ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

Note: This is part 3 of a multi-part post. See the end of the post for links to the other parts.

With my engagement set, I began doing my best to prepare for how to handle an interfaith marriage to a Mormon. My first move was to start talking to other people who had done it, and one of the first names that was passed along to me was that of Juliana Boerio-Goates (in case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced “boreo goats”). Dr. Boerio-Goates was an active, practicing Catholic and a chemistry professor at Brigham Young University. Her husband, Steven Goates, was an active, practicing Latter-day Saint and also a chemistry professor at BYU. They had raised two children together, a daughter who was about my age and a much younger son, and they had raised their children in both religions, so I was full of questions on how their marriage had come about, how their children handled living in an interfaith family, and what they did to make it work.

The good professor was incredibly helpful to me. She took me to lunch and answered all of my questions, and she never had an ill word to say about her husband or Mormons in general. She directed me to some essays she had written on the subject, an essay on her marriage which was published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought back in 1991 and an essay on her experience as a Catholic at BYU called “A Catholic Rediscovers God,” which was published in the 2001 collaboration Finding God at BYU (S. Kent Brown, ed.). As for her children, her son was still growing up and her elder daughter had not yet decided between Catholocism and Mormonism; she considered herself a child of both religions. While some would not be satisfied with that outcome, in my view, it was refreshing to see that children can be raised in an interfaith household and not be bitterly torn between the religions of their parents. While a Catholic and an evangelical Christian certainly is not the same thing, I felt that I had found a kindred spirit in Dr. Boerio-Goates, and she showed me quite lucidly how possible it is for a Latter-day Saint to have a loving marriage and even raise children with another kind of Christian.

Also contained in the Dialogue volume with Dr. Boerio-Goates’s essay were other essays on LDS interfaith marriage, and a Dialogue issue from the previous year contained more essays on the subject. Quite a few of these essays were about marriages between Latter-day Saints and other types of Christians, and even the ones that were not still proved to be very insightful.

Another essay that I found helpful was “Strengthening the Part-Member Marriage? We’re Just Fine, Thank You” by Jana Riess. Riess, a Latter-day Saint, is married to an active mainline Protestant—Methodist at the time of the article, now Episcopalian.

I had lunch with a Baptist woman living in the Provo-Orem area who was married to an active Latter-day Saint (sadly, I do not remember her name). Her LDS husband had children from a previous marriage who were already being raised LDS, and he had fathered one son with this woman. Her son had been pulled aside by other members of her church and told “the truth” about Mormons so that he had chosen to become Baptist. She was pleased that her son had chosen her faith (regardless of the method employed in bringing this about) and seemed to have a lot of regrets about her marriage to a Mormon. I did keep her story in mind, but I found it hard to imagine my marriage ever turning out like hers.

Of course, I consulted with my pastor and fellow church members on the issue, and they were surprisingly supportive. I was very blessed to be part of a church where my unconventional views on soteriology and Mormons were not considered unconventional at all. My pastor trusted my decision and Paul and I agreed to do premarital counseling at my church over the course of our engagement.

Paul’s bishop was also fairly accepting of his decision. He made sure that Paul understood the LDS teachings on the temple and what he was giving up, but other than that he did not object to our engagement. He was always warm and friendly to me when I visited the ward, and most of Paul’s LDS friends liked me.

My parents were not the most active of Christians and only cared that I was marrying a good man who would love me and stay with me for the rest of my life. The strongest objectors were some of my husband’s friends as well as my husband’s parents, and I do not fault any of them for it. In their view, Paul was clearly going against church teaching and there could be no way God had instructed him to marry me. Paul and I had our differences with his parents on the issue, but in the end they came around and have been good to us throughout our marriage.

The story of our marriage, how we handled the wedding and how our interfaith family functions, will continue.