Religion in Relationships

More than 100 years ago, Cardinal John Henry Newman summarized the notion of continuous development: “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” When considering the developmental challenges of the adult lifecycle, readers can turn to a number of recent titles that explore the role of religion and change in the areas of marriage, human sexuality, and parenting.
Love Never Ends: Growing Together in Marriage and Faith by Robert H. Lauer and Jeannette C. Lauer (Upper Room Books, 0-8358-094998) explores from a Biblical perspective the reciprocal relationship between marital growth and spiritual growth.
The Lauers recommend that a couple read each chapter together or individually and then use the “Face to Face” section at the end of every chapter as a guide for journaling and discussion. This workbook format will help married and engaged couples sharpen their marital and spiritual skills and strengthen their relationship with God and each other as they address the themes of authenticity, becoming, intimacy, mutual instruction, growing through crisis, and creating and celebrating moments of joy.
Harold J. Sala’s Connecting: 52 Guidelines for Making Marriage Work (Christian Publications, 0-87509-929-7) offers practical ideas and insights that will help couples grow into a deeper and more meaningful relationship. These selections were heard on “Guidelines—A Five-Minute Commentary on Living,” which is broadcast on more than 600 radio stations in 100 countries and in sixteen languages.
Included with each of the fifty-two guidelines is the author’s commentary, highlighted insight, resource reading from Scripture, and ideas and questions for discussion. Sala considers themes like: going back to basics; love is a decision and a commitment to care; infidelity; differences between men and women; balancing marriage with the demands of love; and building for tomorrow.
Connecting is designed to be read over a period of fifty-two days—one guideline per day. Each four-page guideline may serve as a prayerful reflection accompanied by a related reading from Scripture.
God Knows Marriage Isn’t Always Easy: 12 Ways to Add Zest by Maureen Rogers Law and Lanny Law (Sorin Books, 1-893732-29-0) offers very practical approaches to achieving a better marital relationship. Marriage and family therapists, the Laws present “twelve ways for couples to work out some of the simple and not-so-simple roadblocks that crop up in any marriage.”
They believe that “we have a better marriage when we practice the following elements in our relationship: meeting, accepting, understanding, feeling, loving, prioritizing, touching, balancing, helping, resolving, forgiving, and sharing.” Each of the twelve chapters addresses one of these elements, offering stories, reflections, practical suggestions, and quotes for improving marriage. The authors recommend that both husband and wife read the book, talk about what is being presented, and let the ideas rekindle the sparks of a changing and growing relationship.
Robert Sachs offers The Passionate Buddha: Wisdom on Intimacy and Enduring Love by (Inner Traditions, 0-89281914-6), presenting the foundation of Buddhist ideals in relationships and applying them for the modern couple to the development of a healthy relationship. In the introduction, the author explains that the book is about fully opening to our loving nature by breaking habits we have created that prevent us from being in and finding love—learning to trust our heart, opening up to possibilities, and working with our anger and other difficult emotions. He suggests practical steps that readers can take to make this happen.
Since the emphasis in Buddhism is on enlightenment, there are four key features that are most prominent in a relationship based on Buddhist principles: flexibility, personal detachment, mutuality, and a growing universal love and compassion. The Passionate Buddha explores the principles, contemplations, and tools from the teachings of the Buddha that facilitate healthy relationships and healthy ways that individuals can grow, change, and transform.
Tender Fires: The Spiritual Promise of Sexuality by Fran Herder and John Heagle (Crossroad Publishing Company, 0-8245-1982-5) addresses from a Christian perspective the quiet and dramatic transformation of the very understanding and meaning of human sexuality. The authors point out that: “When the Judeo-Christian tradition speaks from its deepest roots about love, mutual respect, the goodness of the body, and the sacredness of relationships, there is no more powerful source of spiritual guidance. But for many people, the urgency surrounding contemporary issues of human sexuality seems greater than what our current religious institutions are able—or at least willing—to address.”
Tender Fires explores the connectedness between spirituality and sexuality, showing how it is possible“—within the unique circumstances of one’s life and with God’s help and grace—to become a more responsible lover and life-giver.” An excellent choice for reading groups, its thirty-five short chapters are written in a very popular and engaging style. It will serve as a roadmap for everyone—married or single, young or old, divorced or remarried, male or female, gay or straight, celibate by choice or circumstance—as they continue the lifelong journey of sexual growth and development both individually and in relationship.
In What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age (Sorin Books, 1-893732-40-1), veteran work-life journalist Maggie Jackson explains how developments in technology change how and where we work, and the meaning of home, and thus our relationships. She points out that many of us are confused about how to handle the complexities of modern life: cell phones, laptops, longer work hours, the accelerating pace of each day. She explains how these changes blur the boundaries between work and home, how we are searching for “home” outside our homes.
This book offers informative, delightful reading. It is filled with quotes, reflections, and vignettes of some of the 255 people whom Jackson interviewed. Each of the seven chapters concludes with a personal diary entry from the author’s extensive and unpublished journal. Here she records her ideas, reflections, questions, confusions, and observations about her own home and the changing nature of home in the twenty-first century. She offers examples of how these changes affect relationships, marriage, and parenting, providing a framework in which men and women, parents and single parents, single people, male breadwinners, working women, homemaker moms, the Internet Generation, and aging baby boomers can think anew about home as it is impacted by the changing nature and challenges of work in the information age.
Giving Good Gifts: The Spiritual Journey of Parenthood by George E. Conway (Westminster John Knox Press, 0-664-22563-2) explores what we learn from God and the Bible about parenting. Conway, an ordained Presbyterian minister, has spent his professional life as a teacher, counselor, chaplain, coach, and, since 1982, as headmaster at St. Anne’s Belfield School, a coeducational college preparatory school in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Conway describes seven gifts parents can give their children that will help them develop healthy spiritual identities, including companionship of God, a transcendent perspective, and freedom to doubt. Each chapter concludes with a very practical section: “Ten Things a Parent Can Do” to nurture each spiritual gift in children.
He points out that being a parent should be more than a simple journey with children toward their maturity. “Just as the creation of life began a spiritual relationship between God and God’s children, so too does the relationship with our children begin a new phase of our life. . . . All children, at every age, can be catalysts for their parents’ spiritual growth.”
In the last chapter, “The Spiritual Journey of Parenthood,” Conway challenges parents to grow spiritually through Lectio Divina, sacred reading; prayer, especially the Our Father; and finding productive ways of dealing with anger with children. He advises readers that the spiritual journey of parenting happens when we take our daily cares, occasional ambivalence, and deepest joys to God.
Marsha Sinetar’s Don’t Call Me Old—I’m Just Awakening: Spiritual Encouragement for Later Life (Paulist Press, 0-8091-4097-7) will be of special interest to baby boomers as they experience changes in marriage, parenting, and relationship. In addition, it will serve as a resource for these boomers as they care for their parents who are entering later life.
Using the creative and engaging literary device of five exchanges of letters between two fictionalized long-distance friends, Sinetar addresses the many dynamics of personal and interpersonal change in later life. She considers the practical aspects as well as the challenges and joys of spiritual awakening as the prime task of later life.
In the introduction, Sinetar, author of the best-selling Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow: Discovering Your Right Livelihood, presents a message that is based on her research on aging: “To the degree that we commune intimately with God, understand our oneness with Absolute Reality, to that degree we enter into the power and tender consolations of living Love. Later life is wholly transformed by that spiritual hardiness, a phrase I define as strength born of union with the divine Love, or God of our understanding.”
This is a book that should be read slowly and reflectively, using the extensive resources and questions in the Appendix as a guide for journaling, conversation, and reading group discussion.
All of these titles reflect religious publishers’ commitment to explore the role of religion and spirituality in relationships throughout the lifecycle. They offer readers a religious perspective on human sexuality, marriage, and parenting. These titles join together the best of human development and religion to provide a vision and guidance for change and growth in our relationships as friends, spouses, parents, and workers.