re religion and marriage pboxrud magnus acs ohio state edu paul d boxrud writes i wasn t sure if this was the right newsgroup to post this to but i guess the misc is there for a reason here goes i am getting married in june to a devout wisconsin synod lutheran i would classify myself as a strong agnostic weak athiest this has been a a subject of many discussions between us and is really our only real obstacle we don t have any real difficulties with the religious differences yet but i expect they will pop up when we have children i have agreed to raise the children nominally lutheran that is lutheran traditions but trying to keep an open mind i am not sure if this is even possible though i feel that that the worst quality of being devoutly religous is the lack of an open mind just a point i suppose if open mind means believing anything can be true or we can t for sure know what is definitely true i m happy to not be open minded if however open mindedness means being respectful and tolerant towards other beliefs respecting the rights and intelligence and wisdom of people of other beliefs and giving equal time to alternative ideas i try my very best to be open minded just a thot in passing anyway i guess i ll get on with my question is anyone in the same situation and can give some suggestions as to how to deal with this we ve taken the attitude so far of just talking about it a lot and not letting anything get bottled up inside sometimes i get the feeling we re making this much bigger than it actually is any comments would be greatly appreciated also please e mail responses since i don t get a chance to read this group often not being married i cannot say too much to you but from my perspective having mutually exclusive faiths would be a big enough roadblock for me in considering marrying someone making it much bigger than it is i suppose that depends on how serious each of you is in your beliefs lukewarm atheists and christians for whom religion is of nominal importance probly would feel the issue isn t very big i suppose the more important your beliefs are to each of you the more important the issue is paul
