10 - Marrying Out: Gender and Religious Mediation in Interfaith Marriages

Summary

As the example of the Adeleke family illustrates (chapter 9), there are many contexts in Ede where individuals from a variety of backgrounds live and work close to each other, from shared houses, compounds and neighbourhoods to mutual invitations to celebrations and joint business interests. As a result of such everyday interactions, many people have friends from a different religious background, and sometimes such friendship develops into marriage. These religiously mixed marriages – and the challenges associated with their implicit challenge to corporate identities shaped by religion – are the subject of this chapter. Exploring the complex network of religious, gendered and social attitudes and practices that shape interfaith marriages, the chapter illustrates that interfaith marriages are often initially associated with conflict, which appears to give way to mutual tolerance. However, the achievement of this tolerance tends to rely on women's multiple religious practice and mediation of religious difference.

There is no general agreement in the literature on interfaith marriage about what constitutes a difference in religion or faith, but in this chapter we use the terms ‘inter-religious’ and ‘interfaith’ to describe marriages crossing two religions. We include both marriages in which husband and wife have different religions and those in which one partner used to belong to a different religion but has since converted. While statistics in this area are difficult to obtain or non-existent, there seems to be a higher number of interfaith marriages in Ede, and probably in other parts of Yorubaland, than in most parts of Africa or Europe. The survey data discussed in more detail in chapter 11 suggests that between 14 and 20 per cent of marriages in Ede are inter-religious marriages. But despite their high incidence, interfaith marriages are often more difficult than others.

In Ede, an interfaith marriage could mean, for example, a marriage between a Muslim woman and a Christian man, or marriage between a Christian woman and a man who is an adherent of the deity Ṣàngó or another òrìṣà. It is important to note that many people also marry across denominational boundaries, and that proposed marriages between some Muslim or Christian groups or denominations can create as much opposition as marriages between the religions.