Article

Creed

Romance

4 March 2024

5 min read

Misreading the moment at weddings

Feuding photographers and clergy need to understand what makes the moment special.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

A screen grab of a news report; a priest looks angry turning away from a wedding couple. The caption reads: Wedding couple's nightmare. Priest stops wedding, scolds photographer

A special moment, caught on camera.

ABC News.

Petitions are ten a penny these days. It seems that everyone and their dog wants you to sign their petition. They run the gamut from immensely serious – ‘Call a general election now', to downright daft - ‘Deport Erling Haaland on the grounds that he’s not human’; I nearly signed that one. It can be very easy, then, simply to see every new petition as yet another drop in the increasingly large ocean of people demanding change that’ll likely never come.

I was, however, struck by one petition I saw recently, entitled: ‘Improve working conditions for wedding video/photographers in churches’. Launched by photographer Rachel Whitaker, the petition details the harassment faced by wedding videographers and photographers in the course of their jobs documenting one of the most important days in the lives of happy couples. Who could possibly be harassing wedding photographers? Demanding couples? Disgruntled in-laws? Drunken uncles? Nope: vicars and ministers of the Church.

This particular petition struck me because I’m in the unusual position of having some insight into both side of the dispute. In my day job I’m a theologian and biblical scholar who trains people entering ordained ministry as clergy. But, I have also been a semi-professional photographer who has been the sole photographer for a number of weddings. I can, to some degree, sympathise with both groups.

What photographers don’t need, then, is clergy making their lives harder. Again, unfortunately I can speak from experience here.

Let me start off by saying something about being a wedding photographer. It is unbelievably stressful. Although I’ve had a fairly comfortable life, it has not been without moments of stress. I have moved house, planned a wedding, failed (and later passed) driving tests, prepared for my PhD examination. I even lived through Liverpool’s 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul. But none of these compares to the stress of being the sole photographer for someone’s wedding.

Weddings are full of irreplaceable moments. The bride only enters the church once. There is only one exchange of vows, or first kiss, or first dance, or set of speeches. As a photographer, if you miss them, you miss them. What if your memory card stops working? Or the files corrupt? Or the focus is out just enough for the bride to be blurry? Or that uncle steps in front of you just as the first kiss happens? Tough luck; no happy memories for you.

What photographers don’t need, then, is clergy making their lives harder. Again, unfortunately I can speak from experience here. At one wedding I photographed, the vicar told me I could only take photos from behind the last pew. (“But I left my telescope at home!”) Another said I couldn’t use a camera with a shutter noise. (“I guess I’ll just take the pictures with my mind, then?”) Yet another told me I couldn’t use a flash because it would damage the old brickwork of the church walls. (I’m still trying to work that one out).

And yet, as a theologian, I kind of get it. Because marriage is a sacrament. Marriage is not simply a commitment between two people to love each other for the rest of their lives. Or, at least, this isn’t all it is. Instead, marriage is also an outward sign that points to an inward reality in our lives. Marriage is also a performative re-enactment of the way in which Jesus loves the world.

I mean that marriage is not done for marriage’s sake; it points to something outside of itself and, in doing so, marriage finds its meaning.

In the Gospels, Jesus is asked why his disciples don’t fast (like some others do). He responds: “The wedding guests cannot fast when the bridegroom is with them, can they?” At the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, were learn who it is that Jesus is marrying: “the bride … the holy Jerusalem,” a city filled with Jesus’ followers. This is whom Jesus is set to marry.

Human marriage points to, and is grounded in, this marriage between Christ and those whom Jesus loves. It is not a literal marriage (lest we wade into some very sticky theological territory). We are not to understand this marriage in the same terms as a human marriage. Rather, we are to understand human marriage with reference to this marriage between Jesus and the ones He loves.

All this is to say that marriage is intrinsically meaningless. (NB. To my wife: please keep reading). This isn’t to say marriage is meaningless. Instead, I mean that marriage is not done for marriage’s sake; it points to something outside of itself and, in doing so, marriage finds its meaning. It has, in other words, extrinsic rather than intrinsic meaning. Marriage is grounded in something outside of marriage: Jesus’ love for the church.

And so, when clergy get a little frustrated when they perceive photographers and videographers to be introducing upon marriage services, I get it. None of this is to say that aggression from clergy towards people doing their job is ever warranted. It’s not; there’s never an excuse for that. But, for clergy, the frustration underpinning this emerges (I hope) from a perceived lack of respect towards what is really happening in the marriage service.

In the moment of wedding two people to each other, the marriage service points towards Jesus’ love for His Church; and that simply can’t be captured by the photographer. Something more important than any picture is happening here. The people exchanging vows are being made into a living embodiment of Jesus’ love for the church.

Of course, it is not only in marriage that Jesus’ love is displayed. Jesus himself wasn’t married. It’s likely the apostle Paul wasn’t either. They both did a decent job at embodying the love of God (even if Paul did so in a slightly shouty way from time to time). None of this is to say that marriage is the only way where Jesus’ love is displayed in human lives.

Let’s return, for example, to the dispute between clergy and wedding photographers. Sure, some photographers might intrude upon wedding services in ways that downplay the magnitude of what’s happening. However, to respond with aggression and abuse is a bigger afront to the love of God from members of clergy who really ought to know better. Instead, clergy might consider such moments an opportunity to display and embody the very love that the marriage service itself seeks to point towards.

The love of Jesus is only detracted from, and not embodied, when clergy begin to overreact to those employed by the (human) bride and groom to capture the events of the day. There may well be ways in which clergy, photographers, and videographers can work together to better preserve and capture the sacred nature of what is being pointed towards in the marriage service. This cooperation will always be a better embodiment of Jesus’ love for the church than any needless antagonism.

Clergy would also do well to remember that photographers can use photoshop. Upset them at your peril.

Article

Creed

Politics

9 September 2025

5 min read

In praise of nuance

Life is complicated. The early Christians had a much better way than a dramatic headline

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A typewriter holds a piece or paper reading 'truth'

Markus Winkler on Unsplash.

Seventeen hundred years ago this year, the early Christians inched their way towards a landmark statement. The Nicene Creed was the result of 300 years of wrestling with a question at the heart of this new movement: if the Jesus they worshipped was in some sense the ‘Son of God’, what did that mean? Was he a human prophet, better than most, but fundamentally just like the rest of us? Was he God in human disguise? Or a kind of half-breed, like a centaur - half human and half divine? Bishops and theologians spilt blood, sweat and tears (literally) over these questions. Simplistic answers were put forward and found wanting. Treatises were written, synods met, opponents were castigated and excommunicated. Even riots broke out as the debates waxed fiercely across the Roman world.

Eventually, in 325 AD, the Council of Nicaea issued a carefully worded and hard-won statement. It said that Jesus was ‘God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father.' Every word was carefully chosen and the fruit of long debate, deep prayer and thought. It didn’t solve all the problems, but it has stood the test of time, and is still recited in churches across the world today.

I have been pondering all this during the summer as our political debates have raged.

Take the issue of immigration. On one side, there are the ‘refugees welcome’ banners, the suspicion that fixing a flag of St George on a lamp post is a sign of incipient fascism, and that claiming we have a problem with immigration is inherently racist.

On the other side, it is ‘stop the boats’, calls for mass deportations, protests outside hostels for frightened immigrants, the implication that all immigrants are scroungers, destroying the soul of Britain (or the USA) and the need to rapidly close our borders.

But it’s complicated. There are significant differences between the claims of legal migrants, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. Most would probably agree that offering welcome to people escaping warfare, persecution and famine in their homelands is right, proper, and in line with a long tradition of wealthy countries offering a refuge for others in need. People will always be on the move, and to close all borders is unrealistic and unjust. The moderate, fertile British climate, our historic economic and political stability, our well-regulated legal system, the Christian faith which shaped our culture, even the relative tidiness of our streets and countryside, are gifts we inherit from the past and should be generous with them.

Yet these are blessings that can’t be taken for granted. They need protecting, not just for our sakes but for those with a legitimate claim to make a home here.

So, most would also agree that illegal immigration is a scourge, with the ruthless villains enticing desperate migrants to climb on their flimsy boats across the channel deserving little else but criminal sentences. Yet even mass ‘legal’ migration will change the character of the nation. In 1990, net migration was around 20,000 a year. In 2024 it was 430,000. When 40% of primary age children have at least one foreign-born parent, and for one in five, English is not their first language, that can't fail to have an impact on the character of the nation, especially in areas where housing is cheaper and newcomers to the country find it easier to find accommodation.

But this complexity gets lost in the need for a punchy headline. Neither ‘send them home’ or ‘all migrants welcome’ capture the dilemma. It needs nuance. It needs careful, patient working towards the right balance between differing claims – compassion towards the stranger and the preservation of the very things that draw the refugees and the restless here.

The same is true of Israel and Gaza. For the pro-Israel lobby, just to draw attention to the suffering in Gaza is to be anti-Semitic. To urge restraint on Israel’s determination to destroy Hamas, even if it means destroying Gaza and much of its population in the meantime is to echo the death camps and to bring down Zionist wrath. Yet for Palestine Action and its supporters, Israel’s legitimate need to live in peace without a neighbouring state dedicated to its destruction seems to count for nothing. How can it be expected to live alongside a regime that brutally murdered 1,400 of its citizens in one day?

Even assisted dying – on which I and others on Seen & Unseen take the strong view that it is a bad idea – is not simple. The cries of those facing a long and painful death need hearing and people like me, who argue against assisted dying, need to promote solutions that will alleviate such suffering without crossing the red line of encouraging a culture of death.

The truth and the resolution of our dilemmas – on immigration, or Gaza, or even assisted dying, are seldom simple. They require nuance. They need forbearance.

It’s complicated. Most important things are. Anyone who has tried to lead a large organisation will know that it’s often a delicate matter of trying to chart a path forward while keeping competing interests and perspectives on board. You lose some people along the way, but you can’t afford to lose everyone, especially if both sides of the argument have some legitimacy.

The early church’s long struggle to define orthodoxy took time, patience, careful thought and restraint – even though at times it wasn’t very good at doing it. The result was a nuanced statement that steered between one pole – that Jesus was simply a very good human being – and the other – that he was God dressed up in human clothes. The truth eventually glimpsed and embraced was not at one extreme or the other, nor even a limp compromise, but the carefully crafted, unlikely and counter-intuitive idea that held together the best insights of both sides - that he was not ‘only human’ or ‘only divine’, or 50% of each, like semi-skimmed milk, but 100% human and 100% divine, and that this (for reasons too involved to go into here) was not a contradiction in terms.

The truth and the resolution of our dilemmas – on immigration, or Gaza, or even assisted dying, are seldom simple. They require nuance. They need forbearance. They need careful attention and listening to the people you instinctively disagree with to arrive at the truth. Yet our longing for a dramatic headline, our hunger for simple solutions, our algorithms that promote the most extreme opinions, all militate against this kind of patient, watchful political and social culture that would help us arrive at better solutions.

Life is complicated. People are complicated. Solutions to vexed questions are rarely simple. We need nuance.

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