Converting for Love: Difference between revisions

 

== [[Film]] ==

* Happens in ''[[Eat Drink Man Woman]]'' when the eldest daughter Jia-Jen (a Christian) marries the school volleyball coach. When one of her sisters points out that he's not Christian, she smiles and replies, "He ''will'' be."

* In ''[[The Big Lebowski]]'', Walter had converted to Judaism for his wife, and remains as such, despite being divorced.

** He didn't convert. He was born Jewish (had a Jewish mother) but was adopted and raised by Southern Baptists.

* Averted in [[Harry Kemmelman]]'s ''Conversations with Rabbi Small''. Additional twists: the girl want's to pursue conversion despite insistence by both Small and her fiancee that they aren't interested. (Small is more concerned with reverting the non-servant man). But she turns out to be genetically Jewish anyway.

* In ''[[The Alien Series]]'', Serene attends catechism classes at a Catholic church, despite being her family's religion being so important to them they were willing to go into exile on Earth for it, because she's trying to get closer to her Catholic crush.

* Ulrika in ''[[The Emigrants]]'' converts to Christianity's Baptist denomination in order to marry a Baptist priest.

* In ''People of the Book'', Reuben Ben Shoushan converts to Christianity to marry his Catholic sweetheart. This being Spain in 1492, [[The Spanish Inquisition|it really doesn't]] [[Cold-Blooded Torture|end well]].

* Subverted in Swedish science fiction novel ''Iskriget (The Ice War)'', in which neither Catholic Linda nor Wesleyan (i.e. Methodist) Johnny convert -- they just have a Catholic wedding. Considering that in this alternate history the Wesleyans appear to be openly disliked by a lot of authoritarian governments for their stance on social justice, it was probably the most practical solution.

* George converts to Latvian Orthodoxy briefly for a girlfriend in ''[[Seinfeld]]'', only to lose the girlfriend anyway. (According to [[The Other Wiki]], the writer of that episode had no idea that Latvian Orthodox was a real sect -- he was trying to make up a fictional one.)

** [[You Fail Religious Studies Forever|"Is this the group that mutilates squirrels?!"]]

* In the first season of ''[[Soap]]'' Corinne is in love with Father Tim, who leaves the priesthood for her. She isn't Catholic, but she converts.

* ''[[Big Love]]'' has Margie leaving the main Mormon church and joining a polygamous offshoot. (Which, if the Mormon church learns of it, is grounds for immediate excommunication; hence a lot of the secrecy).

* In ''[[The OC]]'' Summer plans on converting to Judaism for Seth. Interestingly averted with Seth's mother Kirsten who is confirmed several times as not converting and is happily married anyway.

* A storyline on the prime time soap ''Sisters'' had youngest sister Frankie converting to Judaism with her husband Mitch. Interestingly, she was not converting to join his religion--they were ''both'' Christian and decided to convert after Mitch attended some services that gave him an insight into Jewish life.

* Janelle from ''Sister Wives'' says that she fell for Kody and the faith came later. With the later revelation that {{spoiler|her mom married Kody's dad shortly before Janelle and Kody got married}}, it seems there was also some [[Converting for Love]] there.

 

 

* In the opera ''Madama Butterfly'', Butterfly secretly converts on the night before her wedding so she can worship the God of her husband-to-be. For this, she is disowned by all her relatives.

* In ''[[Fiddler On the Roof]]'', youngest daughter Chava converts to Christianity so that she can marry a Christian. She is effectively dead to her father, and by extension the rest of her family, for most of the rest of the play.

 

 

* So did [[Elizabeth Taylor]], when she married her third husband, Mike Todd.

* Singer-songwriter Jim Croce also converted to Judaism upon marrying his wife Ingrid.

* A rare (for the time) male example: Sir Ernest Cassel, a famous British Jewish merchant banker of the Victorian era, converted to Catholicism because of a deathbed plea from his wife. Decades later, when his friend King Edward VIII made him a member of his Privy Council, everyone present was astonished that Cassel insisted on swearing his oath on a Catholic Bible.

* Non-Muslim men marrying even moderately-serious Muslim women typically invert this: the traditional Sunni interpretations of Islamic law permit Muslim men to marry non-Muslim "believers" (usually considered to include Christians and Jews, occasionally expanded to include Zoroastrians and even Hindus and Buddhists), but do not permit Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men. The reason that this is a Sunni regulation and not a Shia one is that the rule started with the Caliph Umar, whom the Shia regard as a usurper. Since most Muslims are Sunni, most mixed marriages involving a Muslim woman typically require the man converting. It should be noted that the basis in the Qur'an is kind of vague; it clearly bans marriage to ''kafirun'' (unbelievers) but who exactly is an unbeliever is a rather tricky subject.

*** In a lot of countries, converting from Islam for any reason can get you killed or otherwise result in punishment. How severe depends on the country: in Egypt, a private citizen has to get offended enough by it to bring it up with the prosecutor, who may or may not be willing to pursue the case, and the worst that can happen to someone convicted of apostasy (which includes both conversion away from Islam and what amounts to heresy) is having to pay a fine and, if married and male, having the marriage annulled.<ref>This happened in the mid-90s to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasr_Abu_Zayd (a noted Muslim theologian) whose attempt at a vaguely liberal reinterpretation of the Qur'an rubbed the establishment the wrong way. He ended up moving to Europe for a while until the whole thing just sort of blew over.</ref> On the other hand, in Saudi Arabia, a convert away from Islam should not expect to keep his or her head for very long once the [[Culture Police]] find out about it.

*** Yet other Muslims find the idea distasteful in that, love amongst persons may die when said person dies, and when conversion is done out of love to a person, that faith can die when the person (and hence the love) dies. Then again, there have been cases where a person converted out of love for the person, only to find him/herself genuinely attracted to the religion and started practicing with full conviction.

* In the non-recent past, when a Jewish woman left the faith and married a non-Jew, it was seen as such a betrayal that her family would consider her dead. They might even sit Shiva for her, mourning just as if she really had died. Afterward, they would not speak to her even if she was standing in front of them, because logically they could not see or talk to a dead person. The attitude is more understandable if you take into account the way Jewish communities were frequently harassed by the people around them; besides betraying religion and culture, she had effectively defected to the enemy.

** That explanation would apply everywhere that [[Culture Clash]] is potentially lethal.