(no subject)

[lavendersparkle]

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?

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I think there is a lot of truth in this analysis. 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.

Given that we live in a Christian, or post-Christian country - some people will think that a church wedding is more proper than a non-Church one. The kind of people I'm thinking of are the kind who consider themselves to be Christian in some sense, but don't attend church, pray, or know very much about Christianity (and all the shades before and beyond that). i.e. not regular church-goers or 'practising Christians', but people with some kind of belief which is associated with Christianity.

Personally I am happy for such people to get married in CofE churches (and I feel like I have a bit of extra license to say this now that I am a member of a CofE church so am in some sense an Anglican) if there reasons are associated with what I said in the previous paragraph. Or in other words, if people want to get married at church because they kind of believe in God (or culturally think God is a good idea), I'd much rather them be allowed to do that than to go to a registry office.

Generally speaking vicars seem moderately happy about this too (unless they have a particularly beautiful church which means they're innundated with requests [my ex's church had this problem]), because often they will say you can get married there as long as you attend for a bit / meet up with the vicar a bit / attend a marriage course. Which is good from the vicar's perspective as he has an opportunity to share his more active view of Christianity with the less actively Christian people.

I can completely understand how annoying it would be to have completely irreligious people want to use the church because it is a fancy building though. The tanglement of the church and state is not so good in this respect.

[lavendersparkle.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the fact that people who never go to church but sort of see themselves as Christian in a vague sort of way want to get married in church, people have all kinds of bizarre pieties and what pastoral theology text books refer to as folk religion, but the way that people feel such an entitlement to get married in a church which they have no involvement with which is part of a religion which they have no engagement with and then get so indignant when they can't have everything exactly how they want.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Yeah that is annoying.

I think there is some mileage in 'the CofE is the official church, so don't I have a right to get married in a CofE church' though. We (the CofE) can't (or shouldn't IMO) get away with the privileges we get from being the state church without the costs of having to marry people who don't regularly attend.

OTOH people don't have a right to get married at any church they want - AFAIK they only have a right to get married at a church in their parish (or possibly one they regularly attend, although one of your commenters said this is not the case - I suspect the vicar has a wide leeway to do things how they want in these cases). They certainly don't have a right to turn it in to a non-Christian service, or to have things the vicar deems inappropriate in the service though :-)

[atreic.livejournal.com]

get so indignant when they can't have everything exactly how they want.

Yes... I think it's a subset of the "wedding myth" that it is your day and everything should be just how you want it. There's so much pressure wrapped up in this impossible idea that it's not surprising that when it runs up against reality people explode.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

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.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

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.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

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

[robhu.livejournal.com]

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.