Can a relationship survive if it involves differing religions?

This is a legitimate question I've been asking myself and wondering what other people thought on the matter. Basically, can two people with differing religious views - one of the belief that there is a God, and practices and praises their respective religion consistently, and the other is not a religious person, lacks faith, and believes in a more scientific, analytical, and logical ideology.

I have several components in mind that are probably major pieces that could improve the chances of whether or not this type of thing could work. On paper, it seems more than likely it couldn't, but it's something I'd like to have other people's opinions on in-depth, as I'm genuinely curious to what people think, and possibly any personal experiences they've had with this type of conflict in a relationship, and how it effected the outcome.

Personally, the main, most important, integral piece or component I had in mind is respect. You know, one might love their religion and see their religion as a huge part of their life, and of course being with someone who doesn't at all invest time in that ideology may be daunting, but if that non-religious person, who they've obviously found other reasons to like & enjoy their company, as they're in a relationship, respects and appreciates the other person's devotion to their religion and supports it, but simply doesn't get involved in it themselves, I feel like as long as the religious person is reasonable about the fact that people live their lives in different ways and could benefit from the fact of another point of view, then it could (emphasis on could) work. On the other hand, the religious person has to respect the non-religious person in the sense that they have legitimate reasons for choosing not to practice religion, and though obviously there's a chance they might decide otherwise later in life that they're believing in something, they have the right to do what they please. Realizing, accepting, and putting into action the thought that there is no "right answer" is also quite important in this way. Again, this is assuming that they've gotten in a relationship for liking each other and enjoying each other's company, despite not knowing their differing religious beliefs.

Of course, this is going to cause rifts in the relationship at times, and depending on the personality of the two, it could occur too often for anything palatable to work long-term. However, I am cautiously optimistic that with enough respect and understanding, this type of relationship is possible and can be maintained under these circumstances. It's interesting to think about because to me, in the end we're all people, and believing that there's someone up there shouldn't have to rip you apart from someone you're romantically involved with because they may not believe that same thing. It all ties back to how there's no right answer. I have to assert that if the non-religious person is an extreme type that shuns people who believe in God, then this whole argument is moot and there's no chance of there being a relationship. This thread is more to discuss kind of the slight opposite - the religious individual is an oft-practicing type that participates in religious acts outside of church, and has embraced that culture and ideology, whereas the other is accepting of that but not of the same beliefs or practices by any means.

If anyone is wondering, this isn't something I've dealt with or currently dealing with; so far I've been lucky enough to only date people with the same ideology as me, but it's something I could see myself having to deal with at some point in my life because of where I go to school, and where I am in the country.

Uh, yes, people with differing religions can have a relationship without their ideologies conflicting. This isn't a question that needs to be answered.

Yes, haha. A little mutual respect for each others' beliefs, as you'd expect in any relationship, goes a long way. Relationships involve a lot of compromise and religious beliefs are no exception. It sounds like a way bigger deal in your mind than it is in practice.

I think it more relies on the person's personality more than anything. You could have two members of the same religion bicker over their religion's beliefs and have that be incredibly problematic. I think differing religions can coexist in a relationship, but I can also see the other side of the coin where it destroys relationships as well.

Trev said:

Uh, yes, people with differing religions can have a relationship without their ideologies conflicting. This isn't a question that needs to be answered.

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I feel like that's simplifying it a little too much. Not sure where you're from but people tend to be pretty overbearing about religion and it's not as straightforward as you're making it. I do agree that it should work though.

Nihilego, you're right and honestly I blame it on going to such a conservative uni. I'm worried.

Pepperton said:

I feel like that's simplifying it a little too much. Not sure where you're from but people tend to be pretty overbearing about religion and it's not as straightforward as you're making it. I do agree that it should work though.

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If a person can't put aside religious differences in a relationship, that person shouldn't be in a relationship until they grow up. A person can practice their religion individually, without their S.O., and it's fine. I am non-religious and have dated men of varying religions. We respect each other's differences. There's no reason any other person can't do the same.

Trev said:

If a person can't put aside religious differences in a relationship, that person shouldn't be in a relationship until they grow up. A person can practice their religion individually, without their S.O., and it's fine. I am non-religious and have dated men of varying religions. We respect each other's differences. There's no reason any other person can't do the same.

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I'm not disagreeing with you at all, I think you're right, I'm also non-religious and I can only hope that girls I'm with in the future will respect that and not let that get in the way of our relationship. However, I think trying to completely discredit my thread with your initial post was kind of simple-minded in the sense that not all people are entirely logical about the topic of religion as we are and it's not possible to make a generalization that it 'doesn't need to be discussed'. Not much actually needs to be discussed, but I think this in particular is at least somewhat interesting to think about, especially as someone who doesn't practice religion surrounded by people who do heavily. I just wanted to hear about other people's experiences with this type of relationship and their opinion on how it's handled as a whole. Maybe it's the way I worded the OP - I guess it shouldn't be about 'can' such a relationship work, it's obvious it can - but rather 'how' it can work and what types of differences make it difficult/a challenge.

I think it really depends on the person and their beliefs, or how they were raised. In my opinion, religion really shouldn't matter in a relationship. I know my parents have extremely different religious views, not in the exact same way you described but I'm not really going to go into detail about that.

Trev said:

If a person can't put aside religious differences in a relationship, that person shouldn't be in a relationship until they grow up. A person can practice their religion individually, without their S.O., and it's fine. I am non-religious and have dated men of varying religions. We respect each other's differences. There's no reason any other person can't do the same.

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I don't quite understand this - can you please elaborate?

El Héroe Oscuro said:

I don't quite understand this - can you please elaborate?

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Going off of EHO - that's highly judgemental and shortsighted - plenty of religious people find relationships within their own religion, oftentimes seeking out not only those of the same affiliation but those who worship with the same kind of intensity or style. People can have legitimate dealbreakers of all kinds.

Some people may feel that their faith is being compromised if it isn't shared by their partner...or it may be something that they want to share with their partner. If religion is a huge part of your life, and you can't share that with your partner because it isn't a belief that they already have, I could see how a relationship couldn't survive that.

It's an important and intensely personal facet of some people's lives, and I think in those instances ending a relationship honestly rather than attempting to carry it on and causing unnecessary tension - and either compromising your beliefs or trying to force them onto your partner - is a better way to go...although I would question why someone even entered such a relationship in the first place. But matters of the heart are often just as complicated as matters of faith.

As others have said, it really does depend on the two individuals involved. Mutual understanding and acceptance (or at least good-natured tolerance) are important factors to any successful relationship, and there always need to be compromise...but at the same time, there are often things that people can't compromise on. That doesn't mean they need to "grow up" or whatever...just that it won't work out. These things often don't work out even without the matter of religious beliefs involved, so it's not like it's any different or somehow worse if that proves to be the dealbreaker.

As long as they don't deny anything that's pretty proven like evolution, and their religion doesn't get in the way of my life, then IDC

I don't think there's any single answer to this question, every person has different requirements they look for in a relationship. Simple as that really, whether or not a relationship can survive a difference in religious ideologies depends on the people in it.

I would perceive anyone with an exclusivist or fundamentalist religious ideology as a no-go for me. In short, exclusivism is the belief that only a certain set of followers from a particular faith will find salvation. Fundamentalists take the word of religious scripture as the highest law (above laws of society). Exclusivists believe that people not of their faith are objectively false and therefore have no reason to learn from them. Fundamentalists are not open to discussing sources of morality that exists outside religious text if it is not compatible, and therefore simply inherit a set mind set and resist legal and social change that could coerce them to break their own set of moral law (shout out to Kim Davis).

I am an agnostic moral universalist and firmly believe that God did not simply create us, but we have created him in our own distorted image as to what we think of as our greatest potential moral standard possible for any given human. The issue I have with moral idealism is that it instructs prescribers with one single best way of life and sets laws that must be obeyed and never interrogated. The truest and most devout follower will submit their ability to invoke reason and completely be taken over by an ideology.

So, what about me? As a universalist, I believe that morality ought to apply equally to all people regardless of their identity. However, I do not believe we ought to create moral prescription that coerce people, but rather we must create the conditions necessary for freest possible exercise of reason. In order to do that coercion in all of its forms must be diminished. For instance, rape is a form of coercion, and in such a case coercing the rapist not to coerce his victim is morally obligated. Laws that coerce coercers are therefore functionally non-coercive. This is an individual -level example, based on individual behavior and punishment, and this is what our legal system generally strives to prevent (well unless you are white stanford dude.) The reason why civil law is sometimes not truly just is because of moral deficiencies caused by ideology (often supported by religious text). You can say all you want that a "true" Christian is not misogynistic, but if you are a fundamentalist, you "know" that women are inferior in almost every regard and have a natural affinity to sin. Church customs have influenced inequity in rights to women for centuries, and still exist in resistance to a social and legal movement toward sex equity. Males and females have minute natural differences on merely the basis of sex. Let's say intelligent beings came to Earth to examine differences in humans based on sex, they would likely find very little difference as our researchers find between male and female dogs and cats. The mythology of gender differences persists today; it's nothing more than identitarian ideology. (This is why I do not identify as a man, guy, dude, etc....I am a male, and that means ABSOLUTELY nothing more than I have a penis. Or at least it should only mean that in a reality in which gender mythologies derived from cultural and religious norms do not exist. I often wonder if transexuals are really forced to make a choice in order for their exterior to match the gender norms/myths (though I honestly see ABSOLUTELY zero harm if that is way they need to navigate as freely as possible in a gender mythology society. Since I am saying there is no major difference between sexes, changing one's phenotypical sex does no harm to society nor does it somehow go against one's nature, and may actually liberate them from the mythology of gender.) Also, gender-nonconformists are often ridiculed for not adhering to gender myths and may be punished socially or materially for making freer choices. For those of us who mostly feel comfortable about our gender in society (since we pass as "acceptable"), we can often times make choices unconsciously that we would have not otherwise done because of a pressure to adhere to gender-myth society. In modern society, we often have a mix of adhering to gender norms, or finding little ways to resist and gain freedom. Those who are most strongly influenced by norms tend to have exclusivist and/or fundamentalist beliefs since both they're soul and community acceptance is based upon their external reflection of religious text. If I dated someone with this mindset, how do I know who this person really is? Are they merely a aberration of social/religious mythology? Like I said at the beginning of this tirade, religion often presents the one most bestest ideal account of how a human acts, and for women, to adhere to an identity of inferiority is coercive and rather than creating her own consciousness and identity from her observations unimpeded by coercive ideology. The same applies to men. Women serve under men, men serve under God. Men who truly believe the Christian (among other religions) concept of female inferiority, they may appear to merely be enforcers, but they themselves are the ones being enforced by religious text. A very similar phenomenon is pertinent to white people who treat black people poorly ; to coerce others does not give you control or power, but merely the appearance of it. Rather, racism as an ideology is in control. In this example, the identitarian ideology of male gender superiority takes over the individual's consciousness. Basically the ideology is the soldier, and a sexist male is merely the sword -- a tool if you will. lolz

Some religiously affiliated individuals may simply black box scripture, and rather, ascribe to the belief that their religious affiliation is allegorical, fallible, contradictory, and is not sufficient to the formation of freest consciousness but recognize that their consciousness is largely derived from a particular community set of doctrine. If someone is conscious of this and demostrates this by making choices contradictory to religious ideology (and acknowledge their contradiction) I would be willing to date them. Otherwise, I am not really into dating a walking mythology without much as far as conscious choice. I could have acquaintances who are fundamentalists/exclusivists, but never genuine friends. Not because I am discriminatory toward them, but because I literally could not form a friendship with a walking set of ideology -- a non-person without consciousness.

EDIT:

Forgot to add. Fundamentalists of the same faith honestly cannot have an authentic relationship as two autonomous people. Moreover, no fundamentalist can have an authentic romantic relationship based on two autonomous people regardless of whether they date someone of the same or different faith. Only two people who are not fundamentalists can have a genuine relationship (not necessarily non-affiliated people), even if they have different religious affiliations., but this is not a sufficient condition since it is very possible for either individual to have some other form of ideology strip them of their consciousness and humanity.

El H?roe Oscuro said:

I don't quite understand this - can you please elaborate?

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Kanzler said:

Going off of EHO - that's highly judgemental and shortsighted - plenty of religious people find relationships within their own religion, oftentimes seeking out not only those of the same affiliation but those who worship with the same kind of intensity or style. People can have legitimate dealbreakers of all kinds.

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I will expound: they shouldn't be in a relationship with someone of a different religion until they grow up.

Part of being in a relationship is compromise. If a person dates someone who has a different religion from them and they are so mentally affected by it that it impedes their ability to like that person, they shouldn't be dating them. If they want to date someone within their religion because that's how important their religion is to them, that's fine, but if they want to date people who don't share their religious views, they'll have to toughen up and accept that their S.O. doesn't have to practice their religion/doesn't have to be religious. That's part of life, and if a person isn't able to handle that, they should either date only people in their religion or grow up and let their S.O. have their own beliefs.

Trev said:

I will expound: they shouldn't be in a relationship with someone of a different religion until they grow up.

Part of being in a relationship is compromise. If a person dates someone who has a different religion from them and they are so mentally affected by it that it impedes their ability to like that person, they shouldn't be dating them. If they want to date someone within their religion because that's how important their religion is to them, that's fine, but if they want to date people who don't share their religious views, they'll have to toughen up and accept that their S.O. doesn't have to practice their religion/doesn't have to be religious. That's part of life, and if a person isn't able to handle that, they should either date only people in their religion or grow up and let their S.O. have their own beliefs.

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No, there is a line for everyone. For some, that can be someone's religion. It's not a case that an individual needs to "grow up" - rather, it's what you are willing to put up with. For example, what if my significant other was a masochist? Am I supposed to compromise with that? No, for myself, that's a breaking point for me.

That thin line differs from person to person, and it's perfectly acceptable if that thin line revolves around religious views.

El H?roe Oscuro said:

No, there is a line for everyone. For some, that can be someone's religion. It's not a case that an individual needs to "grow up" - rather, it's what you are willing to put up with. For example, what if my significant other was a masochist? Am I supposed to compromise with that? No, for myself, that's a breaking point for me.

That thin line differs from person to person, and it's perfectly acceptable if that thin line revolves around religious views.

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You're misunderstanding. I am saying that, in the case of two people who have differing religious views, neither person is allowed to force the other person to adhere to rules of a religion they don't practice. If a person can't manage that, they should date within their religion.

In your example with the masochist, YOU don't have to compromise, THEY do. Their behavior could be harmful or uncomfortable to you, and if they can't make that compromise, then you should leave that relationship until they are able to do that.

It depends on how they treat their religion. I'm atheist, but I generally support the role of religion; I'm not hostile to it like a lot of atheists. I think it has a positive place in many peoples' lives, I think it can encourage thinking critically about morality, and I think it's generally a force of good. What I don't think is good is when people treat it like a strict set of unbreakable laws that removes thought from questions of conscience. Religion exists (or should exist) as a set of stories and lessons that inform someone's views on morality, not as a substitute for one's own moral compass. If you can't use your own head for some of these things, then what is it there for?

So if you have a person who treats their religion like a rigid set of rules with no room for interpretation, then that's probably going to cause friction if they're with someone who isn't on the same page. Otherwise, I don't see why it can't work.

I think love can be go without boundaries, either the couple are from different religion, races and also different religion views.

For me, if I am in a relationship with another person which is different religion or races I should actually accept their culture, their religion practices and their beliefs so I can actually know more and understand the culture because this will form a tolerance with different religion and race and also its good to engage the practices with them to improve the relationship with their family.

In my new generation, more and more teenage are becoming open-minded and willingly to accept different culture and religion because we are Malaysian. Maybe we are different with other countries because we are multi-race country so we actually easily participate different religion and culture practices. To be honest as well, atheist is very rare to find here as almost everyone has a faith to their own God so I can't really give a good answer for that but

Imagine you do not like their religion practices, their culture how can you survive in this world? Without beliefs and faiths, we cant have culture , there will be no "colour" in this world.

Of course they can, can EVERYONE, well, no. I mean, people are people. If that sort of difference is that important to you, than the relationship won't work. Myself, I can't see myself dating a particularly religious person. It would irk me pretty badly and just wouldn't work. But for the people who can make it work, coolio.