Mixed Messages

An increasing number of intermarried couples are choosing to raise their children with two religions. Three videos, part of a Columbia Journalism School project, allow interfaith kids to speak for themselves.

By Elettra Fiumi and Lea Khayata for Tablet Magazine 

When Samuel Oliver turned 12, he asked his parents why he wouldn’t have either a bar mitzvah or a confirmation. His Jewish mother, whose family includes Holocaust survivors, and his father, who grew up in a religious Christian home, at first brushed off his question. Then they decided it required further investigation. 

We met Samuel, along with other teenagers in similar situations, while conducting research for Being Interfaith, a multimedia project on Jewish-Christian families that we created earlier this year while students at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. We began the project in part because we were struck by a statistic: Over one in four American adults are married or living with a partner of a different religion. A small but increasing number of these couples are choosing to raise their children in both religions. These families often face opposition from extended family and struggle to be accepted by established congregations and religious organizations, many of which advocate educating children in only one religion. 

Then we found an alternative: the Interfaith Community. Founded in 1987 in New York City, with branches now in Denver and Boston, the organization provides support for religiously mixed families, hosting services and celebrations for Jewish and Christian holidays and offering counseling for couples and classes for children and adults. These classes are taught by two instructors, one Jewish and the other Christian, with each sharing his or her own faith’s history, traditions, and practices, to give the teenagers the tools to make informed decisions regardless of the religious path they choose.

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