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| Jennifer Thompson Project Title: Creating myth and ritual in interfaith families In interviewing Atlanta-area Jewish-Christian interfaith families about their interactions with the Jewish community, the experiences that the families described raised questions for me about religion's place in the individual's and the family's continually developing sense of self. Through ethnographic research, I plan to investigate how parents in middle class families resolve questions about religious selfhood, how families construct their own mythology and identity, and how institutions help and hinder these processes. Interfaith couples use various strategies to shape the religious selfhood of their children. I would like to investigate these families' strategies and practices: formal and informal religious education, use of religious educational or entertainment materials and display of religious symbols in the home; and home-based religious practices. These strategies may help to form selves as well as the entire family unit, just as the individuals' experiences may not clearly separate the self from the family. I also plan to investigate the strategies that organizations use in interacting with interfaith families. How does their treatment of interfaith families affect the family's religious mythology and ritual practice? In what directions do institutions expand their definitions of religious participation in order to include interfaith families? Beyond leading or attending religious services, or belonging to a synagogue, how might synagogues and interfaith organizations meet their own needs, however they define them, as well as those of interfaith families?
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