wisconsin. We met them at the Brooksby Village retirement center in Peabody, Massachusetts, north of Boston. Each had been married and had children and grandchildren, and each had lost his or her spouse. They rediscovered each other, fell in love, and wanted to be married. But they found that, for themselves and their families, marriage could bring substantial financial problems—issues of pensions, insurance, taxes, and bequests.

VIRGINIA SHEDD: The legal problems and inheritance problems with people our age with different families already in existence get very complicated.

WILBUR BLOOM: The legal entanglements that could come up later on—I mean, it could happen to be quite fierce. If one of her kids said, “Hey, wait, that’s ours, that’s not yours”—I mean, that happens.

BOB ABERNETHY: But although Wil and Ginny concluded it could be too costly to get married, as lifelong Baptists they at least wanted their relationship to be blessed by the church and respected by their families and friends.

SHEDD: We definitely wanted to be together, but we wanted to do it the proper way as an example for our own children and our grandchildren. We didn’t want to be just living together without any ceremony of any type.

BLOOM: There’s got to be something significant about what we are doing. It has to have some more meaning, and we felt that the only way to do it would be to have a ceremony or service before—not just before our friends and our family and so on, but before God.

BOB ABERNETHY: Reverend Ann Abernethy, a chaplain at Brooksby Village, knew about the service of commitment the United Church of Christ had developed originally for gays and lesbians who at that time were not allowed to marry and wanted more than a civil union. That service became the model for what Wil and Ginny chose.

REV. ANN ABERNETHY: There’s a yearning in them, and that all wants to be expressed in terms of the sacred and the holy and within the context of God’s presence.

(presiding at ceremony): Appealing to God to witness to your sincerity, do you, Wilbur, take this woman who stands before you, choosing her alone from all the world to be your beloved life partner?

BLOOM: I do.

BOB ABERNETHY: And then Ginny’s promises.

REV. ANN ABERNETHY: This is my sacred vow, spoken before the God who has brought us together.

SHEDD: This is my sacred vow, spoken before the God who has brought us together.

BOB ABERNETHY: Wil and Ginny exchanged rings, they took communion together, and then they were blessed.

REV. ANN ABERNETHY: Fulfill your promises. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, remembering that as members of one body you are called to live in harmony, and never forget to be thankful for what God has done for you.

BOB ABERNETHY: We asked Wil and Ginny, looking back, how did they feel after their commitment service?

SHEDD: It just felt so, just such a feeling of warmth and correctness, and just felt like Christ was there with us.

BLOOM: I felt up. I felt good, and I said, “Holy mackerel, now Ginny and I are for real.”

SHEDD: I just felt it was right, and I think that was a relief to me. I needed to feel that this relationship was right.

BLOOM: Well, to be honest with you, I said, “Now she’s mine.”

BOB ABERNETHY: I asked Wil, what do you call each other? What do you call your situation now?

BLOOM: We are husband and wife, and when somebody we meet for the first time—“This is my wife, Ginny Shedd,” and she says, “This is my husband, Wil Bloom,” and as far as, you know, we are concerned, we are husband and wife until death do us part.

BOB ABERNETHY: I am grateful to my cousin, Reverend Ann Abernethy, for telling us about Wil and Ginny, and to Wil and Ginny for letting us use their video.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This is the Mormon Church’s Crystal City Chapel just outside Washington, DC. There are several others in the area, but this one is unique: the 800 members who attend here are all single. Along with worshiping, they’re here for one other very important reason: to find a partner and get married.

This is Bishop Lewis Larsen, who leads a congregation of older singles aged 31 to 55.

BISHOP LEWIS LARSEN: If you were to look across the general spectrum of single adults, the trend in America is not to even marry at all but to cohabitate. That is not a trend in the Mormon Church.

SEVERSON: If there’s any doubt, talk to some of the singles here.

ADAM NILSEN: I know that God wants that for me. I know that man was not meant to be alone, nor was woman, but that we complement one another.

SEVERSON: Were you ready at 22-23 to get married?

DARLA MARBURGER: I sure think I was. I think I’ve been ready for a long time, but I haven’t been plucked from the vine yet.

BEVERLI JO DEWALT: My grandma offered to find someone to pay someone to date me, because she was fairly convinced I was not able to do that on my own.

PROFESSOR BRAD WILCOX: Mormonism is the marriage religion.

SEVERSON: Sociology professor Brad Wilcox is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. He says the marriage rate in the US has seen a dramatic decline since the 1970s at a 14-fold increase in couples cohabiting. But among practicing Mormons, marriage is still sacred.

WILCOX: They sacralize marriage, obviously, and they view marriage as an eternal institution that exists beyond this space and time.

SEVERSON: Professor Wilcox is speaking about temple marriages, where members in good standing are sealed together for time and all eternity.

LARSEN: When you die and your spouse dies, you will be united as a husband and wife. When your children die, they will be united with you as a family and that the family unit continues on, and I know that that’s a concept that is not generally taught in the Christian world, but it’s very sacredly held concept in Mormonism.

SEVERSON: Marriage has always been a sacred principle of the Mormon Church, but it took on an added dimension when church president Thomas Monson, who is considered a modern-day prophet, expressed alarm at the church’s most recent general conference that not enough members are getting married.

PRESIDENT THOMAS MONSON: Now I have thought a lot lately about you young men who are of an age to marry, but you have not yet felt to do so. I see lovely young ladies who desire to be married and to raise families, and yet their opportunities are limited because so many young men are postponing marriage.

SEVERSON: One reason church leaders are pushing marriage so urgently is that so many young men in the mid-20s are falling away and becoming inactive, focusing on the kinds of things that occupy other young men—getting an education, a job, and having fun.

It’s important to the church and to its young men that they get married, because only married men can hold high leadership offices, and the church says only Mormons who marry can reach the highest realm in the afterlife.

Since serving a church mission, many young Mormons in the DC area have spent their time pursuing advanced degrees. Beverli Jo DeWalt has been working on a career at the State Department.

DEWALT: Most of the folks out here are people that have pursued an education, pursued a career and not with the purpose of delaying marriage, but with the idea that we want to have a full life that includes all of those things.

SPENCER WILLIAMS: I’ve been just very busy with business, and it wasn’t until about six months ago when I really decided I do want to get married.

SEVERSON: How about you, Steve, what’s your excuse?

STEVE ARCHIBALD: Well, beyond the obvious or…?

SEVERSON: Steve Archibald is 28, has a master’s in accounting.

ARCHIBALD: There’s definitely a lot of pressure to get married, but at the same time there’s not pressure to rush into any kind of decision. We can all say that we’re looking. We’re doing our best to try and find the potential “10” out there.

SEVERSON: One high church leader suggested that in looking for a mate, young Mormons like Steve should stop reaching for a “10.“

LARSEN: It’s my job as bishop is to bring a little reality on this, that what they thought they were going to marry probably never did exist. You know, people have faults. Some might be a little overweight, some might be losing their hair, and that doesn’t mean that they are not a fantastic person.

SEVERSON: This is an annual social event in Washington for single Mormons aged 31-55. Washington may not be the hub of the church, but there are between 50,000 and 70,000 members living in the area, the largest concentration East of the Mississippi. For women in their mid-30s who want to start a family, more and more are taking the initiative.

LARSEN: We are a traditional church, and you would say women don’t initiate. But I think that changes when you’re around 30. Yeah, women are much more proactive in my ward.

NILSEN: Having lived in other places I’ve seen other cultures, that women that do take a lot of the initiative.

SEVERSON: So have you had it happen to you?

NILSEN: Have I had women take the initiative with me? Yeah, absolutely.

SEVERSON: Thirty-four-year-old Beverli Jo DeWalt says she is now ready.

DEWALT: I had the opportunity to be married when I was 21—a great guy, a fantastic guy—but I didn’t feel ready, and I think had I gotten married at that point I wouldn’t have been happy.

SEVERSON: Do you think there’s a downside to getting married too young?

LARSEN: Don’t ask me, because I married in my mid-30s, so I’m kind of like my own congregation.

SEVERSON: Bishop Fonz Allen has a congregation of 21-to-30-year-old singles. He says getting married young and struggling can be a good thing.

BISHOP FONZ ALLEN: Many of us in the earlier years, we got married while we were still going to school, and we had children while we still going to school, and we look back on those times today, now when we’re older, as the best times of our life, when we were struggling. So we don’t encourage people to wait to get married.

WILCOX: Folks who get married in their teens are more likely to get divorced, and that’s true across the board. It’s true for Mormons; it’s true for secular folks. People who get married in their mid-20s are pretty safe when it comes to the risk of divorce.

SEVERSON: Nationally, the divorce rate is down, from 50 to 43 percent. Among Mormons it’s about 20 percent. Church leaders say it’s because of the strong emphasis on family—one night is set aside each week for family home evenings—and also because of the church’s teachings on chastity.

LARSEN: In our faith we don’t allow for premarital sex, and I’m sure that does happen, but it’s a rarity, and we are teaching them to hang onto their values.

SEVERSON: Twenty-six- year-old Megan Baer recently got engaged. She says she’s glad she waited.

MEGAN BAER: We have sex drives just like everybody else, so of course it’s very hard, but I love what we call the law of chastity, which is no sex before marriage and complete fidelity when you’re in marriage, and I think it’s kept me from a lot of regret and pain.

SEVERSON: Professor Wilcox says 85 percent of Americans have sex before marriage.

WILCOX: Individuals who have more sexual partners prior to marriage are more likely to get divorced compared to those who do not. It’s something about forming a bond with someone that is then broken, and the way in which that may lead to a certain distrust of the opposite sex or a certain kind of loss of faith in relationships or in romance.

SEVERSON: Another reason for the low divorce rate is that Mormons usually try to date someone of their own faith. Some we spoke with said they had dated outside the church, but it hadn’t worked out. Others are like Steve.

ARCHIBALD: I do not date non-Mormons just because we’re pretty lucky in this area. The numbers are in our favor, speaking for us guys. In our congregation alone here today will have 300 individuals, and close to 200 of them will be women.

SEVERSON: After the church service, the search for a lifelong eternal mate continues in earnest. Bishop Larsen predicts that by the end of this year, at least 20 couples in his congregation of 200 will be engaged or married.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Crystal City, Virginia.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: In recent years, thousands of rural communities in Senegal have held extraordinary public rallies they call “declarations,” and they’ve declared an end to a deeply rooted practice, one rarely discussed in public, one commonly known as female circumcision.

MOLLY MELCHING: Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that I would be sitting here years later, saying that 4,792 communities in Senegal had abandoned. In the beginning it was just unthought of, unbelievable, because it was so taboo.

DE SAM LAZARO: Molly Melching founded a group called Tostan—“breakthrough” in the local Wolof language—in the early ’90s. She had modest goals: to educate people about health and human rights, especially in rural areas and in local languages. The Illinois native is fluent in the ways of Senegal but she keeps a low profile in the work of Tostan.

Tostan’s work often begins with an ice-breaker, like an old movie. Many in the audience have never watched a film. To overcome the language barrier, the selection is a Buster Keaton silent movie classic from 1923, and it’s a hit. A more serious film followed, on vegetable gardening. It’s all part of seminars on nutrition, health, basic human rights, and other issues—in groups, songs, dances, and drama.

Skit: She needs to be cut. All girls need that.

DE SAM LAZARO: It’s proven to be one of the most promising attempts in history to wipe out what Melching calls female genital cutting [FGC], a practice that dates back 2000 years. Each year, the World Health Organization says up to 3 million girls in Africa are subjected to genital mutilation, and up to 140 million women live with its consequences.

Skit: You can’t have a recognized marriage if she is not cut.

DE SAM LAZARO: That cut is a painful rite of passage for girls across a wide swath of predominantly Islamic African and Middle Eastern countries. However, the practice goes back hundreds of years before Islam or Christianity and is also practiced in both faiths and religions native to this region. It’s thought to have originated in the harems of ancient rulers as a means of controlling women’s fidelity, or as a sign of chastity among those who aspired to be consorts.

MELCHING: Those who were in the rest of society could move up, and you could marry someone who was more prestigious or had more money, more status, if you underwent this practice, because it was a sign of good reputation, and as the years went on, I mean 2,200 years, it became very much a part of what was considered criteria for good marriage.

DE SAM LAZARO: Melching came to this West African nation as a student in the 1970s and later as a Peace Corps volunteer. She stayed on to work on improving health education, which she found sorely lacking.

MELCHING: When you see a friend that you’ve known for several months and you’ve gone to her house for lunch, and then she tells you her child has some problem, that it’s someone who has cast an evil spell on the child, the baby, and that she’s going to take them to a religious leader to get the spell taken off, and you don’t know what to say, and it turns out the baby was dehydrated.

DE SAM LAZARO: But from the health education, women began to understand infection, and Melching says they began to connect the dots.

MELCHING: So suddenly as they started learning germ transmission and the consequences of FGC and how these infections occur and why they had more problems in childbirth than other women who had not been cut, they started saying wait a minute.

Seminar: People used to be afraid to talk about this before. Not anymore.

DE SAM LAZARO: But how did women in conservative, patriarchal societies become able to speak out, especially on a sensitive sexual topic? Melching says it’s because Tostan involves men and religious leaders who’ve confirmed that cutting is not required.

MELCHING: We share our modules with the religious leaders so that they see that everything that we do is for the well-being of the community, the health, and all these things are things that Islam espouses, and so they’re very happy in general, but first of all they’re happy because we start with them. We respect them.

DE SAM LAZARO: And that respect also carries over in the group’s message on genital cutting.

MELCHING: Tostan found that using approaches that shame or blame people really was just the opposite of what would work in changing social norms. When you say to someone, we know you love your daughter and you’re doing things because you love your daughter, but let’s look at this and let’s try to understand together exactly what are the consequences of this practice. But you are the ones who will have to make the decision. Then suddenly people are willing to listen. They don’t get defensive.

DE SAM LAZARO: It’s far more effective than the approach of many aid groups—religious, government, and private, says Princeton University professor Gerry Mackie.

PROFESSOR GERRY MACKIE: Not hectoring and preaching but having pro and con discussions. When we think of an ideal way of making a change, we’d say it’s democratic. We all get together and talk it over and decide what the best thing is to do. Whereas some development approaches would, say, force them to do it, pay them to do it, trick them into doing it.

DE SAM LAZARO: Tostan’s volunteers and staff who conduct its seminars all hail from the local communities. Often they are leaders and elders speaking from personal experience or anecdotes. Diarre Ba used to make a living as a female circumciser.

DIARRE BA: I was part of this process. I felt bad. This is not right. But I didn’t know anything at the time. I had no learning.

DE SAM LAZARO: Others have painful, vivid memories. Ibrahim Sankare was very close to an older sister growing up. He walked into her room one evening.

IBRAHIM SANKARE: I saw her lying in a pool of blood. I thought someone had really hurt her. I screamed. My father explained to me. Since then, even now I get goosebumps thinking about it.

MARIAM BAMBA: It was very painful. I will never—you ask me if I can forget it? I will never forget the pain. So painful.

DE SAM LAZARO: Marieme Bamba is a long-time campaigner against genital cutting, and she’s spared her ten-year-old daughter the trauma. Yet before she became involved with Tostan and early in her marriage, she was determined to keep up the tradition. Even her own husband was opposed to genital cutting.

SULEYMAN TRAORE: She insisted that she had to do it. There were so many problems if you didn’t do it. If you cooked meals, no one would eat your food. It’s because we didn’t know. People told us that it was our religion. If you don’t do it, you’ll be going against your religion. All this is false. But I alone can’t do this in the village.

DE SAM LAZARO: They say Tostan was able to insure they were not alone—that communities in which they intermarried were also thinking alike, that their daughters would still be marriageable. The large declaration ceremonies have been critical.

MACKIE: One part of bringing about a change like this is to get everyone to change at once, what we call “coordinated abandonment.” Everyone has to see that everyone else sees that everyone is changing.

DE SAM LAZARO: Genital cutting is not the only tradition they want to change. Many communities have vowed to end the frequent practice of allowing older men to marry adolescent girls, acknowledging both the health risks and the girls’ human rights. Molly Melching says there’s plenty of historical precedent for abrupt changes in social norms and attitudes. She sees a very current example every time she comes home. That’s in American views about smoking.

MELCHING: People were smoking, and nobody said anything about it much through the ‘50s, the ‘60s, and even the ‘70s. As people became more and more aware of the harm that it causes, more and more people—there was a critical mass of people who started really protesting. It was amazing for me, coming from Senegal to the United States, to see how quickly things turned around.

DE SAM LAZARO: Tostan’s efforts have now expanded to 14 other African nations.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Kaolack, Senegal.

SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: Every year, more than two million couples marry in the United States.

Conversation at wedding expo: When is your wedding? August 25th. Oh, you want to sign up here? Sure.

GONZALEZ: And some of those soon to be brides and grooms were here at this southern California wedding expo. As they plan their big day, it’s easy to find people ready to talk about what it takes to keep a relationship strong.

JESSICA VARGAS: I think we definitely are working every day on our relationship, making sure that that stays steady, and then we also have our personal goals that we want.….

RAYMOND GERST: We already went through the tuxedo rentals. We needed that…

GONZALEZ: Raymond Gerst and Jessica Vargas recently became engaged.

GERST: Communication, flat out. We are slowly evolving into having better communication between each other.

VARGAS: I know who he is. I know his flaws, I know the things that annoy me, but at the end of the day…

GERST: As do I…

VARGAS: …I have him, and I know he will be there for me, and as long as that communication stays good I think we’ll do all right.

GERST: As do I.

GONZALEZ: However, statistics show that just over 50 percent of first marriages in the US end in divorce. Couples whose relationships do sour, though, have gotten help from a powerful ally in recent years—the United States government. Starting with a Bush administration initiative in 2006 called the Healthy Marriage Initiative, Washington spent over half a billion dollars bankrolling various marriage education and healthy relationship programs across the country, many run by churches and religious groups.

DENNIS STOICA: We believe that being successful in marriage, it’s primarily a skills-based function, and what we provide is the skills to allow those people to be successful.

GONZALEZ: Dennis Stoica is the president of the California Healthy Marriages Coalition. It’s a nonprofit group that received over $12 million from the US Department of Health and Human Services. Most of the federal dollars Stoica’s group receives in turn goes to marriage education groups run by mostly Christian churches and religious groups, such as the Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino County, which held this marriage forum. It now gets more than 50 percent of its marriage education funds from the federal government.

STOICA: And it makes sense that the church would be interested in this. I mean, if you think about it, no matter what religion somebody belongs to or you’re affiliated with, all religions that I am aware of think that marriage should be a holy institute, so it is a strong alignment of values, yes.

GONZALEZ: The material used in government-funded marriage education programs mostly deals with communication problems and conflict management between spouses, like this scenario in a video produced by a federally funded group in Alabama.

Video excerpt: Robert! You didn’t even start dinner. I asked you two things and you promised two things: clothes and dinner. All you had to do was turn on the oven! I left you a note right on the refrigerator and I know you saw it because I see what’s in your hand. Hey! ….Whew! You can see where this conversation is headed. Robert and Tanya are both tired and stressed. He made some promises he didn’t keep, and she is coming on pretty strong…

GONZALEZ: Fighting poverty is primarily why the federal government is funding marriage education, the argument being that couples that stay together, especially in low-income minority communities, are more stable and less likely to seek government assistance.

Although few question the benefits of marriage, there are critics of Uncle Sam’s big role in marriage education.

PROFESSOR SHARON HAYS: Do you have the government telling you what kind of relationships you’ll establish?

GONZALEZ: Sharon Hays is a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California and an expert on families and government policy.

Man speaking at marriage forum: Would any of you care to share any of your joys or struggles in marriage?

GONZALEZ: She worries about federal money going to Christian religious groups that might criticize gay couples or couples who choose not to marry.

(speaking to Sharon Hays): If marriage is generally a good thing for society, it’s a good thing for people to get married, why shouldn’t government be involved in that?

HAYS: It is implicitly saying there is only one road. There is only one correct pathway, and it is the marriage pathway. Always when I look at all these materials on marriage promotion efforts, I worry that there is an underlying moral agenda here, that it’s actually not a story about ending poverty, but a story about morality—that it is the morally correct thing to be married. Unmarried people are morally incorrect. This is of course, right, the biggest concern relative to having government in the marriage promotion business.

STOICA: If people want to get married, we want them to be successful. But if people don’t want to get married, we don’t want them to get married, because if you don’t want to be married you’re not going to stay married.

Woman speaking at marriage forum: It is a commitment as one…

GONZALEZ: And Stoica says the groups he funds steer clear of proselytizing. However, he is a devout Catholic who sees his marriage work as a vocation.

STOICA: I believe this is God’s calling for me, is that I do believe that marriage is designed by God and that he wants people to be happily married, and that by helping people be happily married I’m fulfilling upon God’s calling for my life.

GONZALEZ: And you feel you can save people’s marriages without necessarily imposing your own religious standards on them?

STOICA: Absolutely. Our religious standards—they just don’t show up in the classroom. They just don’t show up.

GONZALEZ: Few independent studies have been done to assess the quality and effectiveness of federally funded marriage education. The federal government commissioned one report released last year by the social policy study group Mathematica. It studied 5,000 low-income couples in 8 states participating in Building Strong Families [BSF], part of the government’s marriage and relationship education effort. It found that “when results are averaged across all programs, BSF did not make couples more likely to stay together or get married. In addition, it did not improve couples’ relationship quality.”

HAYS: It is quite surprising, right. Here is this federal program that has been well funded for five years, and the research on it has shown that it is not effective. It is not effective in doing what one might call the simplest thing, which is to get people to get married.

GONZALEZ: Hays believes the money spent on marriage education should instead go to other programs, such as job training for the poor. However, Stoica stands behind both marriage and marriage education as ways to make millions of people’s lives better.

STOICA: I believe, frankly, that marriage education is the best anti-poverty program that the federal government has ever invested in, because of its preventative nature. Over 90 percent of Americans end up getting married. Over 95 percent of Americans say they want to get married. All we are doing is giving people increased probability of having what they want, which is a happy marriage.

GONZALEZ: The Obama administration is expected to continue supporting marriage education programs. It’s budgeted $150 million for the next fiscal year.

GERST: I’m thinking about having something like this on the tables …

VARGAS: But, see, then that totally changes my color scheme again.

GONZALEZ: At the marriage expo, the focus is preparing for the first few hours of matrimony and not the joys and challenges that will come later.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

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BETTY ROLLIN, correspondent: When Joseph Reyes, Catholic, and Rebecca Shapiro, Jewish, got married in 2004 they did not think their different religious beliefs would be a problem. They were leaning toward Judaism. The wedding ceremony was Jewish and later Joseph converted. But by this past April they were divorced, with religion playing a major role. Their daughter, Ela, now 4, was at the heart of the dispute.

JOSEPH REYES: Well, the decision was made that we would expose her to each of our respective faiths, and our daughter, Ela, would make her decisions based on what she saw.

ROLLIN: But once you had converted, then wouldn’t you be educating your child as a Jew?

REYES: The whole conversion ceremony was fairly suspect because I was just handed a bunch of books and said, “Read these—or not.”

ROLLIN: So you converted, but you didn’t really mean it.

REYES: Again, it was a cosmetic fix. My then-wife set this whole thing up and all I really did was show up.

ROLLIN: It was clear that Joseph’s conversion had little weight when he had his daughter baptized—secretly. The priest was unaware of the situation.

ROLLIN: Steven Lake is Rebecca’s attorney.

STEVEN LAKE: Mrs. Reyes, Rebecca, is Jewish, always has been. Mr. Reyes converted to Judaism. They got married in a Jewish ceremony. Their little girl was being raised Jewish, and suddenly in the middle of the divorce case on what supposedly was just a normal visitation, he took and had his daughter baptized without any discussion with his wife. She found out by email.

REYES: Being Christian and having grown up the way I had and experiencing the things I had experienced, certainly I wanted to share many of those things with my daughter.

ROLLIN: Joseph blames the entire conflict, even his insincere conversion, on his in-laws.

REYES: Her parents made it clear early on that they had an issue with my being a non-Jew, and that was something that I think plagued and burdened the duration of the marriage.

LAKE: It was only in the context of the divorce case where he blamed this all on her parents. That he did it because of the pressure of the parents. The parents of course, denied it, Rebecca denied and said nobody pressured him into anything.

ROLLIN: Although when Ela visits Joseph the court has given him the right to take her to church, the court has given Rebecca permission to raise her daughter as a Jew.

LAKE: As custodial parent, the law is that she has the right to raise her little girl in the Jewish faith. Having said that, again it’s a question of is there going to be a little exposure to Catholicism, or is it going to be each a tug of war pulling on a little girl trying to get her to follow one religion or the other?

ROLLIN: A greater tolerance of interfaith marriages has led to more of them. They now comprise 25 percent of American households. But according to the American Religious Identification Survey, interfaith marriers are three times more likely to become divorced or separated than people who marry in the same religion.

ROLLIN: Professor Katheryn Dutenhaver runs DePaul University’s interfaith mediation program in Chicago, which deals solely with religious conflict with regard to children after divorce. Clergy are always included.

PROFESSOR KATHERYN DUTENHAVER (Interfaith Family Mediation Project): When the couple come in to a mediation and they are with the clergy of their own faith and they see the clergy talking with each other and they see the clergy talking with the other parent, it becomes a different conversation than in the courtroom where you are trying to prove one is better than the other. I think the fear that people have is that if my child is raised in the other parent’s religion, then the child will grow closer to the other parent and closer to the other grandparents.

REVEREND THOMAS DORE: Very often they don’t know enough about their own religion, let alone the other person’s religion to understand what are the implications if my daughter is going to be Jewish or our daughter is going to be Catholic? What does that mean?

ROLLIN: All the mediators agree that the best solution for children is to be raised in one religion.

RABBI GARY GERSON: If there is a divorce and even if there isn’t a divorce, the child is put in the middle between the two parents, and the question becomes one of if I go to this faith, then am I estranging myself from the other parent or vice versa. Parents are the ones who need to make the decisions, set the boundaries and the rules for the family. Otherwise the child is caught in the middle, and beyond that it’s a lack of clarity for the child. To have a little bit of each is end up having nothing.

ROLLIN: Bridget Jeffries, an evangelical, and Paul Meyers, a Mormon, have a different view. They are raising their daughter, Harley, in both faiths. Their marriage is intact now but they were separated for awhile and they have struggled with the issue of how to religiously raise Harley. Their religious practices have much in common, but theologically there are major differences.

BRIDGET JEFFRIES: The idea of my daughter saying that she has faith in Joseph Smith as well as Jesus and the Trinity, the Godhead to Mormons, that was very difficult for me to process, to think about her going through. I mean I love my husband, I know that he believes in all that, but I really wanted my daughter to just have my own faith, without Joseph Smith and the baptismal confession. So that was a big deal to me.

PAUL MEYERS: I still want her to be Mormon since I believe that Mormon is more right than evangelical, but then again anyone who believes one thing has to assume that it’s more right than the others.

ROLLIN: They are certainly tolerant of each other’s religion, but like so many interfaith marriers didn’t understand their deep feelings about their own religion until they had children.

JEFFRIES: I don’t think that I realized how badly I was going to want my daughter to grow up in my faith when I had her.

ROLLIN: What bothers Paul the most is that Harley might opt out of religion altogether.

MEYERS: She might become apathetic towards just religion in general. Mommy and daddy can’t agree, so.… The idea of believing in something is much more acceptable to me then the idea of believing in nothing.

ROLLIN: Meanwhile, Paul brings Harley to his church one Sunday and Bridget brings her to her church the next Sunday. In addition, they go to both churches as a family and observe both traditions at home.

JEFFRIES: We celebrate the Protestant liturgical calendar, but when we do readings from it, we often do readings from both the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

ROLLIN: Does she show any signs of confusion or do you worry that she will?

MEYERS: She shows no signs of confusion whatsoever.

JEFFRIES: Not so far.

JEFFRIES: This has been very difficult and it’s been very hard. We’ve made a lot of compromises and sacrifices to make it work. So both of our religions say to get married within the faith and we think that’s a very strong counsel that people should follow. We just didn’t.

ROLLIN: And the Jeffries-Meyers family is not alone. According to the National Study of Youth and Religion, fewer than one-fourth of 18-to-23-year-olds think it’s important to marry someone in the same faith. And even the clergy has accepted that in America today interfaith marriages are an increasing reality.

REVEREND DORE: The days are gone when you go to school with only a Jewish community, only a Catholic community. To say you can’t talk to this one, you can’t see this one, you can’t get involved in this one—that isn’t real. It just isn’t a reality at all in their life.

ROLLIN: What Bridget and Paul have in their favor is that they are deeply aware of the problems they are facing and will continue to face, and of the joys.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Betty Rollin in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

KIM LAWTON, anchor: Interfaith marriage has become commonplace in this country. But, for a long time, when it came to the wedding ceremony, many couples felt they had to pick just one religious tradition, the bride’s or the groom’s — or none at all.  Today, brides and grooms are finding new ways to incorporate both their religions. Betty Rollin has our story.

BETTY ROLLIN: Sunitha Mani is an Indian Hindu, born in America. Her mother calls her a modern girl. Even so, as she prepares for her marriage, she is going the traditional route, and then some. It begins with her getting painted with henna, a process called “mehndi.” Sanjana, the marital makeup chief, explains:

SANJANA PURSNANI (Makeup Director, Sona Salon): When it dries up and it starts flaking it gives you that mahogany, like a red burgundy color. So in India the bridal colors are red. We usually wear red, maroon, burgundy, so they say that the bride’s hand shouldn’t show color of her skin.

ROLLIN: Sunitha met her husband-to-be, Ronjit Sandhu, who is a Sikh, at college eight years ago.

SUNITHA MANI (Bride): The henna artists told me yesterday the darker the henna the more your husband and your in-laws love you, so my hands are dark, but not down here so much.

ROLLIN: The groom’s mandate on the wedding night is to find his name hidden in the design.

RONJIT SANDHU (Groom): The night of the wedding, I’m supposed to find — I’m supposed to search for my name in the henna, and then if I can’t find it, basically I’m not allowed to consummate our marriage.

Bride and groom

ROLLIN: The next pre-marriage ritual performed is the puja, where the bride’s family’s Hindu pandit prays before a sacred fire.

Pandit BALU DIXIT (Hindu Temple, Albany, NY): We pray to Lord Ganesha asking for his blessings, so that everything goes very smoothly without any obstacles.

ROLLIN: When Sunitha’s parents married, not only were they required to be of the same faith, but they were expected to marry the person their parents chose.

KANTHI MANI (Mother of Bride): We got married, what, 36 years ago. I think it was through communication between my parents and his parents, and they looked at the horoscope, and once it was agreed, he came to visit me, and that’s it. I hardly knew him until I got married.

ROLLIN: And how do the Manis feel about their daughter marrying outside their faith?

Dr. SRINIVASAN MANI (Father of Bride): Whatever makes our daughter happy and secure in the future, that’s what matters, rather than our discomfort.

ROLLIN: The groom’s father, now a widower, and his aunt also have had some concerns.

Satwant Kaur Banga

SURJIT SINGH SANDHU (Father of Groom): Not having the same culture and the language, sometimes it’s hard to interact.

SATWANT KAUR BANGA (Aunt of Groom): I think that as soon as you hear of a child marrying into a different religion, even though Sikhism absolutely tells there’s only one God and all people are equal, the cultural differences — they creep in after the children come in.

Mr. S. SANDHU: Ideally, you know, you want your kids to be raised as Sikhs, but then again once you are out of India, you know, our kids now are raised in this culture. So in this culture, their culture is the same.

ROLLIN: Ronjit has his own ideas about what his childrens’ religion will be.

Mr. R. SANDHU: I think they’ll definitely be raised under both religions. You know, they are going to go to temple, they are going to go to gurdwara, the Sikh version of a temple. They will essentially learn, you know, about the histories behind both of the religions. Her parents are very religious, so whether we wanted them or not, they will probably share everything they know. They share it with me openly, so I’m sure they will definitely do it with our grandkids.

ROLLIN: The couple decided there was one obvious way to smooth over the religious differences: two weddings — one Sikh, one Hindu.

The Sikh wedding came first, with the groom making his entrance on a white horse named Max. The procession is called a “baraat.” The bride’s extended Hindu family awaits his arrival.

The families greet each other with an elaborate garland exchange. And here comes the bride.

Wedding elephant

And three hours later, here comes the bride again.

Two weddings — one in Sanskrit, one in Punjabi. Countless rituals; two receptions; decorations involving hundreds of yards of fabric; banquets; music of two cultures; 400 guests and a costumed horse.

Putting this together takes a commander-in-chief, otherwise known as a wedding planner. That would be Sonal Shah and her small army of lieutenants.

SONAL SHAH (Interfaith Wedding Planner, Save the Date Event Consultants): Don’t forget to tell everyone to take their shoes off, cover their head.

When she began her profession one religion was the norm. Not anymore.

Ms. SHAH: In the last five years since I started doing wedding planning, interfaith marriages have just skyrocketed. Out of the 25 or 30 weddings we do in a year, right now about half of them, if not more than half, are interfaith marriages. One of the biggest problems that we face is the whole meat/non-meat issue. So, you know, we did a wedding last year where the groom was Irish and the bride was Gradrati Indian, and her family, you know, strict Jains — no meat, no potatoes. And his side of the family is Irish, so obviously they want those things. We really just try to come to a consensus.

(to Ms. Shah): What did you do?

Ms. SHAH: We ended up going with the non-meat. But obviously they weren’t happy about it because their guest list consisted of everybody that, you know, ate meat and potatoes!

ROLLIN: At the Mani-Sandhu wedding there was also a meat issue, since Hindus are vegetarians, but meat won out.

And then there is the animal issue. At a recent wedding Sonal supervised in Washington, D.C., a Hindu groom wanted to make his entrance on an elephant.

Wedding guest

Ms. SHAH: It definitely posed a lot of challenges. But, yes, we found an elephant. We had the elephant brought over on a semi to downtown Washington, D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue. So it was very exciting. But it was, literally — the last six months of the wedding all we were worried about was this elephant.

ROLLIN: Back at the Mani-Sandhu wedding, Sonal has made sure that the two weddings faithfully represent the two religions.

At the Sikh wedding, men and women sit separately on the floor — shoes off, heads covered. The service centers around the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib.

Ms. BANGA: The bride and the groom, they go around the guru, keeping in mind that the guru or God is the center. All their life, because of this way, they will be very easily able to mend their differences if that’s what they keep in mind.

ROLLIN: At the Hindu wedding the bride groom also do a walk-around.

Pandit DIXIT: So that completion of the seven rounds around the fire signifies that they are married, and that concludes with the ceremony where the groom offers a necklace, ties a necklace to the bride and usually they put a little dot, like a kumkum, a sindur of the forehead of the bride, and that means she’s a married woman from then on.

ROLLIN: At the end of the Hindu service, the Sikh elders were invited to join in blessing the bride and groom, showering them with rice, flowers, and spices for fertility, happiness, and peace.

The bride’s hands are painted with henna.

Mr. S. SANDHU: As long as, you know, they will respect each other, not only as an individual but also respect each other’s customs and religion, you know — let the kids learn the better of both sides, and I think they will be stronger.

ROLLIN (to Mr. S. Sandhu): Did it take you awhile to come to this?

Mr. S. SANDHU: Yes. You know, your initial reaction is, you know, you would rather have things, you know, go your way, let it be simple. But reality is not always simple.

ROLLIN: This three-day celebration does come to an end, and Ronjit and Sunitha will be off to Hawaii for their honeymoon, knowing that they have the blessings and acceptance of both families.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Betty Rollin in Utica, New York.

TIM O’BRIEN, anchor: The issue of gay marriage is on the agenda as the US Episcopal Church holds its once-every-three-years General Convention in Anaheim, California.  For years, Episcopalians have been deeply divided over homosexuality.  One proposal being debated at this meeting would allow Episcopal churches to conduct same-sex weddings in the six states that have legalized gay marriage.  Currently, most mainline denominations do not officially allow same-sex weddings.  But the changing legal environment is adding new pressure.  Kim Lawton has our report.

KIM LAWTON: Boston’s historic Church of the Covenant has been an important place for Anne Crane and Sarah Perreault. The lesbian couple had their first date there in the late 1970s, and by the time Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage the two had been active members for more than 25 years, so a church wedding seemed the obvious choice.

SARAH PERREAULT: In particular we wanted to be married at our home church with our community and our family and friends.

LAWTON: But it was complicated. Church of the Covenant is dually aligned with two mainline denominations: the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA).  And while the UCC has no problem marrying same-sex couples, it’s against national Presbyterian policy.

ANNE CRANE: Well, it’s painful to know that the church that I’ve been a part of all my life does not recognize our relationship and our marriage as being a legitimate marriage.

LAWTON:  Church of the Covenant worked it out so that a retired UCC minister conducted the ceremony, and the Presbyterian side of the church officially stayed out of it.  Crane and Perreault say their wedding was beautiful and meaningful, but not quite everything they would have planned.

PERREAULT:  I felt badly because there were people that we would have liked to include in our ceremony who could not participate because they were ordained Presbyterian clergy. There was a real loss there.

Man at Protest:  “We are a couple…”

LAWTON:  For decades, mainline denominations have been wrestling over issues surrounding homosexuality: whether to ordain gay clergy and whether to recognize–and bless same-sex unions. Now that six states have legalized gay marriage, those battles are taking on a new urgency. Some church members are pushing the denominations to reassess their policies, while others are fighting to hold the line.

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an advocacy group that supports conservative positions within mainline denominations.

MARK TOOLEY:  The church shouldn’t just go along with what the wider society demands of it. But the church is ideally supposed to be faithful to timeless teachings that have been presented to the church through its Scripture and through its traditions.

Minister:  “To have and to hold…”

LAWTON: Currently, while the Unitarians and the UCC conduct gay marriages, mainline Protestant denominations as a rule don’t officially allow it. Clergy who participate in same-sex weddings could face church trials and even risk being defrocked.

Minister:  “I hereby pronounce you husband and husband…”

TOOLEY:  Traditionalists within those churches will strive to help to ensure there is as much fidelity as possible, by the clergy to the official teachings.

LAWTON: In the United Methodist Church, 83-year-old Richard Harding has a long history of activism for gay rights. He helped found Reconciling Retired Clergy, a network of retired pastors willing to perform gay marriages.

REV. RICHARD HARDING: There’s not a whole lot that they can do to we retired clergy, and there’s a whole lot that they can do to active clergy that they can’t do to us. And that’s why we’re stepping in.

LAWTON: Harding says he believes what he’s doing is the right thing, so he’s willing to risk any repercussions.

HARDING: We could be defrocked. I would be now sitting here as Mr. Harding instead of Reverend Harding. And in Massachusetts, a lay person can go for a day to the state house and get permission to officiate at a marriage. So I’d still be able to do it, only I just wouldn’t be a pastor anymore.

LAWTON: At Church of the Covenant, interim minister Jennifer Wegter-McNelly is an ordained Presbyterian pastor. She says her congregation has been put in a difficult position of trying to maintain support for gay members while still respecting the national denomination.

REV. JENNIFER WEGTER-MCNELLY: We have a long history and we’re very active, and so I think there is a lot of really thoughtful hard conversation about how do we be prophetic and remain faithful and connected to the churches that are our larger community?

LAWTON: So far, they’ve been able to do that by keeping same-sex weddings solely under the jurisdiction of the UCC part of their church. Other congregations don’t have that option. Episcopal clergy also can’t conduct gay marriages. In an effort to be even-handed, many Massachusetts Episcopal churches aren’t doing any weddings, gay or straight. Instead, Reverend Pam Werntz at Boston’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church says they provide a blessing for couples who are married by the state.

REV. PAM WERNTZ:  That could happen separately, it could happen at the courthouse and then a couple comes here for the ceremony, or it can happen in the same ceremony where a Justice of the Peace presides over the first part of the service and the priest presides over the blessing and often a Eucharist celebration.

LAWTON: The compromise may have helped circumvent some of the denominational difficulties, but Werntz says it was still painful for many members.

WERNTZ:  There were people that left the church in feeling a lot of sorrow and betrayal that the Episcopal Church couldn’t move as fast as I think it needed to move when same-sex marriage was legalized.

LAWTON: UCC minister Reine Abele, who does perform gay weddings, say churches need to be better at addressing social concerns.

REV. REINE ABELE: Churches generally are not the leading edge of cultural change in our society. They are often not the engine but the caboose.

LAWTON: But despite the new activism, mainline clergy continue to be conflicted over the issue, and those who support gay marriages still appear to be in the minority.

LAWTON: According to a recent survey by Public Religion Research, mainline clergy are generally more supportive of gay rights than Americans as a whole. But that doesn’t hold true when it comes to same-sex marriage. Only a third of mainline clergy support gay marriage. That number is just about the same for Americans overall.

TOOLEY: Often people in wider society are very surprised to learn that the mainline churches don’t already accept same sex marriage, because typically these churches, at least for the last 50, 60 years or more have been on the liberal side of social issues. But they have hung back on the marriage issue.

LAWTON: For many, it’s an issue of basic theology.

TOOLEY: Typically for Jews and Christians, marriage is a metaphor for faithfulness between God and his people and once you begin to redefine what marriage is you ultimately start to redefine who God is and that obviously and understandably is difficult for Christians and Jews.

LAWTON: In the Presbyterian Church (USA), Reverend Mary Holder Naegeli is among those urging the denomination to maintain its stand.

REV. MARY HOLDER NAEGELI: Homosexual practice is not God’s design for humanity. Not being God’s design for humanity, having these clear prohibitions in the Scripture make homosexual practice a sin. Homosexual marriage makes permanent a situation that God wants to redeem.

LAWTON: But others advocate a different interpretation of the Bible.

WEGTER-MCNELLY: Our call to be inclusive of all people comes from scripture.  It comes from faithfulness to God, it comes from understanding that all people are made in the image of God and it’s essential to support people in their relationships, to bless them and support them and nurture them.

LAWTON: For Wegter-McNelly, the issue also comes down to her pastoral responsibilities to the people in her pews.

WEGTER-MCNELLY:  Here gay marriage isn’t an abstract issue. It’s not a political issue.  It’s very much an issue of the people of the congregation being in community together. To tell people that this community that is the compass for your life is not going to bless and support you in your intimate relationship is kind of an impossibility.

LAWTON: But supporters of traditional marriage say pastors also have a responsibility to their faith and to the wider church.

HOLDER NAEGELI: Why would I, a representative of God, help people make permanent with a vow, I take marriage vows very seriously, but with a vow to make permanent then, seal something that God wouldn’t agree with?

LAWTON: As they celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary, Anne Crane and Sarah Perreault are glad their church wedding worked out.

CRANE: It’s a liberating feeling, and it’s enabled me and us to just, to live our lives honestly and openly, and many people don’t have that opportunity and have to continue living a lie. And that’s the sad thing.

Minister: Those whom God has joined together, let no one put asunder.  Amen.

LAWTON: But given the conflicts within the mainline churches, the situation is not likely to change any time soon.

I’m Kim Lawton in Boston.

Q: Tell us why your church decided to go ahead and officiate at same sex weddings in California.

A: I think that the central reason is that we believe that God’s love is not discriminatory. It’s not bigoted. There are no second-class citizens, and so the graces of the church should extend to everyone, regardless of who they are.

Q: This has been controversial within the Episcopal Church, and the dioceses in California aren’t all agreeing. Why is there still so much controversy about this?

Rev. Ed Bacon

A: Even within the Episcopal Church there is a lack of exposure to healthy relationships with gay and lesbian Christians, because people have not felt welcome in a church that discriminated against them and a church that they felt was abusive. One of our important lay leaders here who happens to be heterosexual says that where you stand on this issue depends on where you sit on Sunday morning, and by that he means whether or not you are worshipping with brothers and sisters in Christ who are gay and lesbian, who have been on your board with you, or the vestry, who have been in Bible study groups, who have been in prayer groups, and we’ve had the great benefit of that here at All Saints Church. And our children here have grown up understanding that that is the norm, so when our vestry had a called meeting after the California Supreme Court decision, one of our leaders said this is a slam dunk decision, this is a no brainer. Of course we’re not going to be bigoted. Of course we’re not going to be discriminatory. Let’s move forward now.

Q: I’ve talked to some clergy who are really wrestling with whether or not to perform same-sex marriages in their churches. What would you say to those who are struggling over whether this is the right thing to do?

A: I would tell them that Jesus said seek first the kingdom of God and its justice, or its righteousness — both of those words come from the same Greek word — and all these things shall be added to you. The first thing we seek is the kingdom of God and its justice. If we always take a stand for justice everything else works out, so I would encourage them to step outside their comfort zone and experience the joy that we have experienced here at All Saints.

Q: One thing you hear over and over again from different segments of the Christian community is God instituted marriage between a man and a woman, and the Bible says this is between a man and a woman. How do you respond to that?

A: I think it’s very clear that the Bible has an arc that moves towards inclusiveness. Peter himself had a conversion experience about his fixed certainties and the things he felt repugnant toward, and the entire New Testament is about inclusion, about bringing more and more people in and understanding that there’s nothing God created which is inherently evil, and so the Bible itself moves towards inclusion.

Q: Let’s put this issue and what’s happening here in the bigger context of the struggles going on within the US Episcopal Church, and even more broadly within the worldwide Anglican Communion. Have you thought about the impact what you are doing here may have on those wider decisions? Is there a worry or a thought at all that this might in some way exacerbate the tensions?

A: Rather than being worried about the impact of what we’re doing, I’m very excited about the impact of what we’re doing, because I’ve been in the church and have been a priest long enough to have seen the inclusion of women in ordination to the priesthood, and it took some pioneering leaders of the church to step out and say God is for all, and the church had to grapple with the reality of women who were ordained priests. The church will have to grapple with gay and lesbian members who are married, and it will cause some bit of chaos and some bit of rocking the boat, disequilibrium for a while, but the church is led by the Holy Spirit, and I have great excitement and great joy and great confidence that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth, which will be about embracing all people.

Q: Bishops from around the world will be gathering for the Lambeth Conference. Is there a sense that while the leaders are gathering and there are going to be conversations, Lambeth is all about conversation? Do you feel like, at the church level, you all are saying, “We’re moving forward while you all are talking”?

A: Absolutely. The church is moving forward. The church in its pastoral responsibilities to the people of the pew must be engaging, consoling, comforting, empowering rather than abusing its members. So we have a responsibility here on the ground, at the grassroots level, to move forward with justice, inclusion, love, and compassion, and the bishops can talk about it, but we think the bishops will come around and see that we are exercising great pastoral responsibility.

Q: For those who say this is a violation of Scripture and what they think Anglican tradition and historic Christianity teach, where does this leave them?

A: My experience, again, is quite lengthy, and I’ve seen people leave the church over the ordination of women and the change in the prayer book, and then I’ve seen those people come back after they grapple with issues of inclusion and justice. So I have every confidence that those who might leave would be leaving temporarily and then come back. I had a marvelous experience in my former post where I was called by a congregation in the city who had left the cathedral prior to my being the dean there, asking to come back, saying that they knew that the trajectory they were on was a dead end street, and it ended in anger and splinteredness, and they wanted to come back in. I have every confidence that’s going to happen with us.

Q: What is your message, then, for the bishops meeting at Lambeth?

A: My message for the bishops who are meeting in Lambeth is to open the depths of their being, their conscience, their hearts, their minds, and in their community to the movement of the Holy Spirit that leads them into all truth, that blows where it wills, it’s always leading toward inclusion, and then to have the courage of the convictions that come from listening to the Holy Spirit.