Abstract
This chapter explores the role of ritual and interrituality in families where father and mother have different faith backgrounds. The choice and negotiation of rituals represent one dimension of socialization and interrituality in such families, but the practice and inclusion of rituals highlight ritual as an ambiguous phenomenon and a site of possible conflict. Thus, disagreement in mixed-faith families may not arise at the level of truth claims but at the level of what individuals consider important in terms of symbols and symbolic practices. The question of how to raise children tends to bring different points of view to the fore as parents need to decide which, if any, rites of passage they will engage and how and where these will be performed. Mixed-faith families may be flexible in such matters, negotiating boundaries, creating new rituals, and finding ways to reconcile potentially divisive differences. The chapter draws on ethnographic data and findings from a three-year study carried out at the University of Warwick and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The encounter and intersection between faiths, cultures, and ethnicities in mixed-faith families are under-researched areas of social interaction, despite the growing number of such families in the UK and globally. Therefore, one of the study’s aims was to show how parents negotiate the practice and belief of their respective traditions between themselves as a couple and with their extended families and how children in such families perceive and form their own religious and social identities.
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Notes
- 1.
Hence the reference to ‘we’ as we worked as a team throughout the project.
- 2.
There is a wide-ranging debate about both the definitions of religion and the link between culture and religion; we followed scholars who consider religion a part of culture (e.g., Parekh 2000).
- 3.
See below for terminology in the literature.
- 4.
Their sample included 65 parents.
- 5.
Caballero et al. (2008) identified three parenting approaches: (1) giving children a distinctly mixed identity, by familiarizing them with aspects of both cultures (particularly through food)—or fostering mixedness as an identity; (2) stressing a single aspect of a child’s identity (often religious beliefs); (3) adopting an ‘open’ approach—telling the children they transcend categorization.
- 6.
We have explored this theme in detail elsewhere (Arweck and Nesbitt 2010b).
- 7.
‘Notation’ means the ways of imposing order on the social world by devising categories and categorization. Notation is never complete, however many categories are created. Importantly, notation creates ambiguity because categories omit objects and experiences that do not fit into or stand between categories. (Seligman and Weller 2012, p. 15)
- 8.
Elaborating further on the role of emotions goes beyond the scope of this chapter, but see Arweck (2013).
- 9.
The reason for this is availability of data.
- 10.
See, for example, Parekh’s (2000) typology of individuals’ responses to their culture.
- 11.
I am indebted to Lüddeckens (2018) for insights into ritual agency/work.
- 12.
All the names used in this chapter are pseudonyms.
- 13.
Based on his research on mixed-faith families (men from majority Muslim countries married to white Italian women), Cerchiaro (2017) also points to the choice of names revealing explicit attempts to transmit collective identities regarding race, ethnicity, and religion. See also Finch (2008) and Sue and Telles (2007).
- 14.
Sunita identified as Christian, which turned out, upon exploration, to be Mormon. Thus, for Sunita, being Mormon was the same as being Christian. We are of course aware that Mormonism is generally treated as a Christian sect (sociologically speaking).
- 15.
Again, I am indebted to Lüddeckens (2018) for these insights.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to express her deep gratitude to the parents and young people who took part in the project.
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Arweck, E. (2019). The Role of Ritual in Mixed-Faith Families. In: Moyaert, M. (eds) Interreligious Relations and the Negotiation of Ritual Boundaries. Interreligious Studies in Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05701-5_20
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