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

Identity

Nationalism

30 October 2025

5 min read

Flags on lampposts are a cry from long-neglected communities

As banners fly, they whisper of pride and pain

Philip North

Philip is the Bishop of Blackburn

A St George's Cross flag flutters on a tower.

St Helen's Church, Welton, Yorkshire.

Different Resonance on Unsplash.

A flag meant to symbolise unity within a nation. Yet over the summer, flags in the UK became less a source of togetherness and more a flashpoint for division.

In towns and cities across the nation, flags of St George and Union Flags have appeared on bridges, on lamp posts and on buildings. The motivations of those hoisting the flags are often unclear, but the way in which different sets of people perceive these flags carries an alarming message about the widening gulf that now exists within our nation.

For one set of people, the flags are sinister and carry a deep sense of threat. For many people of global majority heritage, the flags bear an intimidating message that those with racist motives are claiming the nation 'back' from them, leaving them stateless and with nowhere to belong. Meanwhile for those on the centre or left of the political spectrum, the flags feel like a straightforward claim to power by the far right and a sign of the growing popularity of their policies and rhetoric. The Church of England has mostly placed itself on this side of the divide and many church leaders have spoken of the flag flying phenomenon with anxiety and distaste.

But there is another narrative at play. As the flags continue to flutter in the autumn breeze, something which is a symbol of fear for one set of people is for another a welcome sign of hope.

This was powerfully brought home to me during a meeting with a leading Orthodox rabbi following the synagogue attack in Manchester. In the course of a lengthy conversation, I asked him how he understood the flags and his comments were striking. 'When I returned from my holiday and saw the flags flying in Salford,' he told me, 'I felt the most tremendous sense of relief.'

So for that rabbi, the flags are claiming back a distinctive and confident British identity, lost by a failed experiment in multiculturalism that has left his own community deeply fearful. And he is far from alone.

One of the strengths of the Church of England is that we place well-trained, professional clergy and lay leaders in every neighbourhood in the country. That means that, in a culture of echo chambers and algorithms, we are uniquely placed to understand every side of a conflict.

When I contacted a group of church leaders from flag-flying communities in Lancashire, the results were intriguing. Of course they were aware of the darker side of this phenomenon. But they also understood the needs and fears of the people for whom the flags are welcome.

One priest told me of a volunteer in her church who assists with projects for the vulnerable and is good friends with asylum seekers in her congregation and yet she is still flying a flag because she feels that immigration has now 'gone too far.'

Another priest spoke of the flags as an outlet for the intense frustration of local people who feel left behind and ignored. Another spoke of them communicating a chronic disillusionment with a political system that has failed them.

For others there is frustration that their institutions seem willing to fly many different flags – the Ukraine flag or the LGBTQI+ flag – but perceive those same institutions to be embarrassed by the flag of their own nation.

Indeed, a chance to demonstrate a love for country was the most often cited reason. Many people take genuine pride in the flags flying over their communities as it gives them a chance to express pride in a nation that often seems to them to be overly apologetic about its past and embarrassed by patriotism.

Perhaps the most poignant reflection was a from a priest who has stood up to Tommy Robinson marchers on his estate and yet wrote, 'I think for some of those people who put up flags it was a desperate cry for their nation to take better care of them, like a neglected child trying to remind everyone that they're a part of the family too.

For many working-class communities, the globalisation and transnationalism that is viewed by those who hold power as the path to greater prosperity has been bad news. It has outsourced jobs, it has forced down wages so that many in-work people are still benefits-dependent and it has resulted in major demographic changes to communities over which local residents have no had no say.

Combined with years of grinding austerity and a political class that is quick to promise and slow to deliver, there is a powerful and intense anger in many parts of working-class Britain for which the flags have become a lightning conductor.

It seems now that one flag now symbolises two nations. And what is so alarming is that one side barely understands the other.

So how should Christians respond? A divided nation wants the established Church to take sides and indeed sees us as weak and vacillating if we do not. But the task of the Christian is not to take on one side or the other in every binary debate. It is to be on the Lord's side. And in this context, I think that means a twin response.

First it means attentively listening to everyone. We should hear the fears of those for whom flags are a sign of growing intolerance and so condemn racism and hatred. But equally importantly, even when we don't agree, we should understand and give voice to the anger of working-class communities who fear that the nation they love is being taken away from them. If that voice is not heard and attended to, then the far right will be all too happy to fill the vacuum that is left behind. In a divided nation, part of the vocation of the Church is to help one side to understand the other.

And second, it means speaking into the place of conflict words of Gospel peace. The Union Flag is more than a symbol of nation. It carries three crosses, each one pointing us to the saving work of Jesus Christ through which we are reconciled to the Father and so to each other. We listen, we understand, but above all we hold the cross high, for in that symbol is the only true and lasting source of unity.

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