Читать книгу The Church Weddings Handbook - Gillian Oliver - Страница 8

Moment One: The First Call

A church wedding typically starts some 18 months before the big day itself, when a couple gets in touch about their good news. So let’s shine a light on this first moment of their church wedding experience. The evidence is that this is the most crucial moment for a church to get right, and identifies the best person to be ‘front of house’ in any church at this moment. Who it is could surprise you.

 Who’s in touch first, and how do they feel?

 How did they know about the church and who to contact?

 What one thing means they might never get in touch?

 How serious are couples about marriage?

 How serious are they about God ?

 What does the law require of churches?

It all begins when the phone first rings. Or does it? In research in Bradford and Oxford two thirds of couples contacted the church in the first instance by phone. We do realise that this is changing very fast, and we’ll get to the growing potential of e-contact soon. However, one thing does not change much at all, and that is who makes first contact with the church. It’s the bride. According to our research in two dioceses, nearly 80% of first contacts involve the bride, either on her own (in more than half the cases) or together with her fiancé. It is less common to be approached by the groom alone (12%), a parent (8%) or grandparent (1%).

This evidence caused the Weddings Project to pay particular attention to the bride at these opening moments of the church wedding journey. It’s one reason we hired women writers and designers to put together the words and images that form the materials we offer to couples through churches. We are a female-led project, and we are communicating mostly, and particularly at first, with women. What the Project found out about men comes into sharper focus a little later in the church wedding journey.

But when the phone first rings it will usually be the bride on the other end. So, how is she feeling when she makes that call? And first of all, what is she thinking about marriage?

England is serious

Latest government research indicates that about 80% of people who marry have lived together first. This often gives rise to much chatter predicting the end of the road for such an ‘anachronistic rite’. In churches, and outside them, the accusation is sometimes heard that couples today cannot be serious about marriage, since it will not change much in their lives. When they eventually choose to get married, it must be because they love to party.

Jesus said that giving and being given in marriage will go on enthusiastically right to the end, meanwhile trends come and go. For a couple of decades it was the done thing for women to keep their maiden name when they married. Big stars like Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole changed all that when they chose to take their husband’s name and this is now the more usual thing among today’s brides.

To find out the broad themes among people considering marriage today, researchers took video cameras into couples’ homes and asked them what they really thought and felt. These were independent research teams and there was not a dog collar in sight when this research work was done. That’s how we met Dave and his partner from the Midlands. They own a home together and they live in it together. They have plans to extend it, but something is missing. What is it? Dave’s partner explains:

‘I’m a lot more old fashioned where it’s concerned. It’s not like I think ‘Oh it’s terrible that we live together’, it’s not that. I just want to be your wife [laughs] … whereas Dave’s not really bothered. It’s like the final show of your commitment. Dave says we will do it, maybe when the extension’s finished. Well if we wait till the extension’s finished we’ll never do it.’

You really have to watch this exchange to feel Dave’s discomfort. He appears to want to shuffle right off the end of his sofa. In fact some of us wondered if his partner had ever got round to saying these things before a research team and film crew turned up in their sitting room. Some of us in the team found it moving, even heartbreaking. But we were all listening to the laughter that accompanied the revelation.

In the Weddings Project we have found that laughter and seriousness go together a lot. We have banks of films of people laughing when they get to the point of expressing something serious, about God or each other. Anthropologist Kate Fox in Watching the English writes of a nation with an ‘oh come off it’ impulse that is uncomfortable with expressions of earnestness. That discomfort can find a release in laughter. And the evidence suggests that when ministering to a generation which is wordless when serious, the pastoral art is to listen for the yearning under the laugh.

The phrase Dave’s partner used, ‘the final show of your commitment’, chimes with others used by many couples in the research. Some spoke of marriage as ‘the last piece in the jigsaw’, ‘the final frontier’, ‘the gold standard’. And listening to this we began to learn that marriage occupies an entirely different place in the hearts and minds of contemporary culture. For my parents, my grandparents and generations before them marriage has been the gateway to adult life. Not any more.

So this is a view of marriage unique to this generation. Couples today see marriage as more like a crown on a relationship which has proved itself to be trustworthy and true, and not the threshold of adulthood, as it once was. It comes later in life, at an average age of 30, and rising. A question our researchers asked in a nationwide survey of the general population bears this out. They asked: ‘Which event best indicates to you and to other people that you are committed to each other for life?’

Almost no one thought that buying a car together expressed this very well, and other low-ranking options were making a will together, being engaged or ‘just knowing you were right for each other’. Closer to top of the pops, but not there yet, were moving in together (18%) and having children together (21%). But the absolute winner – nothing scored anything like as high – was getting married (42%). There is still nothing beyond marriage to show each other and the world that you are committed to each other for life.

Exclusive romantic relationship, as proclaimed in marriage, carries a high value. The evidence suggests there’s nothing higher. Perhaps it is valued more highly by this generation, for whom there is no social stigma in not marrying, because it is a positive choice, from a range of others, made freely, without strong social constraints.

So marriage may have a higher value in the mind of the bridal generation, but it shows its results, its consequences, less conspicuously. It is less likely than in the past to be accompanied by a new address, new habits or a van full of G-Plan furniture. Marriage today is a crowning glory on a love well lived and this is why there is this desire for a wedding to be perfect. If it’s a crown, it’s a reward, it’s a culmination, a haven, a longed-for destination. It’s less likely to be fully expressed with paper plates and cheap plonk. All the lavish feasting that can accompany a modern wedding is part of the same idea. Not every couple wants to spend a fortune, and as Christian people we might prefer not to either, but spending and lavishness is a corollary to this fact:

A perfect crown is what they are yearning for, when they yearn for marriage.

This seriousness about marriage has implications for the wedding day itself and the way in which we in the Church prepare couples for it. When people choose to marry, marriage is what they want, and nothing else gets near to what they want to say through it. They want to proclaim their seriousness about each other for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, it’s true that numbers of marriages, as a proportion of the population, continue to decline. It has never been so little undertaken since records began. But researchers of all kinds agree that delay, not necessarily disinclination, is one big reason why numbers are falling.

So this is what one thirty-year-old bride is thinking about marriage when she picks up the phone to you. No matter what her living arrangements are, she is super serious about marriage. However, it’s true that her idea of marriage is very likely to be categorically different from yours, and from all the generations of vicars before you.

A church wedding

Why does she want church for a wedding? She might say she would like to ‘book the church’ and that turn of phrase may irritate you. She may explain that she was just driving by one weekend and picked it because of its beauty. She may say that to compliment you. She doesn’t know it might not. But it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that the beauty of the building is what people want when they want a church wedding? Prettier churches do most weddings, so more brides must want a beautiful backdrop than want God.

We met vicars on our tour of England who really struggled with what I’m about to tell you. And we met vicars who always knew the truth of it, but who were glad to discover why they know what they know. This is what the Weddings Project found out:

Most people think a church wedding ‘feels more proper’.

That’s the finding of a poll of the general population by a national secular research agency. 53% of the population agreed with the statement, ‘Church weddings feel more proper.’ You are more likely to agree with this statement if you are a younger person and if you are a male person. So it is not a phenomenon that is due to die out, it is a research finding that is ‘future-proof’. You may not think it is a sky-high figure but it is, compared to the number of weddings we’re doing. We are not marrying 53% of the marrying population in the Church of England. We are only marrying 22% (all churches together account for about 33% of all weddings). So the Church of England could easily conduct double the number of weddings by just marrying the people who thought that church was the right place for it, never mind persuading anyone else about it.

A ‘proper’ wedding

This word ‘proper’ has become a key for the Weddings Project and it is packed with meaning and application. To help us understand it, we spoke to academics including sociologists of religion. What they told us lay behind the word ‘proper’ gave us so much hope for the spiritual seriousness of England that we weren’t sure whether to believe them. So in a more focused survey of 822 people marrying in Bradford and the Buckingham Archdeaconry of Oxford our research team probed more deeply. They asked them what the main reason was for choosing church for their wedding. Not a reason, but the reason. They asked people in groups, at three points along the journey:

 at the moment of first contact (before they were married but when they were first in touch with the church)

 around the time of the ceremony

 and a year later.

One option researchers gave as the main reason for marrying in church was this: ‘The main reason for choosing church for me personally was the appearance of the church or chapel.’ And here’s what they found: before the day only 4% said the main reason they chose church was because of its appearance. Of those questioned around the time of their wedding, only 1% said that was the main reason. And a year after the day, not a single person questioned could say that the look of church was the standout reason they chose it for their wedding.

On the other hand, a number of other reasons were advanced by more than 80% of the people questioned as the main reason for choosing church over any other venue. And they were all God reasons. They were things like this: ‘We wanted to make our vows before God’; ‘We wanted to ask for his blessing’; ‘We wanted a spiritual side to our wedding’; ‘We wanted the sacred ambience of the church’; ‘It was something to do with my family’s faith or mine’ (or my partner’s faith or mine); ‘We wanted a proper wedding’; ‘We wanted a traditional wedding.’

Our researchers found that for about two thirds of couples the appearance of the building is a reason to choose a particular church over another. But when it comes to choosing to be married in church at all, it hardly figures. Only one in a hundred would say they had originally chosen church for what meets the eye.

So this word ‘proper’ comes to the Church from a wordless world, tied up in all these other high-scoring phrases about God and his felt presence. It’s a word more commonly used by couples in the south of England, and it’s a counterpart to ‘traditional’ which is used more in the north. It’s not a word that necessarily describes things you can see. It’s a word about story, ceremony, depth, rightness, seriousness, appropriateness, gravity and dignity. All words which align with what God brings to a marriage service.

To find out a little more about what ‘proper’ feels like, here’s how one mother of the bride put it when she walked into a church in Worcestershire with her daughter Nicky. What she said was filmed by the BBC for their hit show Don’t Tell The Bride. ‘For me, it’s not about your wedding, this place’, Nicky’s mum said. ‘It’s the essence of the place, the feel of the wood, it’s just a calmness that descends. The true essence of marriage is a promise in the eyes of God to one another. It’s got to be, hasn’t it? It’s got to be in a church.’

Lost in translation

Women are more likely to talk about spirituality by talking about how they feel. I don’t know how many people who come to church where you are say they did so because of the ‘feel of the wood’. But most of us can relate to that phrase of Nicky’s mum’s: the calm that descends, the wonder of promise-making in the sight of God. Because we live in a culture that is losing the language of orthodox Christian belief, other words are being used instead, foundational words about yearning, experience and value. There is a good chance we might not recognise them as God words when we first hear them. These days, some things are lost in translation, and that might mean the moment of seriousness is shrouded with laughter, or it might mean that the words people use can leave us sensing they are not serious, when in fact they are.

Sarah, a beautician from the north of England, is marrying in church in the village where she grew up. She hasn’t been back since she was in the Brownies. So why does she want to marry there? ‘We’ve always wanted to get married in church, because it’s traditional and it means more than just a hotel room. You’ve got God’s blessing if you like’, and she starts to laugh. Laughing in the sense of ‘me, talk about God’s blessing? How ridiculous does that sound?’

A bride from Oxfordshire spoke to our researchers wistfully about this failure to communicate with the vicar on the first meeting. ‘I think he just thought I was some girl that wanted a big white wedding, rather than the fact that it had any sentimental value to it.’ Sentimental value? You or I may be tempted to hear the word ‘sentiment’ over the word ‘value’, but this bride was expressing her seriousness in the only words she had.

So let’s get back to our bride on the other end of your phone. We have established that she is serious about marriage. Even though to her it might mean something different from what it means to you, and sits later in life, she is no less serious about it. She doesn’t have to get married, after all. What can we conclude then about why she is ringing you – why she wants to marry in church? Well, she doesn’t have to choose church. If she just wants a beautiful building there are plenty of those available on the secular wedding scene. So your bride wants to marry in church because she wants God there. And of course that is a very promising place to begin.

Seriousness meets a block

So with all this seriousness in England today, yearning for marriage and desire for God’s blessing, it must be the simplest thing in the world for a bride to pick up the phone to you and ask if you would conduct their wedding for them. Yes?

No.

Researchers discovered that this seriousness meets a big block somewhere. What they found is that brides are unlikely to get to the point of picking up the phone in the first place. So big are the obstacles in their own mind, they are more likely to give up altogether without even trying and go somewhere else instead.

We have to take you to one sofa in England, and to one bride and groom talking about their ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to choosing a church wedding. On the face of it they should be untroubled. They are connected under the law because the bride’s parents married in the church and so can they. The legal right extends now to them just as if they were resident in the parish. So what’s the problem then? The bride spells out the dilemma:

‘Yeah, I’ve always thought I’d get married in a church, but I do feel a bit hypocritical because I’m not particularly religious. My parents got married in the same church we’re getting married in, which is nice for me but it doesn’t sit very easily for me. I think if we both felt the same way as I do then I’d feel very unhappy about getting married in church, which is such a shame because I do want to get married in church … but for the wrong reasons probably.’

It’s impossible to overstate how high the barrier can be in the couple’s own minds because of their felt ‘hypocrisy’. Now of course, into this lack of qualification and fear of rejection the Church of England has good news to bring. Because we are the Church of England the good news, made even better by the Marriage Measure of 2008, is that we marry people, and so there are churches in England for people to marry in. They do not have to be churchgoers, nor baptised, nor anything else.

The feeling among the marrying generation that they are being hypocritical is the number one myth that the Church of England has to explode. Because of this fact, it works less and less well if we in the Church of England just wait for brides to come and knock on the door. The Weddings Project realised that we had to get to couples while they were still yes-ing and no-ing on their sofas. That’s why the website, www.yourchurchwedding.org is listed number one on Google on a search for church weddings, and why the national church is supporting the mushrooming provision of Church stands at wedding shows. It’s all part of a plan to reach a ‘hypocritical’ generation with the good news of unqualified acceptance.

Back to your bride at the end of the phone. How is she? She is serious about marriage and God. But she is inexpert and wordless, feeling hypocritical, disqualified and uneasy. The obstacles she has overcome to pick up the phone and wait until you answer it are great. She is a heroine, a person of extreme courage. And she is about to be the recipient of great news.

The spirit of Marriage Law

You may think you are well versed on the law of England as far as eligibility for a church wedding goes, and the right way to set fees and charges. Even so, you may feel surprised at some of what follows, you may even feel repentant. If you do not feel repentant then you may be required to repent. But if you are well versed in these matters, then what follows will at least reassure you.

The Weddings Project uncovered that even the most seasoned parish priest can be holding on to errors passed down over the years. Some church people can get confused about exactly what is determined by statute and what by local practice. And marriage law does sometimes change. Indeed, it has just undergone something of a revolution. And the law on fees has been under review too. Add to this the fact that most people get engaged at New Year or on Valentine’s Day. Vicars told us that these seasons are more likely to be times when they may not have done a wedding for a while. So, it’s easy to get rusty. On such occasions, it’s always good to know where to start. Let’s start with the spirit of the law:

The Church of England is not a religious club for members. Its sacraments and services are for all the people of England.

In the case of a wedding you will know that this means that any engaged person who has not been married before has a legal right to marry in the church of the parish in which they live. Apart from a couple of very rare exceptions, this basic right is absolute. It is not conditional on their being baptised, on their churchgoing prowess or even on their readiness to say that they are Christian. As long as they are content to make the promises contained in the marriage service and they haven’t already made them to someone else, if they are a parishioner of yours then you are obliged to welcome their wedding.

Now of course, this might mean that people will be marrying in your church while at the same time believing all sorts of mixed up things about Jesus and his divinity, reincarnation, angels, yoga and Sunday shopping. It doesn’t matter. In these matters the law speaks of a Church of England which is big on grace. Even if one or both parties is divorced with a previous partner still living, the General Synod accepts their marriage in church at the vicar’s discretion and has done so since 2002. Clergy make that call in the light of House of Bishops’ advice. Couples with divorce in their story do sometimes write to the Church of England via the website www.yourchurchwedding.org and ask for a list of churches in their area that will marry divorcees. We always reply that each couple’s story is different and your vicar will want to talk to you about yours. Many clergy speak of the particular privilege of ministry with couples who have known the pain of divorce and want God to help them start again.

So there is a fundamental right to a church wedding. It may be not well known in England today, but that does not take away from the truth of it. It means that, churchgoer or not, your local church is open to you, and you are welcome to this sacrament without promise of improvement. It is an impulse very close to a statement attributed to Archbishop William Temple, that the Church of England is the organisation that exists for people not its members.

The Weddings Project’s research did find new evidence about couples’ seriousness about God. This is true. However, being serious about God is not a legal requirement, and you cannot legally put anything in the way of couples except the demands of the law.

The Marriage Measure

Following a period of dramatic and sustained social mobility in England, Church leaders began to wonder if the law was actually causing them to turn away more people than they were marrying. People who moved away from a parish were instantly barred from marrying there. People whose parents or grandparents were married in a church had no consequent right to celebrate their wedding there too. It became evident that the law was too restrictive, and so the Church took the initiative to reform it.

In doing so it extended the basic parishioner’s right in an amendment the like of which has not been seen since marriage law itself was first framed. This added seven new ways to marry in a church where you do not live. These are set out in full at Find a Church at www.yourchurchwedding.org.