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Intermarriage in the Writings of Paul and the Early Church Fathers

Christine E. Hayes

in Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud

Pauline and early Christian attitudes towards the marriage of believers and nonbelievers owe much to the rhetoric and ideology introduced by Ezra and developed in related Second Temple sources (such ... More

Pauline and early Christian attitudes towards the marriage of believers and nonbelievers owe much to the rhetoric and ideology introduced by Ezra and developed in related Second Temple sources (such as Jubilees and 4QMMT). Paul implies that mixed marriage is fornication, a sexual sin that generates a moral impurity that defiles the believer and, by extension, Christ. Paul also implies that mixed marriage is a joining of holy and impure bodies as one body. Through carnal (i.e., sexual) connection, the moral impurity of the morally defiled body of the unbeliever is communicated to the holy and pure body of the believer, resulting in a carnal (i.e., fleshly) defilement. This new “carnal impurity” which conflates the sinful nature of moral impurity with the physicality and communicability of ritual impurity, figures prominently in patristic literature.Less

Jewish and “Mixed” Families

Marion A. Kaplan

in Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

The chapter focuses on the impact of Nazi oppression of Jewish families through policies which restricted relationships and marital options with Aryans or non-Jews. Thus, existing mixed marriages and ... More

The chapter focuses on the impact of Nazi oppression of Jewish families through policies which restricted relationships and marital options with Aryans or non-Jews. Thus, existing mixed marriages and the resulting offspring came under attack, though households with Aryan husbands were treated more leniently than those with Jewish men. The socio-political climate of the period severely influenced Jewish decisions on engagement, marriage, and family building. The specific details of the Nuremberg Laws relating to racial definitions are described and their implications for Jewish relationships are explored. In the area of divorce, incidences in Jewish families were seen to decline, in contrast with mixed families, wherein the government exhorted the couples to separate. Due to increasing pressures from the government and the community, Jewish husbands and wives in mixed marriages were revealed to have been driven to take the option of suicide out of guilt for the oppression of their families.Less

Marriage and Divorce

Norman Doe

in The Legal Framework of the Church of England: A Critical Study in a Comparative Context

For the Church of England, the right to marry in the parish church is treated as one of the rights in the package, so to speak, of rights enjoyed by parishioners. This chapter explores the basis and ... More

For the Church of England, the right to marry in the parish church is treated as one of the rights in the package, so to speak, of rights enjoyed by parishioners. This chapter explores the basis and terms of this right, procedural matters relating to solemnization, and the canonical requirements for a valid marriage operating within the context of the civil law. These subjects are addressed directly by the church's central legal system though, unlike in the Roman Catholic Church in which tribunals are most active in the field of matrimonial canon law, the jurisdiction of the Church of England's courts to regulate marriages no longer exists. The Church of England's law remains largely undeveloped with regard to divorce and remarriage, about which there has been considerable debate recently, along with the legal position of mixed marriages. With respect to these matters, the practice of the church has been diverging fundamentally from that of the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant system of regulation in the Church of England is to be found in executively formulated norms issued centrally and episcopally at the diocesan level.Less

Works without Faith in 1 Corinthians 7:14

Jerome Murphy‐O'Connor

in Keys to First Corinthians: Revisiting the Major Issues

This chapter stresses ethical behaviour as the key component of ‘holiness’ in this context. Against his normal practice of predicating ‘holy’ only of members of the church, Paul here predicates it of ... More

This chapter stresses ethical behaviour as the key component of ‘holiness’ in this context. Against his normal practice of predicating ‘holy’ only of members of the church, Paul here predicates it of the unconverted partner in a mixed marriage and of children who are technically unbelievers, because their comportment conformed to what he expected of Christians. The unbeliever, who consented to remain in the marriage, in fact obeyed both the divine directive quoted in 1 Cor 6: 16 and Jesus' prohibition of divorce cited in 1 Cor 7: 10–11. Children took their believing parents as role models, and so avoided the false value‐system of the world (‘Sin’).Less

To Stem a Rising Tide: Interfaith Marriage and Religious Institutions

Samira K. Mehta

in Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States

Chapter one analyses institutional responses to interfaith marriage, looking closely at the responses of Reform Judaism, the American Catholic Church, and the Protestant mainline. It reveals that ... More

Chapter one analyses institutional responses to interfaith marriage, looking closely at the responses of Reform Judaism, the American Catholic Church, and the Protestant mainline. It reveals that while all three traditions framed the problem of intermarriage in theological terms, their different belief systems and social locations resulted in divergent and sometimes opposing responses to interfaith marriage.Less

From Pillars of Yugoslavism to Targets of Violence: Interethnic Marriages in the Former Yugoslavia and Thereafter

Mirjana Morokvasic-Müller

in Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones

This chapter investigates the gendered effects of “mixed” marriage on women and men and on their respective families in the post-Yugoslav states. Empirical evidence suggests that groups are usually ... More

This chapter investigates the gendered effects of “mixed” marriage on women and men and on their respective families in the post-Yugoslav states. Empirical evidence suggests that groups are usually more hostile to their women than their men marrying the “Other,” and they are more willing to admit other women than other men to the group. The rate of intermarriage in Yugoslavia from the late 1960s onwards was lower than what it theoretically could have been, given the ethnic diversity of the country. Women in mixed marriages are potential victims of violence by men of their own nationality, of their husband's, and also of others, who see them as wives of an enemy. Interethnic couples who have not left the country are threatened with the stigma of betrayal. They contribute to the integration of the dominant group by assimilating and ceasing to appear as “mixed”.Less

Interfaith Marriage as a Protest Against Bigotry?: Debates in the 1950s and 1960s

Linda C. McClain

in Who's the Bigot?: Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law

This chapter revisits controversies in the 1950s and 1960s over interfaith marriage. Commentators debated whether objections to interfaith marriage stemmed from bigotry and intolerance or legitimate ... More

This chapter revisits controversies in the 1950s and 1960s over interfaith marriage. Commentators debated whether objections to interfaith marriage stemmed from bigotry and intolerance or legitimate grounds, such as lower rates of marital success. The chapter reviews diagnoses of such marriages as resulting from assimilation and increasing social contact among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Some contended that young people intermarried to protest against bigotry. Cautions against interfaith marriage—particularly mixed marriage, where spouses retained their distinct religions—appealed to science to fortify religious arguments. Objectors warned of harms to spouses’ conscience and to children’s sense of identity. Comparing diagnoses of both interfaith and interracial marriage as problem marriages, the chapter discusses Albert I. Gordon’s Intermarriage (1964), which featured in Virginia’s defense of its anti-miscegenation law in Loving v. Virginia (1967). The chapter ends by considering early twenty-first-century analyses of interfaith marriage.Less

Indian Queens and the Queen Who Brought the Indies: Dryden, Settle, and the Tragedies of Empire

Laura J. Rosenthal

in Ways of the World: Theater and Cosmopolitanism in the Restoration and Beyond

This chapter explores how “mixed marriages” captivated audience sympathies. In their dramas, John Dryden (The Indian Queen; The Indian Emperour); Elkanah Settle (The Empress of Morocco); Edward ... More

This chapter explores how “mixed marriages” captivated audience sympathies. In their dramas, John Dryden (The Indian Queen; The Indian Emperour); Elkanah Settle (The Empress of Morocco); Edward Howard (The Womens Conquest); and Aphra Behn (The Rover; The Widow Ranter) explore intercultural romance as a figure for the benefits and volatility of cosmopolitanization. Often in the plots, opposition to affection across boundaries is what leads to disaster. Restoration theater culture produced some remarkably powerful exoticized women. The dramatic unions between European men and foreign women point in two directions at once. On the one hand, they work through new questions about race, gender, and identity in a globalized context. The sexual union of two figures from different nations explores the boundaries of identity and of humanity itself. At the same time they have a specific referent that has attracted less attention. The paradigmatic “mixed marriage” in this period was between Charles II and his Portuguese bride. Dryden's and Settle's plays work through broader issues of shifting identities in a globalized context through powerful exoticized women who resonate as figures for the Portuguese queen. Settle, creates a vicious Empress of Morocco at the height of conflicts over the expense of defending Tangier as an English colony. Dryden, offers a more complicated picture. His Indian queens seek power, but also remains vulnerable to falling in love and suffering rejection and abandonment. These abandoned women also evoke the losers of not just love but of history, those peoples left vulnerable by England's cosmopolitanizing ambitions.Less

Enwalled: Translocality, Intimacies, and Gendered Subjectivity

Valentina Napolitano

in Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return: Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church

The Vatican’s current positions on migration and its understanding of transnational migration in light of “humanity,” “civilization,” and the Culture of Life erase the complexity and the gendered ... More

The Vatican’s current positions on migration and its understanding of transnational migration in light of “humanity,” “civilization,” and the Culture of Life erase the complexity and the gendered politics of migrant sexual and affective experience. This chapter explores these complexities by focusing on three differently situated groups of migrant women (in mix-marriages with Italians, women working in the care industry as badanti, and nuns) and their respective relations to walls, skins, and the Italian society at large. These relations produce affects that stick to skins and walls in the process of the transformation of shared (and unshared) intimacies through the work of love, service/care, and material/immaterial labor. The chapter shows that a labor of love, required and often performed by Latin American lay female workers, is in continuity and counter position to some of the ones performed by Mexican religious nuns in Rome. Through this ethnographic lens we come to appreciate how gendered migrant processes are also potentially creative affective spaces, where national and Catholic ideals are not only broken down but are actually cut, pasted, and reassembled—on and through skins and walls.Less

Breaking a Barrier

Richard Archer

in Jim Crow North: The Struggle for Equal Rights in Antebellum New England

Had Massachusetts legislators been aware of how many mixed marriages existed in their state (and in their region, for that matter), they may not have repealed the law. In their own lives they may ... More

Had Massachusetts legislators been aware of how many mixed marriages existed in their state (and in their region, for that matter), they may not have repealed the law. In their own lives they may have encountered or heard of a couple with mixed ancestry, but that would have been rare. Their experience reinforced the idea that people of African descent and people of European descent preferred to live among their "kind." Even if they didn't find each other physically repugnant, they still had no desire to intermarry. But observations and hearsay did not match reality. During the antebellum period there were at least 410 mixed marriages in New England, scattered through no fewer than 209 cities, towns, and villages. They occurred in all parts of the region and had distinctive characteristics. Their existence substantiated the fluidity of the construction of race (as evidenced in public records) and showed the complexity of New England types of racism and even its absence.Less

Interfaith Marriage

Uzi Rebhun

in Jews and the American Religious Landscape

Chapter 3 calls attention to interfaith marriage. It presents data on its prevalence and the religious composition of the mixed couples. The geographic, educational, and economic characteristics are ... More

Chapter 3 calls attention to interfaith marriage. It presents data on its prevalence and the religious composition of the mixed couples. The geographic, educational, and economic characteristics are incorporated into the demographic variables to assess the role of group affiliation in determining marital exogamy.Less

Conquest and Subjugation: Hierarchies of Citizenship Rights between Colonization and Decolonization (1900–1950)

Dieter Gosewinkel

in Struggles for Belonging: Citizenship in Europe, 1900-2020

The chapter focuses on citizenship in colonial empires. It shows that the history of citizenship in Europe was not defined by the continent’s geographical boundaries and can be understood only if one ... More

The chapter focuses on citizenship in colonial empires. It shows that the history of citizenship in Europe was not defined by the continent’s geographical boundaries and can be understood only if one bears in mind the long tradition of colonial hierarchization of citizenship. Examined are the genesis, justification, and impact of the structural confrontation between privilege (of the colonizers) and discrimination (of colonized people) in citizenship status. The chapter has a connective function, drawing a chronological arc from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War, from the first half of the century to the second. Looking at the overseas colonial empires of Great Britain, France, and Germany, as well as the continental empires of National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union, the chapter pursues the question of the continuity of colonial hierarchies of affiliation and inequality from the peak period of imperialism to the end of the epoch of European colonization.Less

Mixed Marriage in Colonial Burma: National Identity and Nationhood at Risk

Tin Tin Htun

in Domestic Tensions, National Anxieties: Global Perspectives on Marriage, Crisis, and Nation

This chapter explores debates about mixed marriages between Burmese Buddhist women and Indian men in the rapidly changing social, psychological, political, and economic contexts of 1930s Burma. It ... More

This chapter explores debates about mixed marriages between Burmese Buddhist women and Indian men in the rapidly changing social, psychological, political, and economic contexts of 1930s Burma. It employs a social psychological perspective to examine the motivational and psychological processes underlying public reactions towards Indo-Burmese marriages. Against the backdrop of an emerging national identity in colonial Burma, such marriages exacerbated national anxieties. Nationalists perceived Indo-Burmese marriages as a breakdown in the homogeneity of the Burmese race and the Buddhist religion, both of which were at the core of their national identity. An analysis of the print media in the 1930s demonstrates how this crisis of national identity influenced nationalist writers’ reactions to mixed marriages. Although they advocated for women’s education and participation in public life, nationalists confined women to the roles of wife and mother, assigning them the responsibility of preserving Burmese race and religion.Less

Prelude

Kathryn Talalay

in Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler

This book starts telling the story of Philippa Duke Schuyler, a child of a racially mixed marriage, with her death. It happened on a Tuesday, May 9, 1967, when a helicopter assigned to the 282nd ... More

This book starts telling the story of Philippa Duke Schuyler, a child of a racially mixed marriage, with her death. It happened on a Tuesday, May 9, 1967, when a helicopter assigned to the 282nd Aviation Company crashed into the ocean just about ten miles north of Da Nang and Philippa was one of the passengers on board. The book also flashes back to three weeks before the death of Philippa, to April 15, 1967, when she gave a piano concert on South Vietnamese television. The book also describes how Philippa was involved in missions of mercy, evacuating children from an orphanage in Hue to Da Nang.Less

Repealing the Law

Richard Archer

in Jim Crow North: The Struggle for Equal Rights in Antebellum New England

The successful attempt to remove the prohibition against mixed marriages in Massachusetts (such a law continued to exist in Maine where it wasn't enforced and in Rhode Island until the 1880s) did not ... More

The successful attempt to remove the prohibition against mixed marriages in Massachusetts (such a law continued to exist in Maine where it wasn't enforced and in Rhode Island until the 1880s) did not occur in isolation from the larger movement for equal rights. Advocating the end of the ban, however, was tricky for politicians and reformers in general (particularly women), because they would be charged with promoting “amalgamation,” but nonetheless year after year the demand to change the law grew. Petitions kept the issue alive in the legislature, The Liberator had called for repeal since its second issue, and eventually good sense prevailed in part because the cause was just but also because so many politicians believed it to be only a symbolic issue. In 1843 the Massachusetts legislature voted for repeal of the marriage restriction and against the desegregation of the railroads-an issue with immediate impact.Less

An Apogee of Conversions: Gustav Mahler, Karl Kraus, and fin de siècle Vienna ⋆

in From Vienna to Chicago and Back: Essays on Intellectual History and Political Thought in Europe and America

This chapter discusses Vienna's fin de siècle. The most famous of Vienna's fin de siècle converts was probably Gustav Mahler. Mahler's conversion to Catholicism was closely linked with his ... More

This chapter discusses Vienna's fin de siècle. The most famous of Vienna's fin de siècle converts was probably Gustav Mahler. Mahler's conversion to Catholicism was closely linked with his energetically pursued efforts to attain the direction of the Vienna Imperial Opera, the “Hofoper.” His religiosity remained undogmatic. Karl Kraus would remain “konfessionslos” before receiving Catholic baptism on 8 April 1911. Die Fackel recommended turning to Christianity. It is shown that both Mahler and Kraus were in favor of “Mischehen” or mixed marriages, of the connubium between persons of Jewish and non-Jewish origin. Vienna in the course of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a city with a high incidence of marriages—most of them “Christian-Christian” marriages—of persons of Jewish origin and persons on non-Jewish origin. There is a “lieu de mémoire” in Vienna, where the problems discussed in this chapter have found a most poignant expression.Less

Schwarze Schmach and métissages contemporains: The Politics and Poetics of Mixed Marriage in a Refugee Family

Eve Rosenhaft

in Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century

This chapter examines the transnational experience of a family of German-Cameroonian origin, and the ways in which it was processed in autobiographical narratives authored by two of its members, ... More

This chapter examines the transnational experience of a family of German-Cameroonian origin, and the ways in which it was processed in autobiographical narratives authored by two of its members, Duala Misipo and his son Ekwé, written in German and French respectively. It sets those narratives in the context of biographical data about the family, founded by Duala Misipo in Frankfurt in the 1920s and forced to emigrate to Paris by the Nazis in 1937. The texts are analysed in terms of the ways in which father and son represent mixed relationships and respond to the pressures that white racism places on mixed couples. Particular attention is given to the different ways in which the two men represent the (white) women in their family, in a reading that emphasises intergenerational and intertextual relations in terms of the authors’ status as refugees and border-crossers. Less

Japanese Colonialism, Gender, and Household Registration: Legal Reconstruction of Boundaries

Barbara J. Brooks

in Gender and Law in the Japanese Imperium

This chapter takes up the issues of mixed marriages and “hybrid” children through the examination of legal handbooks that were published in prewar Japan and Korea to guide public officials through ... More

This chapter takes up the issues of mixed marriages and “hybrid” children through the examination of legal handbooks that were published in prewar Japan and Korea to guide public officials through the complications of the household registration system. The koseki, or household registration system, was divided into metropolitan (naichi) and colonial (gaichi) registers, and throughout the colonial period policing the divide between these two systems was a challenge for officials. The chapter further explores why Japanese women so often appear to be at the sexual divide between colonizer and colonized, in contrast to the dynamics elucidated in European scholarship on gender and colonial culture.Less

Uses of Citizenship: Tales from the Consulate, or How Mrs. Baker Got Her Hat Back

Nancy L. Green

in The Other Americans in Paris: Businessmen, Countesses, Wayward Youth, 1880-1941

The love lives of Americans in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century were more complicated than most tales of Parisian romance imply. This chapter begins with rival images of the city – ... More

The love lives of Americans in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century were more complicated than most tales of Parisian romance imply. This chapter begins with rival images of the city – danger versus freedom – before examining the marriage and divorce of the American men and women of Paris. France was a complex backdrop to private lives, but it was also the site of two types of liaisons: Americans with each other but also Americans with the French (and the consequent loss of citizenship by American women). The “international marriages” were differentially gendered, linking different sexes, class and culture. There were wealthy American heiresses married to French noblemen, but there were also the U.S. veterans who had stayed in France with their French wives. Many lived happily ever after; others did not. These mixed marriages, personal experiments in international relations, ultimately floundered or flourished like many marriages.Less