Beloved Strangers: Interfaith Families in Nineteenth Century America [Hardcover]

Professor Anne C. Rose (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2001

Interfaith marriage is a visible and often controversial part of American life--and one with a significant history. This is the first historical study of religious diversity in the home. Anne Rose draws a vivid picture of interfaith marriages over the century before World War I, their problems and their social consequences. She shows how mixed-faith families became agents of change in a culture moving toward pluralism.

Following them over several generations, Rose tracks the experiences of twenty-six interfaith families who recorded their thoughts and feelings in letters, journals, and memoirs. She examines the decisions husbands and wives made about religious commitment, their relationships with the extended families on both sides, and their convictions. These couples--who came from strong Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish backgrounds--did not turn away from religion but made personalized adjustments in religious observance. Increasingly, the author notes, women took charge of religion in the home. Rose's family-centered look at private religious decisions and practice gives new insight on American society in a period when it was becoming more open, more diverse, and less community-bound. (20010801)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

enn State's Rose shows that interfaith marriage is nothing new; here, she charts the practice from the War of 1812 to World War I, introducing readers to over two dozen intermarried couples. We meet politicians (North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance married a Catholic), the children of religious leaders (Helen Wise, the daughter of Rabbi Isaac Wise, married a Christian) and ordinary intermarried folk. Rose treats marriages that were interfaith from day one and, even more intriguing, also those marriages in which Protestant wives shocked their Protestant husbands by converting to Catholicism. She pays careful attention to how intermarriage was discussed by pastors, journalists and novelists (Charles Brockden Brown's Arthur Mervyn was the first American novel to tackle intermarriage). In the mid-19th century, Rose shows, those who opposed intermarriage did so on religious grounds; by the fin de siácle, critics of intermarriage often based their arguments in ethnicity and race. The book is heavy on description and light on analysis. What little interpretation Rose offers is anachronistic and cheerleaderish: those who intermarried, she affirms, were courageous early champions of pluralism and diversity. But whatever its flaws, this book is sure to find a sizable audience outside the academy. Not only did Rose hit upon a topic that will interest thousands of Americans, she has told the story of 19th-century intermarriage in crisp prose so accessible that Harvard ought to pass out copies to other scholars hoping to break out of the ivory tower.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Beginning with the complicated parenting struggles of Protestant Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman and his Catholic wife, Rose (history and religious studies, Penn State Univ.) introduces her work on the cultural, familial, and religious issues created by interfaith alliances. Limiting her study to the years between 1865 and 1918, she examines 26 families through letters, journals, memoirs, and, in more controversial cases, public documents such as newspapers. In this cultural history of the well-bred and the well-educated, Rose suggests that liberal families of 19th-century America reflected an emerging melting pot mentality through their willingness to suffer and/or entertain interfaith marriages between Jews, Catholics, and Protestants. Indeed, social liberalism at times seems more like the threshold to interfaith relationships than anything else. Heavily documented with over 70 pages of footnotes and family trees, Rose's analysis stays closer to thoughts and feelings, rarely straying into what she terms "quantifiable trends," a thing one sometimes wishes for as a point of comparison. While the vision is limited to the elite sector of society, it still makes an interesting read for American studies and religion collections. Sandra Collins, Duquesne Univ. Lib., Pittsburgh
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674006402
• ISBN-13: 978-0674006409
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,525,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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