Roughly half of those Americans who marry today choose a spouse from a different religious tradition. The high rate of intermarriage, which both reflects and promotes a basic American tolerance of religious difference, has major implications for the future of religion in our country. It also poses canonical and pastoral problems for those traditions, like Orthodox Christianity, which discourage and, in some circumstances, prohibit mixed marriage. A new book from St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Mixed Marriage: An Orthodox History, by church historian Anthony Roeber (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary) offers some perspective on the question from an Orthodox perspective. Here’s a description from the publisher’s website:

Fr. Roeber’s excellent book offers a lucid and fascinating history of marriage and its relationship to the Church, the authority of the bishop, pastoral practice in relation to the administration of the Mysteries (how can a couple sharing in the sacrament of Orthodox marriage not be allowed thereafter to share in the Eucharist from which it flows?) and how that important, but often ill-defined term of oikonomia can address the issue of mixed marriage today. The study’s strength is that it looks to the historical documentation of what happened in relation to mixed marriage in Orthodox past history, rather than following what is vaguely ‘supposed’ to have happened. Brilliantly and elegantly written, with a calm and surefooted perspective, it offers great interest for the specialist and layperson alike. This book will surely become a standard work on the subject.