If Ryan Beurle was forced to choose his life partner from a list of her defining characteristics, chances are, he never would have married his wife, Frem Lim.

“Before I met Frem, if you’d made it, like: ‘tick a box of religious or non-religious’, I probably would have put non-religious,” he says.

The self-described atheist grew up with some exposure to Catholicism but says that now, “I just don’t even really think about it that much.”

“I mean, I just kind of go, ‘OK, well, there might be a God, there might not be a God. I don’t know. I don’t care.'”

Asked what he thinks happens when we die, the 37-year-old is equally indifferent. “Nothing happens. I mean, it just …” He searches for the right words. “That’s the end.”

Ryan, an atheist, and Frem, a devout Catholic, found love across the religious divide.(Supplied) Frem and Ryan with their daughter Alexis.(Supplied) Frem and Ryan married in a church in 2019.(Supplied)

Frem, the mother of Ryan’s child, describes herself as “very religious” and attends church every Sunday and Bible studies every Friday. She sees it a little differently.

“I’m a Catholic. We always believe that there is an afterlife and depending on how you live your life, that will determine where you’re going when you die: heaven, hell, purgatory, whatever.”

Asked if she worries that Ryan’s atheism means he won’t get into heaven, Frem laughs.

“No, no, I’m not worried about him. I’m more worried about me!” she says. “For me, it’s not really what you believe in. It’s what you have done while you were living.”

Ryan and Frem are among 3.3 million people in Australia who hold different religious beliefs from their partner, according to an ABC analysis of exclusive data spanning more than 50 religious denominations from the 2021 census.

The analysis of 5.2 million married and de facto couples in 2021 and 3.6 million couples in 2001 (both opposite-sex couples and, for the first time, same-sex couples) found that nearly one in three marriages are between people of different denominations and beliefs, and one in five are between people of different religions.

This is double the proportion recorded 35 years earlier, when less than 9 per cent of marriages crossed religious divides, according to figures from the 1986 census.

(Throughout this story, we’ll use the terms “marriage” and “partnership” interchangeably to refer to a “couple relationship”. In the romantic language of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, this is defined as “two people usually residing in the same household who share a social, economic, and emotional bond usually associated with marriage.”)

“Prohibitions against intermarriage are enforced with deadly violence in many cultures,” says sociologist Darren Sherkat, director of the School of Anthropology, Political Science, and Sociology at Southern Illinois University in the US.

“[It is] really the ultimate connection between people within a society … It’s the real test of whether or not groups of people within a multicultural society are connecting with one another.”

That romantic partners usually share the same religious beliefs is part of a wider phenomenon known as homogamy or assortative mating, which refers to the tendency to choose partners similar to ourselves.

It is a universal pattern seen in different regions, countries and societies throughout history, says Professor Sherkat.

“But even where intermarriage is proscribed and the enforcement is violent and dire, people nonetheless marry outside of their group.

“Love wins — not usually, but sometimes.”

Skip ahead to explore more data:

Most and least likely religions to ‘marry their own’

Sydney couple Devi Rangarajan and Kumar Srinivasan met the day before they married.

“It was a typical Indian arranged marriage,” says Devi, 44.

Asked if she was nervous, she replies: “Not at all, because that’s how we were brought up, when I was a child. It’s always parents who find a guy or girl for [their child], so we are used to it.

“If I found a boy [for myself], I would not have found such a wonderful, handsome man, and such a good personality,” she adds, beaming.

Devi Rangarajan and Kumar Srinivasan are among 90 per cent of married Hindus partnered within the religion.(Supplied)

The pair, who are both engineers, say their shared religion makes their marriage stronger. They celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary earlier this month.

“Faith plays a significant role in our life and our children’s lives,” says Kumar, 46.

“It’s a glue that brings us together and keeps us intact.”

More than 90 per cent of the roughly 345,000 married Hindus in Australia are married to one another, making Hindus among the most likely to partner within their religion. Among the general partnered population, just 3.3 per cent of people are married to a Hindu, making Hindus more than 27 times as likely to marry another Hindu.

The religions with the highest proportion married within the group are Brethren (95.2 per cent), Islam (92.6 per cent), Sikhism (92.3 per cent), Hinduism (91.6 per cent) and Druse (89.4 per cent), a branch of Shia Islam and an ethno-religious minority located around Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Among same-sex couples, the religions with the highest proportion married within the group are: No religion (83 per cent), Sikhism (74 per cent), Hinduism (64 per cent), Miscellaneous (62 per cent), and Islam (58 per cent). For men in same-sex relationships, Pentecostal (59 per cent) featured in the top five, while for women in same-sex relationships, Buddhism (64 per cent) was also top-ranked.

“You’re trying to find somebody to love. It’s expected that people who are in cloistered communities, they’re connected mostly to people who are like them, for whatever reason,” Professor Sherkat says.

“This is often bounded by religion and ethnicity, so it turns out you find somebody who is just like you.”

He said the gender gap for same-sex Hindu and Muslim couples married within each of the respective religions made sense. (Hindu men 59 per cent vs Hindu women 71 per cent; Muslim men 51 per cent vs Muslim women 70 per cent).

“For Islamic women, they’re way more likely to hook up with another Islamic woman … [Islamic men] have more opportunity to hook up with people different from them because of their gender privilege.”

La Trobe University historian Tim Jones, who specialises in social research on religion and sexuality, says it’s possible that queer and same-sex couples in Sikhism, Hinduism and Islam were “trauma bonding” — where people form a connection over similar experiences of discrimination.

“People are probably unlikely to be open [about their sexuality] in those communities. But then if they… meet someone from the same background as them in a queer space, they’re likely to bond partly from experiences of racism and religious discrimination in queer communities.”

These religions had grown rapidly in recent decades, making it easier for same-sex-attracted people to find a partner within the group, he adds.

Among same-sex couples, the religions with the lowest proportion married within the group are: Salvation Army (12 per cent), Lutheran (17 per cent), Other Protestant (20 per cent), Presbyterian (21 per cent) and Satanism (22 per cent)

“Queer people in the Salvation Army are almost always living discrete, closeted lives, which might explain why they’re having partners outside [the group],” he said.

“They probably feel like outsiders in their religion.”

He says Protestant, Lutheran and Presbyterian are likely to have high levels of nominal affiliation, while Satanism usually captures people with anti-Christian views, including those who have experienced abuse or misogyny at the hands of the church or are outraged at those abuses.

The experts who spoke to the ABC emphasised that when it comes to beliefs about marriage, the real division — which is not captured in census data — is often within a religion, rather than between religions.

“[It’s the] highly invested, sectarian groups — exclusivist Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims or Christians — who are most interested in restricting and controlling marriage to keep it within the group … Not everybody from those traditions has those same strictures,” he says.

However, exclusivity serves an important purpose for those seeking to enforce it, Professor Sherkat says. “Those kinds of strictures make boundaries that protect your group.”

But there is one exception to the rule, which has withstood the test of time and place.

“Whenever you have groups that have similarities in social status, then they will have more intermarriage, even if there’s a religious divide,” Professor Sherkat says.

One example is US Vice-President JD Vance, who identifies as a conservative Catholic and is married to a Hindu woman. “That’s OK because they’re both Yale Law grads,” Professor Sherkat says.

It’s also how Professor Sherkat’s Armenian Christian grandmother married his Azerbaijani Muslim grandfather about a century ago.

“You had the rich Armenians and the rich Muslims and next thing you know, a couple of them are hooking up, and it was beneficial. It brought families together.”

Why some religions marry within the group

Melbourne academic John Zeleznikov doesn’t consider himself a devout Jew, but says he would be reluctant to marry someone who wasn’t Jewish.

John met his wife Lisa in 1992, after Lisa sold his parents an ad in the Jewish newspaper where she worked. They went on their first date one week after speaking on the phone, and got engaged less than a week after that.

“Although we are not devout practitioners, being Jewish is who we are,” says John, who has been married to Lisa for 33 years.(Supplied)

John says he fell in love with Lisa before they had even met, when he called to ask her out. “She was so personable.”

Lisa interrupts: “I didn’t understand three-quarters of the words he was using … And when we did meet, I knew what he was going to look like: short and daggy. And I was absolutely accurate.”

But one quality stood out from the beginning, she adds: “He’s very kind. That’s the most important thing.”

Jews are 156 times as likely to marry a Jew compared to the general partnered population. Just over 73 per cent of the 48,700-or-so married Jews in the 2021 census were married to each other, while only 0.5 per cent of the general married population are married to Jews.

“In some religious minorities, there is a strong tradition to marry within your tradition because of persecution. [It helps] ensure that that religion survives and those traditions survive,” says Deakin University sociologist Anna Halafoff.

John describes his Jewish parents as “anti-religious”, but says they still expected him to marry a Jewish woman, perhaps because they were Holocaust survivors.

Sharing the same sorts of experiences makes it easier to trust those who come from a similar group to you, the 75-year-old explains.

“It’s just a feeling that they’re more likely to understand me, [a feeling] more of comfort than with someone who’s different.”

Religion has different functions for different communities, Dr Jones says. For example, the Christian model emphasises belief in salvation, while many Eastern religions focus on religious practice and can be more about cultural identity than belief.

He says it’s telling that the religions with the steepest declines in in-marriage are mostly religions of practice linked to waves of migration and cultural identity, he says; whereas those with the steepest increases are mostly minority religions where belief is important.

The ABC’s analysis of census data shows that in the 20 years to 2021, the religions that saw the sharpest falls in marriage within the group included: Japanese religions (-24 percentage points), Armenian Apostolic (-15pp), Greek Orthodox (-13pp), Buddhism (-12pp) and Wiccan (-11.6pp), a modern pagan religion whose followers typically identify as witches.

Those with the biggest increases in marriage within the religion were miscellaneous religions (+24pp), which includes many minority religions including Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Rastafari and Yezidi, for example; no religion (+10pp), Brethren (+5.4pp), Hinduism (+3pp) and Latter-day Saints (+2.3pp).

Among same-sex couples, the religions that saw the sharpest rises in marriage within the group included Hinduism (+25pp), Baptist (+14pp), Buddhism (+12pp), Islam (+12pp) and Lutheran (+11pp). Those decreasing most were: Eastern Orth (-39pp), (Wiccan -38pp), Spiritualism -21pp, Paganism -20pp.

For Adelaide lawyer Esther Phipps, the best thing to come out of the Latter-day Saints was finding her husband, Taylor Tucci. For the institution that brought them together, it would arguably turn out to be the worst thing.

“It really was through finding each other that we had the strength to then leave the religion together,” says Esther.

Both Esther and Taylor were born and raised in the Mormon church, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They were married in a Mormon temple in 2018 — or in the Mormon tradition, “sealed for time and eternity”.

Latter-day Saints are more than 340 times as likely to marry another member: more than 76 per cent of Australia’s 23,000 married Latter-day Saints are married to a Latter-day Saint, compared to just 0.2 per cent of the general population.

Taylor and Esther married in their early twenties. They felt pressured to marry within the Mormon religion, Esther says.(Supplied) “The shared religion was definitely a big part of it,” says Esther about finding love with Taylor. The pair left the Mormon church together. Leaving the Mormon church was like “having multiple existential crises” but “it’s still one of the best decision we ever made”, Esther says.(Supplied)

“It certainly wasn’t like a love at first sight story. But when … it did happen, it was the easiest thing ever. We just really connected,” Esther says.

The pair dated for 10 months before getting engaged. Esther was 23. Taylor was 25. Both have only ever dated Mormons, which Esther says was difficult because “it’s quite a small pool”. The pair hail from different cities — Taylor grew up in Melbourne, Esther in Adelaide.

“We really wouldn’t have met without the religion,” Esther says.

“There’s quite a bit of pressure to marry within the religion and also to marry young … [so] the church would do a lot of conventions and activities to help [members meet], because there’s not that many Mormons in Australia.”

Why some patterns change over time, while others don’t

In Australia, 77 per cent of first-generation immigrants are married within their religion, compared to 65 per cent among second-generation immigrants (the Australian-born children of immigrants born overseas) and 62 per cent among subsequent generations (which cannot be further separated in census data).

This is partly because many first-generation immigrants arrive as a couple, and tend to settle in tight-knit communities that are culturally, linguistically and socio-economically similar.

“In diaspora communities, when people settle in a new society or country, religious organisations often play a really strong role in helping people to settle,” Professor Halafoff says.

This is the story of her own parents, who met through the Russian Orthodox community in Australia.

“For newer migrants, life just revolves much more around your cultural community … I grew up [in Australia] in the Russian communities where you literally went to Russian balls to meet your prospective partner.”

For most groups, these cultural and religious bonds tend to fade over time, as later generations mix more with other groups and, in some cases, lose their linguistic or personal connection to the original culture.

Immigration also affects the size of a religion, which, in turn, links to two parallel trends, says Professor Halafoff.

“When you have larger religious groups, then you’ve got more potential to find a partner within your own religious group,” she explains.

On the other hand, rising numbers can also lead to “an increase in inter-religious marriages because there’s more contact with diverse religions and … more acceptance of diverse religious beliefs.”

This is reflected in the data, which shows that rates of marriage within ethnic minority religions — including Buddhism, Armenian Apostolic, Syrian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Hinduism and Chinese religions — fell more starkly across the generations compared to the average.

By contrast, the religions bucking the trend — such as Brethren, Jehovah’s Witness, Lutheran and Pentecostal — are more exclusivist, all-encompassing faiths that “might not be … keeping you locked in, but they’re going to give you a lot to do on the weekends,” Professor Halafoff says.

This is how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints operates, Esther says. It was no coincidence that she and Taylor finally decided to leave during the COVID pandemic.

“Mormonism is really not just a Sunday religion … You might have a Sunday night activity. You can have Saturday activities or there’ll be one or two things on in the week. It’s just very, very demanding on your time,” she says.

“So COVID was this critical circuit breaker that happened right when I was really fracturing over [my doubts about the church]. It was just this beautiful break for us … because we couldn’t attend.”

Professor Halafoff says that the “prosperity gospel” of religions like the Latter-day Saints and Pentecostalism, where economic success is seen as positive in God’s eyes, is “very aligned with neoliberalism”, which has helped them to grow.

She says both religions have harnessed technology to attract new followers to “thriving, exciting, entertaining religious communities” and, because of this, also have a strong emphasis on connecting youth, she says.

“Then once you meet your partner, the church also will try and help keep you together and strengthen your union.”

For Esther and Taylor, leaving the Mormon church actually brought the pair closer to one another, Esther says. The 30-year-old says it’s still one of the best decisions they ever made — and having each other made it possible.

The hardest part was losing the community and “being afraid of the way it would affect family relationships,” she says.

“But then finding that kind of freedom, learning to trust my own decision-making, all of that was a really wonderful thing to discover in the aftermath.

“It is tricky to leave, but you know, things are pretty great on the other side too.”

The top-ranked choice outside your religion

‘No religion’ was either the top or 2nd choice of partner for all 31 non-Christian religious groups and the 2nd choice of partner for nine of the 24 Christian denominations in the dataset. (The top choice in almost all religions is a partner with the same religion, while the 2nd choice of partner for most Christian denominations was Catholic.)

“You’re more likely to hook up with somebody who’s not religious because there’s more non-religious people,” says Professor Sherkat.

“The stigma … has decreased.”

Between 2001 and 2021, the percentage of Australians declaring no religion on the census soared 2.4-fold. The census data for married and de facto couples reflects these same proportions: in 2021, just under 38 per cent of the partnered population had no religion, compared to 15 per cent in 2001.

Among same-sex couples, those figures jump to 64 per cent in 2021 and 41 per cent in 2001.

“In queer communities there’s an extra push out of religion because if you’re open about your sexuality, you’re more likely to be rejected and experience discrimination,” says La Trobe’s Dr Jones.

Tiki Ohira, 38, says going to an Anglican high school on the Gold Coast involved “religious trauma, mostly around sexuality and identity.”

“There’s really nice parts to religion,” says Tiki Ohira, but organised religions also tend to “lean towards hate and persecution.”(Supplied)

“When I was much younger, I had a lot of internalised hate around that because I guess I knew from a very young age that I was queer … [It] was weird trying to understand a) whether or not I had made a choice, because I didn’t think I had; and, b) that my existence was sinful.”

This led to significant mental health issues during adolescence, Tiki says. “And in terms of partners, I wouldn’t particularly seek out anyone who was quite Christian.”

Tiki has been with their partner, Ali, who is also non-religious, for nearly three years. (Both use they/them pronouns.) They said the relationship works because the two are quite different. For example, Tiki is introverted, Ali is extroverted; Tiki is a scientist, Ali is an artist; Tiki eats meat, Ali is a vegetarian. You get the idea.

Tiki says that, from the first date, what attracted them to Ali from the start is that “[Ali] is an incredibly vibrant person”.

“They are also extremely blunt, which I really love as someone who struggles with nuance and social cues … because there’s no space for my anxious thinking!”

Tiki and Alli are among the 78 per cent of nearly 145,500 same-sex couples in Australia in which neither partner is religious. This is the most common “religious” pairing for same-sex couples.

Among the nearly four million married Australians with no religion, 78 per cent were married to each other, compared to 69 per cent in 2001.

However, after adjusting for group size, the ABC’s analysis found that religious ‘nones’ were half as likely to marry within their group in 2021 as in 2001. Furthermore, they’re the least likely of the 55 religious denominations in the dataset to marry within their group.

Ryan, the atheist from Newcastle, and Frem, the “very religious” Catholic, have now been married for six years. The key to their success, Frem says, is mutual respect for their differences.

Ryan says Frem doesn’t push him to go to church and doesn’t talk about religion, unless it’s “what they ate at Bible study”.

Frem says Ryan has always respected her boundaries, too — “whether that meant not going out on Friday nights or Sunday mornings, or waiting until we were engaged before living together.”

He even drives her to church every Sunday.

This is the second in a series of data stories looking at why and how we choose our partners. Our first story analysed who you’ll probably marry, based on your job. Upcoming stories will examine ancestry and education. If you have a story you’d like to share, please get in touch via inga.ting@abc.net.au

Credits

Notes about this story

The Australian Bureau of Statistics makes small random adjustments to cell values to protect data confidentiality. These adjustments may affect some totals and percentagesLow numbers means data for same-sex couples was not available for some religions. The ABC has included as much data as was considered reliableData excludes people who did not report a religion in the census or did not adequately describe their religion for the purposes of classificationPercentages are calculated as a share of people with partners who reported a religion in the census. In 2021, the overall rate of non-response was about 7 per cent.The census category “Christian” in the dataset refers to “Christian, not further defined”. The ABS uses “Not further defined (nfd)” when enough information exists to partially code a response, but not have enough to code it to the most detailed category.Analysis of migration generation excludes people whose generation could not be determined. In 2021, this was roughly 2 per cent of people; in 2001, this was about 5 per cent of people.Love stories from the public have been edited for clarity and length. These were collected from responses to this ABC story.

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