ABSTRACT
Across history different societies have exhibited considerable ethnographic, legal, and socio-political similarities in marital and familial customs and patterns. Religio-legal norms and institutions have integrated pre-existing naturalistic, moral, and legalistic ways of thinking about sexuality, reproductive relations, gender roles, and notions, rituals, and markers of identity. As a result, as demonstrated in the preceding chapters, today we observe more convergence than conflict in the teachings of major world religions on marriage and divorce (Browning et al., 2006: xxii). The present chapter will identify main points of agreement (and also disagreement) across major religious traditions in terms of their rules and customs that regulate the formation and dissolution of marital unions within their respective communities. Religious family laws have long been appropriated by governments and integrated into national legal systems in polities all over the world. With this common dynamic in mind, the chapter will also discuss the effects of state appropriation, both on religious traditions themselves and on the rights and freedoms of people who are subject to state-enforced religious family laws.
