Christmas in the Room: Gender, Conflict, and Compromise in Multi-Religious Domestic Space

• Main Author: Samira K. Mehta
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-06-01
• Series: Religions
• Subjects: interfaith families; public; Christian; Jewish; gender; United States
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11/6/281

Interfaith relationships offer particular potential for creating religious coexistence; they also play out very differently in domestic space than in public and civic spaces, with the result that interfaith marriage becomes an important, yet unique, site of religious cooperation, co-existence, and conflict. The article argues that examinations of interfaith families must take three factors into account, each of which involves careful attention to the particular power dynamics of the family in question. First, scholars must think about the broader context in which the interfaith family has come to exist. Second, scholars must consider that the emotional and power dynamics of domestic space often have little in common with the compromises and power dynamics of public space. Lastly, while gender is not generally a key category of analysis for thinking about interfaith encounters in public space, gender, both as it shapes power dynamics and as it drives assumptions about childrearing and domestic labor, shapes interfaith family life and requires attendant scholarly attention.