| Many factors influence the choice of spouse. Among them are similarity in outlook and background. Some religious groups have strongly encouraged people to find their partners within their own religious group. They have argued that differences in religion can be a cause of marital unhappiness. It might also be added that when the parents have different religious affiliations, it can affect the children (Nelson, 1990). However, in recent years, the religious barriers between denominations have not been as rigid and, in some denominations, less concern has been expressed about people marrying outside their denomination. Some researchers have suggested that the fact that more people appear to be marrying outside their religion tells us that religion means little to them. One American researcher wrote in 1985 that ‘religion seems to have become increasingly irrelevant to the choice of mates in modern society’ (Hargrave, 1985, p.206). He, and others, have argued that this is another piece of evidence of the ‘secularisation’ of society (McCutcheon, 1988, p.215). The national Housing and Population Census allows us to examine the extent to which Australians are married to people who share the same religion or denomination.
Availability
One factor which influences the rate of intermarriage (outside one’s religion) or within one’s religion is the availability of partners. If there are large numbers of people with a similar religious outlook, the chance of finding someone of the same religion is higher. Since over one quarter of Australians are Catholic, there is a one in four chance that a person will find a Catholic partner by accident. However, since only 4 per cent are Presbyterians, there is only a one in twenty-five chance that a Presbyterian will find another Presbyterian. While the Presbyterian inter-marriage rate is much lower, in fact it represents a much stronger selectivity among Presbyterians for other Presbyterians than do the Catholic or Anglican figures.
The availability of suitable partners is affected by some other factors. If a religious group is concentrated in particular areas, even though they may be few in numbers, there is a greater chance that the person will meet someone of their own religious background. There are areas of high concentrations of Lutherans, however, which mean that they are more likely to find someone of the same religion. Baptists are not concentrated heavily in specific areas in Australia and thus there is a similar chance of finding another Baptist almost anywhere. Nevertheless, as shown in the chart, the Baptists actually have a higher rate of marriage within the denomination than the Lutherans. Many of the groups with high rates of marriage within the religion are, in fact, very small. For these groups other factors are more significant.
Ethnicity
For some people living in Australia, there are strong reasons to look for spouses among people of their own ethnic background, people who speak the same language and share similar customs. To some extent, the figures on intermarriage among religions reflect the fact that people look for people of similar ethnic background, of which religion is just one figure.
This may be especially important for recent immigrants who have come here with their spouses or have sought them within the immigrant community with which they have built their first relationships since coming to Australia. Many Buddhists have arrived in Australia in the last ten years, and the high levels of intermarriage among them reflects this.
However, other groups show that such rates of intermarriage can last over generations. Many Orthodox people arrived in Australia in the 1950s, yet their intermarriage rates are still very high. Charles Price says the rates of Greek in-marriages are increasing. It will be interesting to see if the intermarriage rates of other recently arrived groups remain as high.
For some ethnic groups, religion is an important means of expressing ethnic identity. For example, for many of the Irish immigrants to Australia, Catholicism was part of their Irish identity. In such cases, the sense of ethnic identity was maintained partly through religious identity, and marriage within the religious group was very important.
Attitudes to Intermarriage
The attitudes within a religious group to inter-marriage is another significant factor. Some religions actively encourage people to find partners of the same religious group, while others express little concern. The conservative religious groups tend to pay more attention to this than many mainstream groups. This is demonstrated most clearly in the Pentecostals. The rate of inter-marriage here is very high, especially considering that the ethnic component is low and the possibility of finding another Pentecostal by chance is less than one in a hundred. It shows that Pentecostals have a very definite preference for other Pentecostals.
However, these figures may not tell us the whole story. We do not, in fact, know how many Pentecostals married Pentecostals, for we do not know how many spouses have since been converted to Pentecostalism. Many Pentecostals are very keen to convert their spouses. Some churches have special groups for people with ‘unconverted’ spouses, and hold special activities through which they seek to convert them. Many Pentecostal and some other denominations make a strong distinction between those who are ‘saved’ and those who are not. Thus members are keen for their spouses to be saved. One researcher in the United States found that almost half of the intermarriages in the U.S.A. led to conversion (Yinger, quoted in McCutcheon, 1988).
In America, there has been considerable discussion as to whether it is important to look separately at different denominations. The Australian data show that the patterns vary considerably from one religious group to another. Denominational differences are significant.
The data also show that one cannot account for the different rates of marriage within the religious group in terms of any one factor. A variety of factors play a part, and the combination of factors, such as the availability of partners, the relationships between religion and ethnicity, and the doctrines of the group come together in different ways in different denominations.
Philip Hughes
References
Hargrave, Barbara, 1985, ‘Gender, the family and the sacred’ in P.E. Hammond, (ed.), The Sacred in a Secular Age, Berkeley: University of California Press.
McCutcheon, Alan, 1988, ‘Denominations and Religious Intermarriage: Trends Among White Americans in the Twentieth Century’ in Review of Religious Research, Vol 29, No.3.pp.213-227.
Nelson, Hart, 1990, ‘The Religious Identification of Children of Interfaith Marriages’ in Review of Religious Research, Vol. 32, No.2. pp.122-134.
Price, Charles, 'Ethnic Intermixture in Australia', in People and Place, vol2, no.4, pp.8-11.
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