You find yourself waiting by the altar with a catholic priest. An alien from a discrepant religion. You’re ears are being pierced by the christian music. Beautiful, but distinctly different than yours. Even the cathedral isn’t a preferable place of marriage. But none of this stops you from doing it. From marrying the woman you love. All eyes are on her and that includes yours. These things you used to find bothersome have been forgotten.
Religion should not play a factor in marriage. That decision is up to you. If you truly love someone, nothing can get in the way of that. Although religion is important it should not be a deciding point in marriage.

I’m not the only who thinks this. About half of the nation is in agreement with me. In fact “Forty-two percent of marriages in the U.S. are interfaith ones” (Riley). That is a relatively large part of our country. It’s definitely larger than I would have expected. But when you really get down to it numbers don’t really matter. I’m sure some of you know a couple with different religious beliefs. I also can guess that some of you don’t even know, you know a couple that practices different religions. It can be covered up pretty well. Almost as if the problem was non-existent.

As time has gone on religion has become less and less important to people when it comes to dating. In a recent poll it was concluded that only “44% of adults” (Pew Research Center) find religion important. People have started to consider other things more important in a healthy relationship. For example, both shared interests and shared household chores have become more pressing matters than shared religion. Based on the way things are going now it’s possible that later on the problem of interfaith marriages won’t just seem non-existent, it really will be.
As I was saying earlier, many of you probably know a interfaith couple. I know I do. In fact my parents have different religious beliefs. My mom’s catholic and my dad was raised a protestant, but if you know my family you know this isn’t a problem. My parents decided that me and my brother would be raised catholic, which wasn’t a problem for my dad, because he is much less religious. He really didn’t care and honestly I think he’d rather it be that way.

Of course these kinds of differences don’t always go over well in a family. In Romeo and Juliet the Montagues and Capulets absolutely hated each other. One might even say they religiously hated each other. This hate definitely made Romeo and Juliet's love life complicated and ultimately lead to both of their deaths. So clearly in some situations religion does get the best of couples. I’m not saying it doesn’t, but these are only in rare circumstances. Also, technically Romeo and Juliet did get married and were happy with each other. Their families were the real problem.

If you ever find yourself in an interfaith relationship will you turn down your date? I don’t think so. Not if you truly love your date. I think that even love can overpower religion sometimes, in a way. I think religion is important and always will be. But when love and religion come together they just seem to sort themselves out. So if ever you find yourself in a complicated relationship, just wait it out. It’ll be worth it.