Anonymous Asks (336)

“Should Christians from different denominations date or marry?”

As with so many questions, the answer very much depends on your personal situation. Why do you attend the church you currently attend? Obviously, the most desirable answer is “Out of conviction about the interpretations of scripture taught there.”

But that’s not always why people are where they are, is it?

When It Works

Take, for example, the young man with Reformed leanings who attends a dispensational church because his parents do. Leaving aside whether he’s right or wrong in his theology, there will probably be less friction in his romantic relationship long-term if he pairs up with someone who believes the same things he does than with someone who doesn’t. Likewise, the twenty-something single girl who attends a local church nearby because she doesn’t have a car and it’s the only church close enough to attend regularly. She would not be sacrificing any great spiritual principle by pairing up with a man from another church who owns a vehicle, provided she is able to agree in good conscience with his church’s statement of faith. Or take the case of a married woman who, despite her upbringing in another church, has been Baptist for her entire married life because she submits to a husband of Baptist convictions. If he suddenly dies, should she feel obligated to the Baptists until death? Not necessarily.

In cases like these, pairing up with someone from a different denomination may actually get you closer to your own beliefs than continuing to fellowship at the church you attend presently. Not only would it be no great loss (except, in a few happy cases, to the church you are presently attending), it might actually be advantageous.

When It Doesn’t

What should be obvious is that if you would not marry someone from a particular denomination, then you should definitely not date them either. Dating frivolously, or in expectation that the other party will be the one changing her mind eventually, is risky business and quite lacking in charity. Dating an immature Christian who has yet to develop strong convictions can also be an unwise move. It may turn out those convictions never develop, or that she simply copies yours without any great spiritual investment. In a case like that, early and easy agreement without real conviction can come back to haunt you later on.

So then, how important are your spiritual convictions to you? They should be very important indeed. In writing about “opinions”, the apostle Paul says, “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” and “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” If the celebration or non-celebration of Jewish holidays by believers is something about which you and I ought to form firm convictions, how much more so the important doctrines of scripture, differences over which have given rise to denominations.

Two Christians from any two different denominations will certainly have more in common with one another than they have with the unsaved, but that does not mean the differences between them are necessarily trivial. A committed Calvinist reads scripture very differently than I do. Likewise, a committed Covenant Theologian or Postmillennialist. Don’t even get me started on Charismatics, saved Catholics, Complementarians and Egalitarians, let alone liberal Christians with their LGBT-friendly rewrites of the apostle Paul.

Practical Implications

All these belief systems have very practical implications in the here and now. Consistently applied and practiced, they will affect how a Christian feels about Israel, nationalism and political activism, what his expectations are concerning the return of the Lord and the judgments to come, how he reads the Old Testament prophets (taking them literally or spiritualizing them away) and how he understand basic theological terminology. They will determine what sort of service and teaching your prospective partner prefers. They will affect the sort of friends they seek out and the type of conversations you have when you socialize. They will probably impinge on the subject matter of your dinner conversations unless you agree not to discuss your differences at all, which is likely to leave at least one of you feeling alienated to some degree. In the case of beliefs about biblical men’s and women’s roles, the effect on your home and married relationship dynamics may be profound.

I have known Christian couples who married and went on attending different churches. That worked fine until they started having children, then the inevitable question arose: Which church will our children attend? It’s pretty dumb to start down that road with no end game in view.

In Short

None of this is to say it’s a great sin to marry someone who loves the Lord Jesus with all their heart but believes differently than you do about the finer theological details. You are going to find some differences in convictions between any two people. But to start moving toward marriage without considering the potential impact of your differences in belief on your developing relationship is both naïve and imprudent. How significant are the differences, and what are the potential negatives for your relationship in the long term if you both continue to hold your current interpretations of scripture?

It’s a subject you both need to think over very carefully before committing yourselves to a life together.