This interview is part of our Mixed-Faith Marriage Series. An edited transcript of the interview, including photographs, can be found in our interview library.

Leslie Schwartz-Leeper’s parents divorced when she was very young. Her mother raised her six children by herself, and taught them that the bottom line of the gospel is love. Leslie always had a testimony, but drifted in and out of the Church through her teen and young adult years. In her early thirties, she married Ian, a non-believer of Jewish/Episcopalian heritage, at the same time as she returned to the Church. Leslie talks about her positive experience undergoing a Church disciplinary council, about the ways Ian supports her and their children in Church activity, about some of the challenges of a mixed-faith marriage, and about the peace she has in her partnership with a man she chose for his intelligence, kindness, and love.