With Interfaith Sunday Schools, Parents Don't Have To Choose One Religion

[rug]

Interfaith marriage is on the rise, putting parents in a tough spot to choose one religion to pass to their kids. Rami Ayyub reports on a Maryland Sunday school that says it's possible to have both.

May 15, 20165:14 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
RAMI AYYUB

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

If you have a parent who was Italian, say, or another who's Korean, you might identify as half Italian and half Korean. For interfaith families though, choosing between religions to pass on to their children can be a difficult decision. But Rami Ayyub reports, some parents are embracing a different strategy - choose both.

RAMI AYYUB, BYLINE: It's early Sunday morning and a group of families are finally filing into a high school cafeteria. Most of them have one parent who's Jewish and another who's Christian, and instead of church or synagogue, they come here. Trading church pews for folding chairs is nothing new, but just down the hall, a new project is taking hold.

DAVID BIGGE: Who doesn't have their own Bible yet?

AYYUB: That's David Bigge (ph). He's the Hebrew teacher at the Interfaith Families Project Sunday School in Kensington, Md.

http://www.npr.org/2016/05/15/478148968/with-interfaith-sunday-schools-parents-dont-have-to-choose-one-religion

3:43 audio

[MADem]

1. I was fortunate in that I was exposed to many different

religions growing up. I can "pass" in a number of them, which comes in handy.

Even if you don't sign on to the particulars of the religion, the cultural touchstones are handy to know.