BY KEN CHITWOOD

Religious plurality is a fact of life. Every day, we encounter and interact with an increasing number of people of different faith traditions.

With Jewish neighbors, Hindu co-workers, and non-religious friends – and amidst other changes in the landscape of marriages and relationships – it is unsurprising that in the United States, interfaith marriages have been on the rise. In fact, over the past five decades, the share of couples in same-faith marriages has dropped substantially, with an increasing number opting for starting interfaith families, according to the 2022 American National Family Life Survey.

Ten years ago, Susan Katz Miller wrote a book with this demographic, and their families, in mind. Being Both introduced another world often judged, and nudged to the margins, by monochromatic religious insiders who feared or looked down upon interfaith unions. It suggested another way forward to a generation of people increasingly aware of religious plurality and living it out within their own families. Katz Miller did not shy away from the challenges interfaith family communities face, whether navigating institutional obstacles to their unions or when deciding how to include coming of age ceremonies for their children or navigate the interreligious calendar.

A decade after its first publication, I had the opportunity to ask Katz Miller some follow-up questions about the ongoing challenges interfaith families face, the evolving religious and interfaith marriage landscape, and how our very notion of what “religions” are and how we define religious communities and cultures might be challenged by the dynamics she’s witnessed in interfaith families over the years. The following is an edited version of our conversation.

After a decade, what do you feel is Being Both’s ongoing message and relevance?

This book is not only still relevant but perhaps more relevant than ever. So, I'm grateful that Beacon Press still has it in print in hardcover, paperback, and eBook. For the 10th anniversary, we made an audiobook and I have just come out of the studio, where I spent three days recording and narrating.