Introduction
This article analyzes how couples with one nonreligious partner and one practicing Christian partner discuss their differences during couple interviews and individual follow-ups, primarily focusing on nonreligiosity. Drawing on theories of everyday secularity and nonreligiosity, the study uses a mixedness approach, examining intimate relationships in relation to the societal context. The partners share many privileged positionalities (white, cisgender, Dutch) but can be considered ‘mixed’ in terms of religious practice and self-identification, with one partner Christian and the other nonreligious.
I analyse how nonreligiosity comes to the surface among the nonreligious (self-identified as such, or as atheist, agnostic, or secular) men in the case study. Prior to meeting their partner, these men rarely reflected on their religious positioning, assuming a secular neutral stance indicative of a majority position. Scholars today generally agree that the secular is not neutral, but connected to power, colonialism and religio-racialised difference, which is also applicable to Christian hegemony (Moyaert 2024, Schrijvers 2024). Secularity is contextual and shaped by local histories, such as the Calvinist Protestant legacy in the Netherlands, which continues to impact the public sphere. Less attention has been given to the intersections and differences between secularity and Christianity, especially in ethnographic realities. This article investigates these entanglements by focusing on intimate relationships, aiming to understand the meaning-making process of nonreligiosity and Christianity.
Almost all participating couples consists of a Christian woman and a nonreligious man in a monogamous heterosexual relationship.1 In their relationship, men were often prompted to reflect on their own presumptions, positionality, and self-identification for the first time (for similar reflections, see Hirschkind, 2011). This context of a couple interview offers insight into how the secular is constructed in conversation and how these couples interpret the religion/secular divide. I explore how these couples navigate and define their (non)religious identities, asking whether they can be understood as mixed. The first section of the article discusses the framework of mixedness, nonreligiosity and secularity in everyday life. The second section explains the methodology, before presenting the findings in four subsections: the self-definitions and positionalities of nonreligion; the role of science; the definition of religion; and spiritual experiences by some nonreligious men. The conclusions reflect on the question of mixedness and these couples in relation to wider societal Christian-secular hegemonic frameworks.
Relationality and Relationships: Studying the Secular in Everyday Life
This research builds on insights from critical secular studies and mixedness scholarship. Recent scholarship on the secular highlights the challenges of studying it from an ethnographic or material perspective without reinforcing the religion/secular binary. Recognising religion and the secular as co-constitutive and relational (Asad, 2003; Bracke, 2008; Fadil, 2017; Johansen, 2022; Wohlrab-Sahr and Kaden 2014), it is relevant to examine how this relationality manifests in everyday life. The research with mixed couples enables such an exploration, where mixedness is understood as fluid, context-bound, and shaped by intersecting axes of difference—including religion, race, ethnicity, and gender (Collet 2015; Fresnoza-Flot 2025). Such a perspective also reveals how mixed couples give meaning to, conform to, deviate from, or challenge societal norms of religious and racialised difference. Arweck and Nesbitt (2010) argue that intimate relationships serve as microcosms for studying societal frameworks of difference, which aligns with Jamieson’s conceptualisation of intimacy as simultaneously personal and political (1998, see also Fresnoza-Flot 2025). The concept of ‘mixedness’ bridges everyday experiences and socio-political frameworks and norms. This is different from studies of ‘interfaith’ or ‘interracial’ couples in family studies or psychology, where the focus is often on intra-family dynamics and identity (e.g. Song, 2017), or legal studies, which often examine transnational couples’ bureaucratic navigations (e.g. Zambelli and de Hart, 2025).
In mixedness scholarship, the focus typically lies on couples where one partner embodies the societal religio-racial norm, while the other deviates from it, such as Muslim-Christian couples in Europe (Collet, 2015; Cerchiaro, 2022; Therrien, Gall and Cerchiaro, 2022). Christianity and secularity are often grouped as ‘Christian-secular’ hegemony,2 but the everyday material and discursive realities of these intersections deserve further exploration (Lauwers, 2023). This research aims to deepen the understanding of the everyday meaning of religion-secular difference and nonreligion through the analysis of couple- and individual interviews.
In scholarship, nonreligiosity generally refers to a form of practice and self-identification, while secularity denotes a broader epistemic framework, conceptually different from secularisation as a process of disaffiliation, or secularism as a political framework. While these aspects of the secular overlap, this research focuses on the secular as epistemic framework and uses the term nonreligiosity as self-identification. Intimate relationships between Christians and nonreligious people have primarily been studied in the context of North America (although not exclusively, e.g. Blanes and Oustinova-Stjepanovic, 2017; Engelke, 2015), where the category of ‘Nones’ typically refers to religiously unaffiliated individuals who were socialised as Christian (King, 2023; Manning, 2015; Sumerau and Cragun, 2016). Importantly, however, studies in the United States occur in a context where nonreligiosity is largely exceptional (Wohlrab-Sahr and Kaden, 2014), which contrasts with in the Netherlands.
The latest census in the Netherlands estimated that fifty-four percent of the 17 million population does not identify with a religion and/or attends church services (CBS, 2021) and can be considered ‘nonreligious’. Historically, the country has been shaped by Calvinist Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, which make up the largest religious groups at 15 and 18 per cent, respectively. In this sense, Christians can be considered a minority group. However, this is not conceived as such in public discourse. Muslims are mainly minoritised and targeted with anti-migration and Islamophobic rhetoric, while their population (five percent) tends to be exaggerated.
Moreover, scholars have shown that Dutch secularity is strongly influenced by Christianity (Tamimi Arab, 2018; Lauwers, 2023; Schuh, Burchardt, and Wohlrab-Sahr, 2012; Valenta, 2012). A culturalised form of Christianity, somewhat disconnected from churches and practices, remains dominant in the public sphere: Christian holidays are observed; Christian political parties have an important role in the parliament; Sunday is the main day of rest; and Christian schools are publicly funded. Churches also impact the cityscape through architecture (within a ‘cultural heritage’ framework, Kuyk, 2023) or the sound of church bells (Tamimi Arab, 2018). Christian symbols in public spaces tend to be seen as ‘cultural’, while Islamic symbols are often perceived as religious and deviating from the norm. Thus, while the Netherlands may be statistically secular, Dutch ‘Nones’ continue to benefit from Christian privileges while non-Christian minorities do not. Moreover, although practicing Christians face secular norms, they are less affected by secular hegemony than non-Christian religious groups. In what follows, I analyse how my interlocutors give meaning to secularity and (non)religion, focusing on the nonreligious partners’ positioning. First, I provide more details about methodology and reflect on the gender dimension in the case study.
Methodology
This article analyzes couples where one partner is nonreligious and the other is practicing Christian in the Netherlands and is based on interviews with thirteen couples in 2023: twenty-six participants in total, from monogamous and majority heterosexual relationships. The research is part of a broader project group with Marianne Moyaert as principal investigator, Deniz Aktaş as PhD candidate, and Nella van den Brandt and me as postdoctoral researchers. Each focuses independently on a separate cases study with different mixed couples (Muslim-Christian, Jewish-Christian or nonreligious-Christian). The project outline, methods and data analyses were discussed with the group.
For my case study that this article is based on, couples who self-identified as having one practicing Christian3 and one nonreligious partner were invited to participate, I did not know any participants beforehand. Participant recruitment involved a general call for the broader project, with individual outreach within relevant networks.4 All who signed up met the inclusion criteria, although two couples ultimately chose not to participate.
After introductory meetings, I conducted couple interviews and individual follow-ups.5 The interviews took place at their homes and typically lasted between two and three hours. In consultation with the broader research group, I prepared an item list covering topics such as relationship milestones, religious practice, children, and the broader societal context. Follow-up interviews with the individuals focused on topics not fully addressed in the couple interviews, or those particularly relevant to the individual partner. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and qualitatively coded using Atlas.ti. I employed a thematic analysis to identify recurring themes and patterns in the ethnographic data in different phases. First, I used emic terminology, which often reflected topics on the item list (e.g. children, everyday rituals, personal beliefs, self-identification); or events in chronological order (e.g. start of the relationship, wedding). I then applied etic codes that the participants did not necessarily use, but reflected broader theoretical discussions (e.g. mixedness, privilege). For this article, I specifically focused on the ways couples spoke about nonreligion and secularity. This led to a more discursive approach in which the language used by the interlocutors was analysed more closely, for example the use of ‘science’ in relation to ‘belief’. To corroborate the results, the analyses and draft versions of this article were discussed in the research group, as well as with critical philosopher and expert on Dutch secularity and Christianity Sophie Lauwers, and two key interlocutors who remain anonymous. In this publication, all personal identifiers have been removed, and participants are referred to with pseudonyms.
Whenever participants asked me about my religiosity, I replied that I do not identify with any tradition but that my parents were raised as Christian (Roman Catholic and Protestant), shaping my positionality within white normative Christianity. All interlocutors were white, Dutch, and either socialised as Christians or raised nonreligious. In the latter case, (grand)parents had usually been raised Christian. Most participants belonged to middle or middle-upper class social strata and received higher education. Ages varied from twenty-two to seventy-eight, reflecting different family lives: from students who had only recently gotten together, to married couples with young children or teenagers, and retired couples with decades long relationships. Religious difference was most pronounced early in the relationship or during key life events (such as the birth of a child), but the couples did not experience their religious mixedness daily. The interview setting is therefore somewhat forced: It asks couples to reflect on their differences and similarities, which some were used to, while for others, it was new or long passed. Knowing my research focus, many said they used the occasion to discuss their ‘mixedness’ before our after our meeting.
Almost all couples (twelve out of thirteen) consisted of a Christian woman and a nonreligious man. The remaining couple of two women is excluded from the current analysis.6 Whilst the difference in LGBTQI+ versus heterosexual participants was expected, this gender imbalance among the heterosexual couples is striking and was not observed in the other case studies of the broader project. Some studies of Muslim-Christian couples do suggest that there are more Muslim men married to Christian women than vice versa (e.g. Cerchiaro, 2022; Collet, 2015),7 but apart from that, gender remains underexplored in mixedness research. Observations in Christian communities and conversations with religious leaders suggests this is not simply selection bias: they also recognised the discrepancy.
One reason could be that overall, more women attend church than men. This is in line with the general ‘gender gap’ in religiosity between Dutch men and women as observed in statistical research (Kregting et al., 2019). This gender gap creates a shortage of marriageable men within Christian communities that could lead women to seek partners outside their religion. Huygens (2023) found that many Roman-Catholic women in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) preferred a partner of the same faith, and although many were in a relationship with a nonreligious partner, this was regarded a second choice. However, my findings did not align with this. My interlocutors explicitly rejected the idea that a nonreligious partner was a second choice, both in individual and in couple interviews. This difference may be related to denominational differences: My study mainly included Protestant women, whereas Huygens’ research focused on Roman Catholic women. Dutch Protestantism encompasses various denominations, with differences on individual church levels. Hence, even a Protestant-Protestant relationship is usually religiously mixed in some degree, which might be less the case within the Roman Catholic Church’s synodal structure.
Most couples met each other through work or mutual friends and few women explicitly searched for a Christian partner. Some who were in their thirties or twenties met via dating apps such as Tinder. Some women even explicitly mentioned preferring a nonreligious partner over a Christian one. Notably, questions about endogamy were rarely directed at the nonreligious men in the study. In a similar vein, the Christian women were asked about their religious self-identification far more often than the nonreligious men. The next section focuses on these and other findings.
Findings: Nonreligious Self-Positionings and the Truth of Science
All women self-identified as Christian, observed Christian ritual practices, were raised Christian and belonged to various denominations: mainline Protestantism (five); Reformed Protestantism (typically called ‘orthodox’, four); Baptists (two) and Roman-Catholicism (one). One woman was raised Protestant and now identifies as Baptist, the others were affiliated with denominations similar to their upbringing. They were explicit in their self-identification as ‘believing’ or Christian, and can be considered ‘practicing’ as they regularly attended church services, participated actively in a church community, and/or had Christian rituals at home, such as praying or reading the Bible. The identification as Christian could refer to heritage (how they were raised), ontological framework (belief in God), views of the afterlife (belief in heaven), everyday practice (e.g. praying), community (church) and a general mode of ethical conduct. In interviews, they readily explained what being Christian meant to them, often emphasising the joy and comfort it brought. They were accustomed to such questions of self-positioning in their social circles (friends, coworkers), often coming from nonreligious individuals. This reflects their position as different to a secularist framework, in which nonreligious is the norm and being religious is seen as deviant, with little recognition of the intimate connections between Christianity and secularity. In their relationship, the women somewhat deviated from this secular norm and received more questions and remarks about their religious positioning.
The nonreligious men were rarely asked such questions, especially not prior to meeting their partner and Christian family-in-law. Although they were sometimes asked to position themselves by their partners’ Christian peers, this questioning was more often directed towards the Christian women themselves, for example the question what it was like for the women to be with a nonreligious man. Overall, these men, conforming to the secular norm, were rarely asked to make their position explicit. This was reflected in the interviews, where they did not describe themselves with the same ease as the women. Following Lois Lee (2014), nonreligious is a relational matter of self-definition that the men I interviewed expressed in various ways (see also Catto et al., 2023). Seven out of twelve described themselves as nonreligious or nonbelieving, one of them also identified as humanist. Two identified as atheist, by which they meant a strong conviction in the nonexistence of God, and two others as agnostic, expressing uncertainty about God’s existence. One preferred the term secular because he did not want to be defined in the negative (e.g. non-religious), as if he did not have a conviction.
Many men assumed a position of neutrality: They did not have any strong feelings about religion and were ‘just nothing’ (gewoon niets8), to cite Daan. In several conversations, their Christian partners encouraged them to be more specific, like Daan’s partner Eline. When I asked Daan how he would describe himself, he replied:
Daan: Uhm… well, simply nonbelieving. That’s it. Also not believing in anything else, so to speak. Very rational.
Eline: Isn’t there a term for that?
Daan: Atheist? Or what is it?
Author: Yes, could be… There is no one right or wrong label, I’m curious to learn what that would mean to you and how you would describe yourself.
Daan: Yeah, no that’s it. Just, yeah, I don’t think there’s anything extra either. Some people talk about… the whole philosophical question, like ‘there must be something more’, but I don’t really have that either. I think there’s just… I just think very scientifically about things… Boring, huh?
It was interesting to observe that Eline intervened, and they searched for a ‘correct’ label together. Once I clarified that I was primarily interested in Daan’s personal description, he described his position with reference to beliefs: He does not believe that there is anything ‘extra’ between heaven and earth. Instead, he is ‘very rational’ and has a ‘scientific approach’, which I return to later.
For most of the men, their nonreligiosity appeared neutral and went unremarked upon in their social circles. It was often only after meeting their girlfriend, engaging with their Christian family-in-law, and encountering their partner’s friends and community that they began to reflect on their position. Gender might play a role here as well: perhaps men are generally asked less about their emotional or intimate personal thoughts. Perhaps the intimacy of a relationship prompts all individuals to explore these more vulnerable sides. However, the secular norms are evident here, as being nonreligious is seen as a neutral position, requiring little reflection. The way that men responded to the question to reflect is analysed in the following subsection.
Indifferent(ism)
How the men related to Christianity was impacted by their prior knowledge about religion and their childhood experiences. Two groups emerged (with some overlap): Those raised as Christians and those socialised as nonreligious. Seven out of twelve men were not raised with any religion, and religion had little relevance in their childhood. While their grandparents had usually been Christian, this family background was not deemed important. Only a few recalled one parent speaking negatively about religion, but most parents never gave it any explicit attention. This aligns with the findings of Anna Strhan and Rachael Shillitoe, who argue that not speaking or practicing religion at home is one ‘factor in the transmission of non-religion, as the lack of socialization in relation to religion has the effect of socializing children as non-religious’ (2019, 1100). In similar ways, these men were socialised as non-religious.
This sense of irrelevance resonates with scholarship of nonreligion, such as Lee’s notion of indifference (2014) or Schnell’s ‘existential indifference’ (2010). According to Quack and Schuh (2017, 5), this indifference to religion ‘undermines its authority’ as it is deemed irrelevant. Importantly, this indifference does not suggest explicit hostility or rejection (Quack and Schuh, 2017, 6). Instead, it reflects a sense of distance from religion and a general lack of interest. One example from my study is Niek, a man in his early thirties who was in a relationship with Christian Marleen for one year when we met. Reflecting on his childhood, he said:
Niek: We never really spoke about [religion] at all… there was just little attention paid to it. Although I don’t think [my parents] have anything against it. […] I’ve always been fairly neutral, so I’ve never thought anything like: ‘that’s very weird, that’s very stupid, or this is very beautiful or very nice.’ Of course, I’ve never been religious so I’ve never… I’m not sure how to say this… I’ve never been into it because I wasn’t raised that way. If you’re raised with it from a young age, it becomes something very normal.
In Niek’s citation something came up that I noticed more often. He begins with his personal story and struggles to find the words: He’s never been very conscious about religion; he has been fairly neutral. Toward the end of the citation, however, the style shifts and he speaks more generally about religion: ‘If you’re raised with it from a young age, it becomes something very normal.’ For him, religion was not normal because it was not part of his upbringing. While he did not recall his parents speaking negatively about Christianity, Niek later mentioned that he had some negative stereotypes from the media, seeing it as outdated, dogmatic, and conservative. This was a common theme among men raised as nonreligious. Most of these assumptions began to change when they started discussing religion with their partner, often the first practicing Christian of their age with whom they engaged in these conversations.
These ‘indifferent’ interlocutors found this subject intriguing and participated in certain activities, especially early in relationship when they experienced ‘mixedness’ more explicitly and wanted to bridge the difference. Some attended an introductory Alpha course, often with their partner, hoping to fill their experienced gap in knowledge about Christianity. However, many expressed disappointment when they experienced the course as evangelising instead of informational, suspecting its intent was conversion—which is understandable considering Alpha is indeed organised in the context of evangelisation (Hunt, 2019). Many also attended their partner’s church but were similarly wary of conversion efforts here.9 Still, most were curious about this aspect of their partner’s life. Niek and others were mostly relieved to be welcomed in the church as a non-Christian and were happy to participate every now and then. Over time, this participation often waned, because the nonreligious partner reflected that it did not offer anything new anymore.
These (formerly) indifferent men, curious to learn more, were different from those more antagonistic toward Christianity. These sentiments were mainly found among men raised as Christians who stopped attending church as young adults, when their parents no longer required this. They associated Christianity with compulsory church attendance and a strict, boring aspect of life, with no reference to a God image. Unlike the first group, they had prior knowledge about Christianity but in a largely negative way. This reflects an engaged indifferentism where ‘disinterest in religion […] is the core aspect of an individual’s “religious” identity and is something they are invested in and committed to.’ (Lee, 2014, 474).10 This implies an active positioning against Christianity, while indifference is a passive neglect and disinterest. Two men in this group described themselves as atheist, explicitly rejecting the existence of God. Due to negative associations, these men were more hesitant when they met their Christian partner and most suspicious of potential conversion efforts. They were also less inclined to engage in the rituals or community of their partner. Occasionally, they attended a church service—mainly ‘for their partner’, as one explained—on special occasions such as holidays, weddings, or funerals.
One example of indifferentism comes from an interview with Giel and Hannah, a couple in their late twenties who have been together for five years. Both were raised Protestant: Giel in a mainline Protestant church and Hannah in a more conservative Reformed Protestant church. While she remained active in that denomination, Giel explained:
Giel: I’m the non-believer of this couple. I attended church until I was 18, not by choice, but because my parents said I had to. […] It didn’t do much for me. I still don’t think much of it. […] I don’t feel connected to it; I don’t have an opinion… Or maybe I do have an opinion, like: ‘I just don’t really want to be there, if I don’t have to.’
At first, Giel’s response echoed those indifferent men who claimed not to ‘have an opinion’. However, as he continued, it became clear that he did have an opinion, a decidedly negative one, finding Christianity ‘unnecessary’:
Giel: I actually think there’s nothing [transcendental], but you can never be 100% sure. Even if something exists… I don’t believe, in any case, that attending church is necessary. I know Christianity well and I don’t really see any reason to engage with it. Even if it were true, what would it do for me?
Unlike the indifference and curiosity expressed by the first group, Giel assumed a strong position against Christianity. His explicit nonreligious identity was important for him, and he saw religion as irrelevant and unnecessary, not because of a lack of interest, but precisely because of his experiences with Christianity.
One might expect that such a strong anti-Christian stance can cause tensions between the partners. In this case, however, Hannah responded that Giel has the right to his opinion, but that she had a different view and experience. When asked what religion meant to her, she replied:
Hannah: I do enjoy going to church, to come together with people. I enjoy the singing and often, with the sermons, I feel like it gives me new insights, things to think about, to work on.
Whenever Giel and Hannah visit his parents, she sometimes attends church with her parents-in-law. About this church, the same that Giel grew up in, she said: ‘I don’t really like that church, so I can understand why Giel stopped going’, expressing empathy with his negative perspective. Like Hannah, other women were often understanding in the couple interviews and asked follow-up questions themselves, offering insight into the relationship dynamic, where the men could voice negative views about their partner’s religion, without leading to conflict.
In most cases, these couples separated their life worlds, with Christianity as belonging to the women. This became more challenging when couples had children, as parenting was one of the clearest examples where their backgrounds ‘mixed’ rather than remained separated. The question of childrearing in Christian-nonreligious couples is broad and beyond this article’s scope. To be brief, all five couples who had children together had agreed that their kids would attend church on Sundays until they were old enough—usually teenagers—to decide for themselves. This motivated men to attend church services and participate in other church related activities to spend time together and to support their partner.
With regards to childrearing, Christian practices in everyday life, such as praying before dinner, reading the Bible, singing Christian songs before bed, were primarily considered the responsibility of women, as they were the Christian partner. However, the nonreligious partner did not engage in ‘nonreligious socialisation’ (Strhan and Shillitoe 2019). This is not unique to this setting: in various contexts, historically and today, (religious) socialisation is considered a women’s role (Cheruvallil-Contractor and Rye, 2016; Day 2017; Page, 2016). A few men pointed out that they found it important to teach their children about their options and explicitly tell them that they are nonreligious: ‘Mom is Christian, and dad is not’, one participant said. However, the nonreligious socialisation was not considered as important as Christian, partly because nonreligiosity was considered the societal norm and partly also because the responsibility for socialisation, in general, tended to lean towards the women.
Science and Truth
All participants acknowledged that the men’s nonreligiosity did not mean that they lacked ethical views, existential frameworks, or worldviews. For many, science was primary source for meaning. The mention of science comes up more in studies of nonreligious people, sometimes with reference to the classic ‘religion versus science’ constellation, other times as a defining feature of a positive atheist identity: Instead of being only anti-religious, they are simultaneously pro-science. As Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Tom Kaden (2014, 109) put it: ‘the reference to science has a special significance of bestowing a positive identity on the non-religious attitude whilst distinguishing it from religion.’
This self-positioning came up in my research as well. When asked, many men described their meaning system (Taves, 2018) in rationalised, disembodied, transhistorical and science-based terms. This reflects the prioritising of cerebral and seemingly rational knowing, over knowing through the body and experience: think of Daan who identified as ‘very rational’. Maarten, whose grandparents were Roman Catholic and who has been in a relationship with Sanne for twenty years, raising two teenage children, expressed his view in similar ways:
Maarten: I do want to be able to explain things, we can explain more and more. I don’t really understand that you’d get that out of a book, a very old book [the Bible]. I think, maybe you can just write a new book, wouldn’t that make more sense? And what would that book contain? I’d much rather think of that for myself, what I think is good… I don’t feel I need the pastor for it.
In our conversations, Maarten expressed an explicit disregard for the church hierarchy in Roman Catholicism, where, in his opinion, the pastor has too much power. Maarten’s statement reflects indifferentism: he takes a strong position against Christianity and suggests that it is unnecessary but specifically targets religious leaders: He does not need a pastor to explain the world. Instead of the very old book of the Bible, he would write his own ‘book’, based on scientific evidence.
The discussion of science resonates with Latour’s reflections on secular Science lovers (capitalised). For many, Latour (2017) argues, Science represents a system of brute facts and truths that are universal and timeless–quite similar to what Christianity can be accused of by critics. The inherent diversity of science, its multiplication of agents and constant flow of critical review, are usually not taken into account. This nuance was similarly absent from the views of the men in my study. Those who voiced such a scientific approach often considered science to be the realm of truths and objective facts, separating it from Christianity, which was considered just one way of explaining the world when scientific truth was unavailable. Such a ‘conflict narrative’ also comes up in Catto et.al’s study of nonreligious scientists, as an ‘important cultural frame’ (2023, 5) in which science is considered incompatible with religion. The idea of my participants was that religion ultimately becomes redundant if Science is followed, reflecting a secularisation thesis often disputed in academia today.
Another characteristic noticed by Latour, is that Science people are often indifferent to historical context, as they have ‘access to universal truths that exist for all eternity’ (2017, 165). This came up in the interviews as well. The Christian partners were far more nuanced in their view of the historical and national context of their religion: They personalised their belief and did not consider this to reflect a universal truth. Nonreligious partners did not include such a contextualisation, which points to the norm and neutrality of science-based discourses. Similarly, Catto et.al reflect that ‘religious people become constructed as a less scientific outgroup, and science idealized, with little critical reflection on its own historic dark sides or ideologies’ (2023, 5). For the nonreligious men, the Christian partner had a religion, and they had science.
Many women emphasised that their belief in God did not contrast with scientific truth, questioning the conflict narrative (Catto et al., 2023) articulated by their partners. One interlocutor pointed out that Christians relate to science in several different ways, of which a conflict between science and religion is just one option that is rarely expressed in real life. Referring to Ian Barbour’s (2000) typology, she mentioned that science and religion can also be considered as equally truthful, but independent; can be dialogue partners; or can be integrated. However, most nonreligious people were, in her words, quite ‘dogmatic’ in their formulation of a conflict narrative.
Some women wanted to learn more about their partner’s meaning systems, especially why and how their views differed. In an individual interview, Dieuwertje described that she had initially felt confused: ‘If he doesn’t believe in God, what gives him purpose? How do you do good?’ This type of misunderstanding and experience of difference did not only arise among the nonreligious men, but some religious women were similarly unfamiliar with not believing. Some couples engaged more with these questions in the interviews, such as Barbara and Casper, a couple in their sixties who have been together for ten years. Barbara identifies as Roman Catholic and Casper as nonreligious. Casper is a mathematician, and when we discussed his love for math, the couple discussed the similarities between Casper’s love for mathematics and Barbara’s love for Roman Catholicism. In the end, they concluded that, despite the often-heard conflict between science and religion, both reflect a conviction that share characteristics, such as providing a community, a sense of purpose and an answer to existential questions of life. Moreover, both convictions gave them great joy and enriched their lives. In the end, Barbara and Casper concluded that perhaps, for them, religion and science were not so oppositional after all.
Defining Religion
With this emphasis on science as a secular conviction or truth, came a definition of religion, often reflecting ‘negative generalizations’ (Catto et al., 2023, 8). Here the back-and-forth between the partners gave interesting clues about secular/religious difference in everyday life. At some points, the partners emphasised their commonality with regards to ethical views and practices, disregarding the label of ‘mixed’. On other occasions, secularity was clearly distinguished from Christianity and the mixedness became more evident. One example comes from the conversation with Bart and Amber, who are in their late twenties and have been together for four years. He was raised with no religion (neither were his parents) and she is part of a mainline Protestant church, being raised in what she described a stricter orthodox Reformed church. Bart described (non)religion as follows:
Bart: Often, […] it’s as if the religious person, the one who believes, has something extra that the other does not have… But for me, it’s a set of life convictions on all matters: a conviction about everything in life. You [Amber] share that set with many others in Christianity. But I also have an opinion about everything, you know, or a conviction. But I don’t adhere to anything… in that sense, I don’t have a religion because I don’t share it with a large group. (emphasis in original)
Now, Amber said:
Amber: You often see religion as a… construct… like a set of rules […] But it’s not just top-down from the religion, as if I haven’t thought things through. The foundation for me, is Christianity. And you also have a certain foundation out of which you live.
In this citation, Bart individualises convictions and suggests that the difference between his and a religious view is that religious people share their conviction with a larger group. When asked further, his convictions did not seem to differ that much from the majority, so there would actually be a rather large group with whom he shares his views: the secular majority, although this group is not organised in a similar way as Amber’s Christian community, and is less visible.
Like Bart, many male partners tended to explain religion, even unconsciously. On the one hand, religion was seen as deviating from the secular norm. On the other hand, they frequently claimed similarity to Christian values, asserting that certain core values are ‘normal’ for society as a whole, reducing religion to a cognitive system of values. In this way, Christianity is secularised and culturalised, and the normativity of the secular is reinforced. The Christian heritage of these values was not recognised: The values did not have Christian roots, nor did they historically impact secular worldviews in the Netherlands. Instead, Christian interpretations were seen as one way of expressing otherwise secular, timeless, and universal values.
A common example is the Ten Commandments. ‘Those are important for everyone’, said Luc. In such cases, the Ten Commandments came to represent a generic ethical framework thought to be universally relevant. This specifically referred to commandments five through ten, which prohibit killing, adultery and stealing. The first four commandments (relating to God) were typically left out of the conversation and were, on second instance, not considered to be relevant to all of humanity. These discussions show that while claims of similarity were often made, they were not always substantiated by deeper knowledge. Instead, Christian values were considered as just one manifestation of broader moral principles, such as the commandment not to kill—which, in Daan’s words, ‘doesn’t need religion’.
Of further relevance is the intervention made by Amber, as she defends her position and corrects the idea that she lacks a mind of her own or does not think things through. This speaks back to the stereotype that religion is connected to irrationality and the body, and the secular to rationality and the mind. While Amber corrected the assumption of irrationality, she also stressed that religion is not just about ‘values’. Instead of seeing religion as a solely cognitive frame or set of values, Amber and other Christian women emphasised the importance of an emotional, embodied relationship with God and the significance of marking life events with rituals. The definition of religion as sharing convictions was considered narrow and limiting, not representative of their own experiences, and they advocated for a more ritualistic and embodied understanding of faith. While many men were familiar with discussions of ‘ethical values’, they often lacked the language to engage with these aspects of Christianity. There was less attention to these embodied experiences and the broader valuable aspects of their partner’s Christian practice and community. However, conversations about religion provided some men with an opportunity to engage with existential questions in a way they were not used to.
Spiritual nonbelievers
Most men had no affinity with spirituality, religion, or God(s). A few did engage more with questions of spirituality in, or triggered by, their relationship. However, talking about these experiences proved to be rather difficult in the interview setting, as well as in their everyday life. This resonates with the observations of Atko Remmel (2017, 132):
I ask my interviewees at the end of the interview how they feel about talking about their personal beliefs. It is no problem for convinced atheists, who feel their opinions are “normal” and supported by science. Nor is it a problem for believers, who have grown up in religious families and who regard religion as a normal part of their everyday life. It is quite a strong problem, however, for nonbelievers with superstitions or supernatural beliefs; they fear that public attention could make them look ridiculous.
Most of the participants fit Remmel’s definition of ‘convinced atheist’ or ‘believer’. A few did have a form of belief in supernatural powers or spiritual experiences. These cases were an exception to the rule but highlight the fluidity of categories like ‘nonreligious’ and allows for an openness and nuance to the binary between nonreligion and religion reiterated by other couples. In this section, I explore one of those stories.
Chris and Dieuwertje are a couple in their early thirties, whose wedding I was invited to during the fieldwork. In our first conversation, we discussed religious or spiritual experiences. They shared how neither one of them believes in coincidences and how they had shared experiences where they felt a spiritual presence and sense of purpose or faith. Initially, we mainly discussed the question of belief or religion in relation to Dieuwertje, the Christian partner. Toward the end of the first interview, Chris mentioned that he recognised they way Dieuwertje talked about God. He added:
Chris: I still find it… and it’s getting better over the past years… but it’s a sensitive topic, to really talk about those experiences. We’re very cautious in that. At least, I am very cautious.
Dieuwertje: I think you mainly refer to experiences of God, the level of emotions and feelings.
Chris: Yes, that feeling, we do that very gently, very carefully… […] Uhm… having these emotional experiences together… we don’t really talk about it… it continues to be… it’s very vulnerable, talking about it… I do think so, I still experience it that way.
Dieuwertje: Yeah, vulnerable or uhm… I also experience it as a sort of sacral, holy space, one that you don’t enter just like that. It feels a kind of sacred.
For Dieuwertje, not discussing some of her personal experiences represented a sacred space: There were experiences that could not be put into words, and trying to do so would diminish their sacredness. I had individual follow up meetings with both partners, where Chris shared an additional reason why he felt vulnerable and hesitant to discuss experiences with God. He opened up about his own spiritual journeys, which included reincarnation, meditation and rituals that can be considered pagan. Chris explained that he finds it difficult to talk about this because he is afraid that people will make fun of him or make him feel ‘ridiculous’ (Remmel, 2017, 132). He also felt that Dieuwertje has more ease with these conversations, as someone who had experiences of God her whole life within a recognised framework, being familiar with the common vocabulary. For Chris, the lack of familiarity made it difficult to talk about his spiritual experiences and made this a sensitive topic, not only because of their sacredness. A lack of language implied a lack of control over how to convey his feelings and experiences, making this even more challenging.
Chris did not consider himself to be religious. Nor did he describe himself as spiritual, which makes him somewhat different than the ‘spiritual but not religious’ people often described by scholars of religion (Aune, 2011; Heelas and Woodhead, 2005). At the same time, he had experiences where he saw similarity with his wife’s experiences of God. It is possible that more men in the study had similar experiences but did not discuss these, feeling uneasy discussing their personal beliefs. The discomfort surrounding personal embodied experiences of the divine – whether one calls it God, religious, spiritual – is also an expression of the secular. Other studies show that nonreligious people certainly have spiritual experiences and struggles (Mercadante, 2020), which nuances and questions the binary between Christian believers on the one hand and nonbelievers on the other (see also King, 2023).
Conclusions: Nonreligious-Christian Couples and Mixedness
Being in a mixed relationship, nonreligious men started to think and speak about their positioning. At times, this led to critical reflections on religious and secular norms; at others, the otherness of Christianity as a religion was reinforced. The findings reveal different insights. First, they confirm that positions of nonreligiosity are diverse and context-bound, often changing over time and in relation to others. Some men who were socialised as nonreligious initially felt indifferent to religion but became more interested in the context of their mixed relationship with a Christian, motivating them to explore their partner’s lifeworld. However, they also remained suspicious of conversion efforts by other Christians. Men who were socialised as Christian but had left their religion tended to be more explicitly negative about religion and tried to avoid this in their relationship. In all cases, the secular was the norm, and these men were unaccustomed to discussing their nonreligious positionality, something the Christian women were more familiar with. Second, science often served as an ontological framework of truth, reflecting a secularisation narrative where religion was deemed unnecessary. Third, the men had the tendency to define religion as a set of convictions or a cognitive framework. The nonreligious partners’ definition of the religious often did not align with the experiences of the Christian partners themselves, who stressed the emotional and embodied dimensions of religion rather than the more rationalised interpretation of religion being a set of ethical views. This suggests that the interconnectedness of several normative binary frameworks, secular/religious, rational/embodied, masculine/feminine, deeply impacts everyday life. Moreover, Christian values were considered to be similar to their nonreligious and ‘universal’ ethics, but there was hardly any reflection on the Christian underpinnings of Dutch secularity. Fourth, a minority of the men delved into discussions of embodied experiences of the divine but found it difficult to discuss these. This points to the limiting aspects of a nonreligious framework, the diversity of nonreligious positionings, and the observation that the bodily dimension of the secular is more difficult to grasp, as secularity is usually discussed in terms of rational knowledge.
Can the couples in this case study then be considered ‘mixed’? Many studies on mixed couples focus on partners who, apart from different religions, do not share the same national, ethnic, or racial background. In that sense, these Christian-nonreligious couples are not mixed: Both partners are white and Dutch without a migration background. However, the religious-secular difference in self-identification and practice was significant for most. A close reading of their narratives offers insight into this dimension of religious mixedness. At some points, the couples did consider themselves as mixed, having a different ontological framework to understand life’s existential questions, or when engaging in different practices such as church attendance. At other times, they emphasised their similarities and reflected that nonreligious and Christian ethics were not so different. This reflects the constructedness of mixedness and the various ways this can come up. In other words: Mixed couples do not always consider themselves as such, nor is mixedness always an important factor in their day-to-day life. It is not a fixed state, but something that arises in different situations, leading to a separation of worlds, to a mutual interest, or to a search for common ground. Lastly, it is important to realise that mixedness does not have to lead to difficulties or conflict. Instead, many interlocutors reflected that their differences created depth and enabled valuable conversations about life’s questions from the start of the relationship.
I focused primarily on the interviews, which implies a focus on the construction of the secular through language within the context of the everyday. The article does not include findings from participant observation, which will be analysed in relation to concepts such as interrituality (Schrijvers, 2026). However, the value of this analysis of couple interviews lies in its unique insight into how difference is vocalised and negotiated within intimate relationships. The observation that secular partners are rarely asked to position themselves in their social environment points to the supposed neutrality of the secular norm in the Netherlands. Christians occupy an interesting position in this regard: While the partners sometimes felt their position was that of an outsider—a statistical minority—the persistent privilege of Christian religion over other religions cannot be overlooked. This question of minority and majority status of Christians was difficult to discuss: many women felt the ‘other’ within their relationship and in the country at large. However, assuming such a minority position risks a blindness towards privileges: Christians do benefit from institutionalised norms in the society and have many privileges in comparison to those belonging to other religious groups, such as Jews or Muslims. Nevertheless, they simultaneously often feel like a stranger in certain hegemonic secular milieus, as they are not always given the same level of credibility as nonreligious people.
From a societal and political point of view, certain forms of Christianity and secularity do overlap and can be seen as two sides of the same coin. However, this analysis shows where the two diverge and where secular normativity is more persistent than Christian privilege, as well as how nonreligiosity comes to be in relationships, through various meanings and positionalities in everyday life. Ultimately, these intimacies emphasise the fluidity of mixedness and individual positions, showing how the partners reiterate or question boundaries between the secular and the religious in the context of their everyday lives.
Data Accessibility Statement
This study involves sensitive personal data collected from a relatively small number of participants, and full datasets cannot be shared publicly due to confidentiality and ethical restrictions. Metadata describing the study will be made available upon project completion. Access to anonymised excerpts may be considered on reasonable request, subject to ethical approval, data protection regulations, and appropriate data sharing agreements.
Notes
[1] This research studies intimate relationships (Jamieson, 1998; Huygens, 2023), rather than limiting the scope to married couples as is common in most studies of mixedness. The case study includes different forms of contemporary romantic relationships, albeit all monogamous and largely heteronormative. For research on polyamory in the Netherlands, see (Roodsaz, 2022).
[2] Hegemony refers here to the institutionalisation of majority norms on a societal level, leading to privileges for those belonging to the majority and therefore benefiting from institutionalised norms.
[3] In Dutch Protestantism, the term belijdend (‘professing’) was common, next to praktiserend (‘practicing’). I asked explicitly for Christian participants who considered themselves active or practicing their faith, for example through church attendance or daily rituals at home.
[4] I met interlocutors through online calls, personal and academic networks and through religious networks, such as church newsletters and contacts with religious leaders. Some interlocutors introduced me to other couples. There was no financial compensation for the participation in the project.
[5] For a reflection on couple interviews in mixedness scholarship, see (Cerchiaro, 2023).
[6] The interview with these this lesbian couple is left out of the rest of the article, which focuses on cisgender people in normative heterosexual and monogamous relationships. Although experiences of heterosexual and queer couples are relevant for a comparative analysis, at the time of writing I do not have enough material on queer mixed couples to make such an analysis without generalisations.
[7] Cerchiaro connected this observation to Islamic teachings, writing: ‘This imbalanced composition is due to the Quranic norm, which affects the orthopraxis and prohibits a Muslim woman from marrying a non-Muslim man’ (2022, 5). However, teachings do not necessarily reflect everyday practice, and this assumption is contested by Deniz Aktaş’ (2026) research with Christian-Muslim couples, whose participants were mainly Muslim women in a relationship with a Christian man.
[8] The Dutch word gewoon can be translated as ‘just’ or ‘simply’ but usually conveys a sense of ordinariness or normalcy. ‘Gewoon niets’ carries this implication and could also be translated as ‘ordinarily nothing’.
[9] This wish for conversion was never explicitly expressed by the women in the study, nor did the men mention that their partner had expressed this. However, in individual conversations, some women did express the wish for their partner to ‘find God’ but accepted the low probability of this occurring.
[10] According to Steve Bruce (2002), explicit atheism/indifferentianism would be more characteristic for religious societies, while indifference comes up more in secular societies. However, many studies have shown the converse to be true as well (Klug, 2017, Lee, 2015).
Ethics and Consent
This research project was approved by the Scientific Research and Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Religion and Theology, VU Amsterdam (KT/dr/FRT22.049). All interlocutors gave their informed consent. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, pseudonymised, and safely stored according to the privacy framework of VU Amsterdam and the data management plan of this project, available upon request.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the Marianne Moyaert, Deniz Aktaş, Nella van den Brandt, and Sophie Lauwers, for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this text.
Competing Interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.