Religious Homogamy and Marital Happiness

Data from a representative sample of 1,070 married Protestants and Catholics were used to examine the relationship between religious homogamy and marital happiness. Although couples may vary in the extent to which they share religious views (e.g., beliefs, values), previous research has treated religious homogamy as a dichotomy; a couple is either homogamous or it is not. A partial explanation for this is that few studies have gone beyond the broad divisions of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. In the present study religious bodies were classified on the basis of doctrine and ritual, yielding six categories: Baptist, Calvinist, Catholic, fundamentalist, Lutheran, and Methodist. These categories were then used to develop a measure of estimated “religious distance” or degrees of heterogamy. This measure was used to test the hypothesis that the larger the religious distance or disparity, the greater the likelihood of unhappiness with the marriage. The hypothesis was supported by the data. It is well established that Americans tend to marry endogamously with respect to social and cultural characteristics. Although some of this is accounted for by demographic factors and geographic propinquity, it is clear that group values and norms tend to promote homogamy and discourage heterogamy. Constraints regarding interracial marriage appear strongest, followed, respectively, by those related to religion, social class, and ethnicity (cf. Moss, Apolonio, and Jensen, 1971; Leslie and Korman, 1985). One of the important underlying assumptions for encouraging marital homogamy is the belief that persons sharing similar characteristics (e.g., social status, values, norms, beliefs) will adjust more easily to one another. In other words, sociocultural homogamy promote harmony, whereas heterogamy increases the chances of discord and unhappiness. Sociological and social-psychological theories of love and mate selection are generally consistent with this proposition (cf. Coombs, 1966; Murstein, 1970; Reiss, 1980). Religious Homogamy and Marital Happiness 225 The present study examines the relationship between religious homogamy and marital happiness. More specifically, the study examines intraand interfaith marriages among six religious bodies. Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church are classified on the basis of doctrine and ritual. These categories are used to develop a measure of estimated “religious distance” or degrees of heterogamy. This procedure is used to test the hypothesis, derived from the theoretical reasoning discussed above, that the larger the religious disparity in marriage, the greater the likelihood of unhappiness with the marriage. Development of the Research Strategy Nearly all of the studies dealing with the relationship between interand intrafaith marriages and marital success have classified marriages as homogamous or heterogamous on the basis of the familiar trichotomy of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Using these categories as indices introduces at least two possibly unwarranted assumptions. First, religious similarity is presumably a matter of degree. Thus reducing homogamy/heterogamy to an either/or dichotomy introduces the implicit assumption that all Protestants, regardless of denomination, are the same.1 Second, limiting classification to these categories assumes that all interfaith marriages are equally heterogamous; for example, the measurement model ignores the possibility that Catholics may have more in common religiously with Episcopalians than with Baptists. Thus measuring homogamy and heterogamy solely on the basis of the categories of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew risks obscuring relevant value differences both within and between the three major religious traditions in the United States. Findings from studies using the categories of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew generally support the hypothesis that religiously homogamous marriages are somewhat more successful than interfaith marriages. The most frequently used measure of marital success has been marital stability, as indexed by divorce or survival rates (cf. Landis, 1949; Monahan and Kephart, 1954; Burchinal and Chancellor, 1963; Christensen and Barber, 1967; Bumpass and Sweet, 1972). Studies using marital happiness as an indicator of marital success have reached similar conclusions. 226 Ortega, Whitt, & Williams in Journal of family issues 9 (1988) Alston, McIntosh, and Wright (1976) report a higher level of marital happiness among persons in religiously homogamous marriages, as does Glenn (1982) for males, but not females. Although there are differences in opinion as to whether Protestant denominations are sufficiently different form one another to affect adjustment in interdenominational marriages (cf. Glenn, 1982; Greeley, 1970), there are surprisingly few studies that can be brought to bear on the issue.2 Using somewhat different denominational groupings, Burchinal and Chancellor (1963) and Bumpass and Sweet (1972) have examined marriage survival rates between homogamous and denominationally mixed Protestant marriages. There is little support for the hypothesis that intradenominational marriages will have higher survival rates than marriages crossing denominational lines; however, some mixed-marriage combinations were found to be less stable than comparable homogamous marriages. It should be pointed out, however, that neither study included all of the major Protestant denominations in American society, much less the smaller groups. Furthermore, the distinctions that are made appear to be based simply on the fact that each category represents a social aggregate with a name, for example. Baptist or Methodist. No attempt is made to specify how these denominations differ from one another. While there is little empirical evidence one way or the other, theoretically, it seems possible that some of the differences among Protestant denominations such as differences in doctrine, ritual, and church polity, could be sufficiently important to create difficulties in interdenominational marriages. Furthermore, some Protestant denominations are quite similar to each other with respect to these characteristics, whereas they are quite different from other denominations. In other words, Protestant denominations are not equidistant on all dimensions. This being the case, it is appropriate to classify denominations on the basis of theoretically important dimensions and then to develop interval or at least ordinal scales representing the degree of heterogamy of each pair of denominations along these dimensions. This research strategy permits testing the study hypothesis as stated in continuous form: The larger the religious disparity in marriage, the greater the likelihood of unhappiness with the marriage. Religious Homogamy and Marital Happiness 227