Why Mormons Have the Lowest Rates of Interfaith Marriage [View all]

Jana Riess | May 7, 2013

According to Naomi Schaefer Riley’s new book Till Faith Do Us Part, 36% of American marriages are now interfaith (when all brands of Protestantism are lumped together). This is up from 15 percent in 1988 and 25 percent in 2006.

But there’s a significant outlier to the national trend toward intermarriage. My own part-member family notwithstanding, Mormons are the least likely of any religious group to marry outside the fold, at just 12%.

Here are seven reasons Riley gives for the low rates of interfaith marriages among Mormons. The first is obvious; a few others make good sense when you stop to think about them; and the last one is surprising but likely all too true.

1) The theology of eternal families confirms same-faith marriage as a goal for all Mormons.

This statement is going to seem obvious to Latter-day Saints, who are schooled from diaperhood that their families can be together forever—if their parents are married in the temple. But while Mormonism is hardly unique in its theological belief that families can be eternal, it makes that belief concretely contingent upon a particular wedding ceremony in an LDS temple, to which only orthodox Mormons are admitted.

http://janariess.religionnews.com/2013/05/07/why-mormons-have-the-lowest-rates-of-interfaith-marriage/