Believed in to hold together

Question

Summarizing their findings about life in the typical American town between 1890 and 1925 they write, “The townsfolk seemed to regard romance in marriage as something which, like their religion, must be believed in to hold society together.

I have two questions on this sentence I brought from a book.

Q1) According to the sentence above, what was holding the society together to the townsfolk? "romance"?

Q2) Is this "believed in to hold society together" the same in meaning as "believed to hold society together" ? (I mean there is no need to write "in") or nearly the same?

I'd say yes to both questions, but as I'm not sure about my answer, I need your answers as well.

Thanks a lot!

GPY · Accepted Answer

fire1Q1) According to the sentence above, what was holding the society together to the townsfolk?

Belief in romance in marriage, as well as belief in their religion.

fire1Q2) Is this "believed in to hold society together" the same in meaning as "believed to hold society together" ?

First of all, note that "must be believed (in) to hold society together" means that it was necessary for the townsfolk to believe (in) the things mentioned, in order to hold society together.

"to believe in romance in marriage" means to believe that romance in marriage is a good or necessary thing. (Note that this is a different sense of "believe in" to, say, "believe in ***", which means "believe in the existence of ***".)

Without "in", your sentence feels questionable or harder to interpret, in my opinion. While it is OK to say that religion must be believed, to say that romance in marriage must be believed is of doubtful meaning here. In practice, the sentence without "in" would probably be understood much the same as the sentence with "in", since that is the meaning that seems obviously intended.

Believed in to hold together

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