Interfaith Wedding Ceremonies: Samples and Sources
- Book Review,
by Joan C. Hawxhurst (Editor)
From Library Journal
In the United States today, some 40,000 couples enter interfaith (Jewish/Christian) marriages each year, and the trend is increasing. Compiled by the editor of Dovetail: A Newsletter by and for Jewish/Christian Families (LJ 5/15/94), this eminently practical guide helps couples plan a wedding ceremony that will reflect their own differing religious backgrounds, traditions, and beliefs and also be sensitive to the beliefs and traditions of their parents, other relatives, and guests. Included are pointers on choosing an offciant or officiants as well as suggested vows, blessings, benedictions, and musical selections. Seven actual interfaith ceremonies are given, with comments by the main participants. This is an excellent addition to public library collections.?Marcia G. Welsh, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Interfaith marriages are a fact of American life, especially in the Jewish community, where approximately 50 percent of young people marry outside their faith. Editor Hawxhurst, a practicing Methodist who is married to a Jew and publishes a newsletter for interfaith couples, knows her subject firsthand. This extremely helpful book looks closely at one of the first problems an interfaith couple will face: planning the wedding ceremony. Hawxhurst faces the difficulties of the interfaith ceremony directly, but, writing in an upbeat style, she also provides many suggestions for making the happy day just that. In addition to several sample ceremonies, the text discusses general issues such as working with two traditions and choosing an officiant. There is also an extensive bibliography as well as a list of interfaith support groups and officiants. Solid practical advice. Ilene Cooper
Booklist, August 1996
This extremely helpful book looks closely at one of the first problems an interfaith couple will face: planning the wedding ceremony. Solid practical advice.
Book Description
Thousands of interfaith couples struggle each year to create a meaningful and inclusive wedding ceremony that both respects and includes two sets of traditions and two families. This book contains the ingredients for a successful and meaningful interfaith wedding ceremony. This book will help interfaith couples to: decide what kind of wedding they want, learn about Jewish and Christian wedding traditions and choose which ones are meaningful to them, get inspiration and support from the ceremonies and reflections of other interfaith couples, review sample readings, musical selections, and vows, and plan and write a ceremony that expresses both partners' beliefs and values. An interfaith wedding ceremony can include two sets of traditions and reach out to both sets of parents. It can be a beautiful and meaningful event that participants and guests remember for a long, long time. And it can start out a marriage on a solid, well-built foundation. This book is the only national compendium of sample interfaith wedding ceremonies. As couples and officiants prepare for an interfaith wedding, they will refer to this resource again and again.
About the Author
Joan C. Hawxhurst is the founding editor of the independent bimonthly periodical Dovetail: A Journal by and for Jewish/Christian Families, which has been serving the needs of interfaith couples and their children for over six years. She has been interviewed for dozens of magazine and newspaper articles, as well as radio and TV segments, on the topic of interfaith marriage. A practicing United Methodist, she lives with her Jewish husband and two children in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Hawxhurst founded Dovetail in 1992 upon realizing that interfaith families had a difficult time finding resources which balance and respect the faiths of both partners. She believed that interfaith families needed an independent vehicle to share experiences and support each other. With an MA in international relations from Yale University and ten years of writing and editing experience, she decided to create a new kind of resource, and Dovetail Publishing was born. Prior to starting Dovetail, Hawxhurst worked for the Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, spending time in Argentina and Washington, DC, working with human rights organizations. She currently serves on the Interfaith Relations Commission of the National Council of Churches. She is the author of several books for grade school students as well as numerous articles for national periodicals, on topics ranging from interfaith marriage to international debt in South America. As the first book from Dovetail Publishing, Hawxhurst in 1996 edited Interfaith Wedding Ceremonies: Samples and Sources. This unique collection of meaningful and inclusive dual-faith wedding ceremonies has been described by one expert in the field as "a real and lasting contribution to available resources for interfaith couples." Dovetail Publishing's award-winning second book, Bubbe and Gram: My Two Grandmothers, is a children's book written by Hawxhurst in late 1996. Bubbe and Gram won a 1997 Benjamin Franklin Silver Medal Award for excellence in independent publishing (given by the Publishers' Marketing Association), as well as the 1998 Helen Keating Ott Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children's Literature (given by the Church and Synagogue Library Association). New from Dovetail Publishing, and also authored by Hawxhurst, is The Interfaith Family Guidebook: Practical Advice for Jewish and Christian Partners, available in June 1999.
Excerpted from Interfaith Wedding Ceremonies : Samples and Sources by Joan C. Hawxhurst. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Foreword, by Monsignor Thomas Hartman, who, along with Rabbi Marc Gellman, comprises "The God Squad," as seen on ABC-TV's Good Morning America. Congratulations and Mazel tov on your upcoming wedding! The journey on which you're about to embark will be both the most exhilarating and the most difficult of your life. You and your fianc will be dedicating your lives to each other. You will be sharing your hearts, minds, and souls. You will be promising to help and encourage each other to love yourselves, others and God. It's an exciting--and demanding--time. If you had come to me before you met your fianc and had asked my advice, I'd have said marriage is tough enough--marry within your faith. But life doesn't always work out that way. You have fallen in love with someone of another faith. You want to get married. Okay. Then set about to do right by yourselves, your families, and your God. Together you have to examine your family backgrounds. You have to ask yourselves why you want to be married to each other. You have to ask if this relationship helps you to grow, to love, to become a better person. Your interfaith marriage will be more challenging because you come from differrent cultures, traditions, and religions. How are you going to raise the children? Will your families accept your decisions? How will you practice your faith after you are married? Sadly, too many couples don't face these issues. Instead, they avoid discussions of religion and faith. In a successful interfaith marriage, both partners are willing to talk with each other about their beliefs and their religions, even if the discussion is difficult or painful. In this context, an interfaith wedding can be a sign of hope, a reminder to all of us that, if we are willing to make the effort, the barriers which separate us can indeed be broken down. As a Christian and a Jew, you take on special challenges and opportunities. You face the challenge of living with two different, and sometimes contradictory, sets of beliefs. You have the opportunity to be an example to the world of successful interfaith dialogue at a very personal, day-to-day level. When a couple comes to me to be married, I feel privileged to be a part of the preparation for marriage. I try to help couples understand that there are two levels of a wedding--fact and mystery. People who attend your wedding will know the fact of your love and the fact of your marriage. What you need to do is explore the mystery, the inexplicable connection and commitment that has been happening in your hearts and souls. If people don't know any more about the two of you after your wedding than they knew before, you and your wedding officiant will have failed. You will have created a ceremony, but not a loving, spiritual ritual. As you plan your interfaith wedding ceremony together, and as you embark on a new life together, each of you can be a spiritual guide to the other. The answer to the challenges you will face is not to abandon your faith. It is to embrace your individual faiths and to teach each other. If you can't begin doing that during your courtship, don't get engaged. If you can't come to some common ground during your engagement, don't get married. I believe that interfaith marriages can succeed, but not easily. You'll have to work hard. Pray hard. Love hard. Read this book. Speak with your clergy. Get involved in your wedding plans. And get involved for the rest of your lives in charity, in prayer, in renewing your love, and in making your marriage a sign that people from different faiths can love with uncommon devotion, understanding and faith.
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