A church wedding for a secular couple. Guest Post by Nick Thorne.

There is something strange about an increasingly common phenomenon: secular couples having church weddings. Of course there’s a certain logic to it – many couples who hold no religious beliefs still feel that a church is the proper place for a wedding. Family expectations of a traditional wedding can exert pressure. For most people in Britain today the church plays no significant role, and more often than not, the desire to have a church wedding stems from a conservative taste in décor and an insistence on tradition, rather than from any religious sentiment. Understandably, churches resent merely being used as a pretty venue, and as they have what the couple wants, they use their advantage to insist on keeping some of the religious formalities. This creates an absurd situation in which just about everyone concerned is obliged to say things that they don’t mean, on an occasion for which honesty is absolutely crucial. 

Some rights reserved by Eusebius@Commons

It begins with the rule that you have to be a member of the parish in order to be married in that particular church. Many secular couples will not be a part of any parish and have often not been to church for years. In order to be allowed to get married in church, they have to turn up on a Sunday for a certain period before their wedding. That seems fair, but what does it actually achieve? The priest has to pretend to be convinced by the couple’s religious fervour, despite knowing full well that in virtually every case, the couple will never set foot in the church again after their wedding. And the couple know that they are deceiving the priest, an uneasy feeling to have during their wedding preparations.

During the church service itself on the wedding day the priest introduces the party to a short overview of Christian teaching on marriage. There’s a vague allusion of the commitment to have children, but there’s certainly no mention of St Paul’s teachings in the New Testament, that a man should strive for celibacy. While it’s a step forward that such fundamentalist texts have been quietly dropped, you’re left wondering whether there is anything specifically “Christian” in the priest’s preamble at all. And if there isn’t, why bother with the whole charade in the first place?

In the marriage vows, the couple have to repeat after the priest, that they are entering into a union together in the presence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This seems somewhat problematic if the couple in question doesn’t hold a Christian belief. A marriage has to be founded on an honest commitment between two people – a system which forces the couple to begin their life together by professing a belief they do not hold is absurd. 

It will be interesting to see how this phenomenon evolves over the coming decades. As the older generation passes away, the proportion of religious believers and church goers will decrease further, but many will still like the idea of a church wedding. Perhaps churches will become even laxer in the demands they place on secular couples. Perhaps certain Christian denominations or priests will allow their churches to be used for secular weddings, or communities will be able to purchase or take over churches as they become vacant. In any event, it is difficult to see how the strange contradictions of church weddings for secular couples can continue much longer.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.