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Show Also in this section: Lifestyle f Weddings C3 ArtsEntertainment C6-- 8 Caught in the middle on question of religion By HARLENE ELLIN Universal Press Syndicate My husband, Mike, and I grew apprehensive during our engagement: We couldn't agree on a religion for our future family. I am Jewish and Mike is Methodist. And while WQ decided that conversions, religious weddings and Christmas trees were out (for now), we both wanted a religious home for our children. But which religion would we practice? We thought it important to select a religion before we married, and well before any babies arrived. We didn't want to argue in the hospital maternity ward over whether to have a baptism or a bris. Sometimes we sat down specifically to discuss religion; at other times the issue popped up unexpectedly over a glass of beer. Most of the time I campaigned for Judaism, telling Mike about its beautiful traditions and its outlook. Mike pitched for Christianity, explaining its emphasis on caring and forgiveness. Sometimes these rational conversations dissolved into battles complete with tears. "Why," Mike would ask, "do you push for Judaism when you rarely attend synagogue or keep kosher?" "All you really care about is Christmas," I countered. "You just want to make sure you get your tree.' It became clear that, for reasons that we still can't fully explain or articulate, neither of us wanted to ive in. As the baby of my family, I always sang the "Ftr r Questions" at the Passover Sede Someday, I wanted our youngest child to experience the nervous rush of singing, in Hebrew, to a holiday table packed with admiring adults. And I see our little girl dressed as Queen Esther for the Purim parade, munching on a gooey apricot cookie. Mike wants our children to feel as safe and as secure as he had after saying the Lord's Prayer at bedtime. And he pictures our little boy playing a shepherd in the Christmas pageant. We couldn't accept a home where our own religious tradions and values were secondary, or, worse, ignored. Yet we weren't sure what alternatives existed. As our wedding grew nearer, we began talking about raising our children with both religions. We could expose them to both Judaism and Christianity and then let them choose. Although we didn't know families with the any "dual-faith- " boom in intermarriage, we reasoned, there must be thousands of couples successfully balancing Ju- daism and Christianity, with hundreds of education and counseling programs providing support.' Mike and I are one of about 400,000 Jewish-Christia- n couples in the United States, and they are expected to produce more than 1 million children by the year 2000, according to Egon Mayer, a sociologist at Brooklyn College who studies inter-fait- h issues. " Mike and I eagerly grasped this h "solution," hoping that it would work. When people asked us, But what about the children?" as they invariably did we told them, "We're going to have a religiously eclectic home." Nobody even Mike's family minister seemed to find the idea dual-fait- Thursday Dec. 20, 1990 Is G- month, one fashion reporter summed up the clothes as "not particularly interesting." There should, he thought, be "More ideas, more risk, more newness, more progress on the runway." Klein's radically simple spring clothes looked a lot like the clothes he showed last season, and the one before. Maybe a little simpler. Anything he could get rid of is gone no prints or checks or stripes, no collars, no cuffs, no pocket flaps, no tucks or pleats, no trims, no startlingly original cuts, no ruffles or flourishes or fidgets. All the things most designers count on to add interest to their clothes are missing from his. Even his colors If parchment, platinum, ecru, are so subtle they barebisque ly register. still Quakers dressed plain and if they were as rich as many of their 18th and forebears they'd probably wear his clothes. Even Frances E. Harvey couldn't have asked for plainer. As matron of the Friends' Boarding School at Westtown, Pa., from 1906 to 1916, Harvey periodically inspected the Gordon-Elliot- t, finishing her friend's thought. "But I totally don't feel like I'm different from anyone else." "If we're emtionally confused about anythinq, it's not because of religion," says Elizabeth, "It's just matters at this everyday teen-ag- e point." I found this comforting. And it was encouraging to hear that these clothes Quaker attire in Delaware Valley will be on view through March 30, 1991 at the Historical Society, 22 Chester, Pa. 19380. Calvin Klein showed similar clothing in his fall show. students Westtown English Friends had a earlier. Still, as Harvey's daybook demonstrates, they continued to take a dim view of unnecessary flash. But even a century earlier, Friends hadn't all dressed alike, hadn't all worn gray, and hadn't all looked like the man on the Quaker Oats box, as the exhibition of Quaker dress now on view at the Chester County Historical Society in West Chester, Pa., makes clear. Friends wore a range of colors, mostly on the quiet side. Ladies tended to wear modified versions of whatever silhouette was fashionable at the time but without the bustles, hoops, ribbons, laces, ruffles, fringes and flounces that make brought to school with them to see that they were "sufficiently plain" to reflect "the simplicity of our religious profession." Clothes that weren't were simplified or sent home. In September 1913, for instance, Harvey found: "One red dress too bright. No tucks above the knee accepted, Several useless buttons called off. Peplums not passed except when ... perfectly plain, can be worn inside. Extra rows of lace and niching asked off. Some pipings not passed when too conspicuous." By then, except for a last few elderly ladies too old to give up their Quaker bonnets, American Friends had largely abandoned their instinctively plain garb, as interfaith training helped them feel comfortable whether at a Passover Seder or an Easter Mass. They say they know teen-ager- s' more about religion than some of their single-fait-h friends, and each wonders why others worry about them. "It's like the whole world is intefaith now," says Meredith Atkinson, a tall girl with porcelain skin. "It's just not unusual any- J Photo courtesy Todd Buchanan, The Philadelphia Inquirer 19th-centu- ry "That we're grasping," says ' ml half-centu- ry Klein makes his clothes plain for aes-- " thetic reasons. Quakers dressed plain for moral and theological reasons. Their horror of ornament, like the rest of the Reformation, was part of a pendulum swing away from the exuberance and excess of the baroque, grounded in a feeling that there had gotten to be too much that was extraneous too much music and art in church, too much lace on cuffs, too many curlicues on buildings and furniture, too much euphemism in speech. Quakers believed in simplicity, equality and peace, and their, clothes were an outward and visible sign of these beliefs. They " believed anything superfluous in dress, furnishing, architecture," etc. was likely to distract from "inward listening" and attention to the truth. : Most people dress up to show; off their superior figures, impressive incomes or advanced taste. Quakers dressed plainly to avoid looking snazzier than other people an idea that may bear some responsibility for Philadelphia's persistent reputation for dowdi- -' ness. They were so serious about the equality of all men that they refused to doff their hats to kings! and princes, which got them into: trouble with the law. And, as they clung to styles whose time had passed, their clothes came to look not merely plain, but odd, and were ridiculed in the streets. Today, according to Mary Anne Caton, who organized the Chester County Historical Society show, Friends "dress just like everybody else, pretty much." But Don Yoder, who teaches in the University of Pennsylvania's department of folklore and folklife, and has studied plain dress, thinks there's still "kind of a Quaker trend to be unfashionable but comfortable." Friends, he says, "are still trying to simplify life." ; In that, they're unwittingly part of a 1990s trend, a sort of Reformation writ small. It embraces minimalist clothes like Klein's, a distaste for the Trumped-u- p glitz of the '80s. u. If American Calvin Presumably, Universal Press Syndicate Quakers dressed to avoid looking snazzier-than-thoWhen Calvin Klein showed his spring collection in New York last Jana 3 yakeir chic, becoming 'in' look? By PATRICIA McLAUGHLTN Only after our wedding (a civil ceremony before a judge) did I talk with interfaith children, their parents, religious leaders and other "experts." Now I believe we were naive and our solution simplistic. I am not sure we can mold religious children in a dual-fait- h home. And it pains me to admit that there are few support networks to educate or guide us. I wanted most to understand how dual-fait- h homes affect children. I wondered if our children will suffer identity problems, loyalty conflicts and confusion, as many critics predict. Will they have the knowledge and desire to choose a religion? I thought interfaith children themselves might provide some answers. Between piano lessons, studying and basketball practice, a small group of lively high school sophomores gathered recently to talk about their dual-fait- h upbringings with me. Each has attended interfaith education classes as part of a program formed in 1985 by parents from the tony Trinity School on New York City's Upper West Side. A rabbi and a minister have taught them basic Judaism and Christianity mostly history and holidays. "People think we're totally confused ..." says Elizabeth Gordon, a petite, energetic brunette. - ladies look to us like fancy lampshades. Men continued to wear the long, collarless coat that was fashionable during the reign of Charles II and avoided like long adopting new fashions trousers until long after "worldly" people had done so. 19th-centu- For many Quakers, "going plain" was a personal decision. Some families and some famidressed plainer ly members than others. On the day she heard the sermon that changed her life, Betsy Gurney, who would become the English Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, went to meeting wearing new purple boots with scarlet laces not your stereotypical idea of Friendly footgear. -- more." For now, they say, they consider themselves "half and half." "I've learned the history, traditions and customs of both religions," says Elizabeth. "It's like your own religion." "But it also has the background of other religions," adds Jana. "You have the freedom to believe what you want to believe in." Being "both," Jana says, allows her to believe in God without deciding whether Jesus was the Messiah. Many adult critics, however, find the dual-fait- h path unfathomable. They view it as a frightening attempt ta blend Judaism and Christianity. "If you mix it up it can be overwhelming for a child," says Brother William J. Martyn of the Archdiocese of New York. "Would they be a Jew or a Christian?" Mayer of Brooklyn College agrees. "It gives children a fake sense of how the world works," he says. "You can't say 'I'm Jewish and also Christian' except in the privacy of your own mind." children make Unless dual-fait- h a conscious choice, Mayr says, they will not find a mainstream religious identity. Interfaith homes seen as threat to Jewish community The U.S. Jewish community which constitutes only 3 percent of the U.S. population has long believed that interfaith bottom line is that they do want the kids to be raised Jewish," says Christina Giebisch, an Episcopalian married to a Jew, who attended a Reform Jewish outreach program in New Haven, Conn., last year. Although the outreach program admits that it opposes duality, its national director, Lydia Kukoff, maintains that it respects Christian participants. "We're welcoming and accommodating, but there are boundaries," she says. For now, most interfaith families particularly those following the dual-fait- h route must create and sustain their own support networks. homes threaten its survival. Yet Reform and Reconstruction-is- t Jewish congregations, to attract new members, have opened synagogues and formed national education and counseling programs for interfaith families without requiring conversion. But many interfaith couples find these unprecedented efforts insufficient. They say the programs push for single-fait- h Jewish homes and ignore the Christian side. "Although they don't say it, the a full length Listen to best selling novel on cassette from LISTENING TO BOOKS GESE for more information call toll free sxmm Ask about our introductory offer... Make 1991 the NEW YOU! Join Now & Save! CHRISTMAS SALE ! Valuable Coupon -$2.00 OFF any retail purchase of $10.00 or more. 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