Dear Harlan,\nAs someone who is married to a man who calls himself an atheist, I can give some good advice from a woman's point of view. Every time there is a sacred event for which I would like to attend church (Easter, Christmas, Lent, etc.), I always end up going alone. You sit at the back of the church and view the happy families in front of you and wonder why that can't be you. When the children become involved, it becomes even more complex. When you are a little girl watching babies being baptized, you dream of the day your child will be up there. Now you are married to an atheist, who refuses to attend the ceremony and makes every sacred event a miserable experience, lecturing you again and again about how God is just a leftover idea from caveman days and that the church is just one big corporation, blah, blah, blah. While this notion of replacing these two very different religious beliefs with a tolerant, respectful, Unitarian practice, as you suggested, is a nice idealistic one, it doesn't seem to fit the tone of Devote's letter, which clearly states that he wants nothing to do with faith at all. If this poor woman can't lay out Easter eggs for her children without her husband barking out impassioned doctrines about how God is a lie, neither she nor the children are going to be happy.\nAnna
Hi Anna,\nI should have added that tolerance doesn't only mean tolerating another person's faith; it has to mean respecting it too. Without respect, you're left with disrespect, and that's not a happy relationship.
Dear Harlan,\nMy husband and I both have a Ph.D in science, were raised in a mainstream Protestant religion and happily avoided organized religion for years after we were married. Our family consists of one atheist (my husband), two agnostics (myself and our daughter) and our son, who has a strong belief in the existence of God. There is a book ("Further Along the Road Less Traveled," by M. Scott Peck) with an appealing explanation of spiritual growth throughout one's life. Without going into too much detail, this journey can include a point where one finds that one can be a rational scientist and still embrace a personally fulfilling spirituality. I hope "Devote" will continue his search for truth, which can help him understand how his science-trained girlfriend finds spiritual fulfillment in her Catholic beliefs.\nLCS
Dear LCS,\nI hope Devote will learn to respect other people's faith -- that's enlightenment.
Dear Harlan,\nI can't believe your answer to this atheist fellow. Did you just make that up on the fly, or did you do any research into divorce statistics first? The arguments will increase after the children come along, most likely creating a broken home for the kids and a lifetime of regret for family members on both sides. Why do you think it would be better for them to marry instead of finding someone who already embraces their fundamental beliefs? I am so flabbergasted by your response that I'm totally at a loss to describe it. Maybe you should consider another line of work.\nMelissa in Mo.
Hey Melissa,\nI agree that interfaith marriages are largely bad news, but they can work only if the people involved are willing to mingle faiths without guilt and grudges. I don't know if you were a kid or a partner in such a relationship, but clearly, someone must have hurt you.
