I appreciate your encouragement! I guess I should add that there is no rush to get married but we don't want to delay uneccesarily if things aren't going to change. I should also add that when I say my family has rejected him, I don't mean they dislike him. They have rejected him from the moment I told them he was going to move here. It is not a rejection where they have taken time (the recent holiday season included) to sit down and get to know him. They treat me and us as if it's just a phase... All because of the way we met, on the Internet. In the words of my mom " I don't believe God would send you a husband from that far away from the Internet."
If that is really the only objection, then you can show them some statistics from articles that say how many people meet online. I think it's 25 or 30% of new married couples in the US. You can also say he's here now in real life, so ask them not to think of him as a man from the Internet. Marrying off the Internet makes sense. I helped a single friend get hooked up on the Internet so he could do Internet dating. They had all these boxes you could tick, and there are lots of dating websites. You can sort through searching individuals throughout the world and screen them by religion, height, weight, hair color, and what kind of music they like. And they are all on these sites to find someone to date, not like real life where trying to date someone could be weird. So I can see the appeal and why it could work. But it makes sense to get to know someone in 'real life', meet their relatives and friends and get a feel for what they are like before considering marriage.
You haven't really shared that much about what he is like spiritually, unless I missed a post. Is he someone who calls himself a 'spiritual person' who doesn't go to church? Is he non-denominational, Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic, etc.? What is the difference in religion here. You mentioned your parents are Pentecostal. If you'd found a Pentecostal on the Internet, would they change their tune?
I grew up Pentecostal in the Southeast, but not the Oneness type, and it was no big deal if someone married a Baptist, for example, who loved Jesus. Oneness Pentecostals tend to not see people from other churches as saved, so that might be a big deal for them. Do you go to a Oneness church, or a Trinitarian church, maybe, that has a lot of rules about how to dress, from the Holiness tradition? Has he gone to church with you, btw?
If he's acceptable on the faith front, you could talk with your parents about why 'on paper' he is a good husband, too.
