Pluralist family values : domestic strategies for living with religious difference
By: MCCARTHY, Kate
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ArticlePublisher: Thousand Oaks : SAGE, July 2007The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science 612, p. 188-208Abstract: As microcosms of pluralist society, interfaith families reveal distinctive strategies for managing religious difference with respect, integrity, and creative problem-solving. In these families, assumptions about and possibilities for a religiously pluralist civil society are embedded in the daily choices of women, men, and children trying to create coherent relationships and spiritualities, a task for which the institutions of family and religion have for many Americans ceased to offer reliable instruction. This analysis of interfaith families, based on a series of face-to-face interviews with interfaith couples and five years of online exchanges among participants in interfaith family discussion groups, highlights the insights and skills developed in these families, and critically assesses their potential to transfer to the work of citizenship in pluralist civil society.
As microcosms of pluralist society, interfaith families reveal distinctive strategies for managing religious difference with respect, integrity, and creative problem-solving. In these families, assumptions about and possibilities for a religiously pluralist civil society are embedded in the daily choices of women, men, and children trying to create coherent relationships and spiritualities, a task for which the institutions of family and religion have for many Americans ceased to offer reliable instruction. This analysis of interfaith families, based on a series of face-to-face interviews with interfaith couples and five years of online exchanges among participants in interfaith family discussion groups, highlights the insights and skills developed in these families, and critically assesses their potential to transfer to the work of citizenship in pluralist civil society.
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