lavendersparkle | (no subject)

In my perusing of the wedding planning part of the internet I'm getting increasingly irritable with non-religious brides who want to have an Anglican wedding so that they can get married in a pretty church but then bitch about unfair it is that the church:
a) won't let them get married in a different church to their parish church just because it's prettier and/or was in a film.
b) strongly encourages them to come to church a whole three times to hear the Banns read.
c) makes them meet with the vicar more than once and dares to try to explain Christian ideas of marriage during those meetings.
d) won't allow them to do things which it deems inappropriate during the service.
e) makes them use the liturgy of the Church of England.

The Church of England is a religious body, not a wedding and pretty building preservation service. Would these people wander into a Mosque because it was pretty and then get all uppity about how the imam wouldn't let them wear a strapless dress for the ceremony?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't think it's unreasonable for people to think that a Christian wedding is in some sense more real than registry office weddings. In the sense that a marriage is a commitment between two people then they should be considered equal, but in the sense that it is also a commitment before God then they are not equal

Yeah, but, I don't think that is what they're doing. It's not "church weddings are right because they have God TM, and registry office weddings don't", it's a much fuzzier set of ideas about why church weddings are right. And so they pick a church wedding because of those fuzzy reasons, and then get annoyed that it comes with so much God TM.

I think for some people the fuzzier reasons have God in there somewhere. Not for everyone, but for some people. For those people I think it's understandable and reasonable that they'd want to get married in church.

I am thinking of people I know here btw, not purely theoretical people.

Yes, I think you're right there are people like that too, but I doubt they're the people whinging on the internet and annoying

lavendersparkle

ISTM this kind of explains why there is such a big difference between the number of Christians on things like the census, and the number of people who regularly attend church. A lot of people believe in God but don't want religion to be an active part of their life, or believe in something out there. In both cases for various reasons Christianity is the thing that people connect to for their spiritual stuff.