COMMENT
as a congregation) knew the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Because the Church of Scotland doesn’t
Yes, minister W
eddings, as regular readers will know, have been quite a feature of our year so far. The three we’ve been to this
summer have been fabulous, joyful occasions, and all very different in their own way. This got me thinking about the part the Kirk,
or indeed any church, plays in such important ceremonies nowadays. The other day a friend who is an elder and beadle, or church officer, told me angrily that he feels the Kirk is being abused by those who want a church wedding not to solemnise their vows but to look good in the photographs. At one recent ceremony, he told me, the
bride kept everyone waiting for 40 minutes. It is traditional for brides to be late, but on this occasion the lady decided that she didn’t like her dress, after all, and had to be persuaded that it really was very nice and that the scooped back showed off her tattoos perfectly. When she eventually turned up, the ceremony
went ahead, though my friend was pretty sure that only he, the organist and the minister out of the entire assembly (it couldn’t be described
FIELD
regard marriage as a sacrament, there are no strict rules about who its ministers will marry. Generally speaking, they can agree to marry anyone; it all depends on the minister. Churches charge for the ceremony, and the fee – anything from around £300 to more than double that – usually covers the organist and church officer as well as the minister. But should people of no faith marry in a
The Kirk can hardly refuse to give those of little faith a church wedding – but at what cost to true believers? WORDS ALAN COCHRANE ILLUSTRATION STEPHEN DAY
church at all? I suppose the Kirk’s view is that it lives in hope and that if it agrees to marry a couple there is some chance that they might one day become good Christians. It’s a long shot. Different ministers have different views
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CO.UK
Alan Cochrane is the Daily Telegraph’s Scottish Editor
about what they’ll allow in their kirks. When we lived in the Angus Glens old Dennis Leadbetter, our minister, ran a very open congregation. His beautiful church lies at the start of a well-known trail – the Minister’s Walk – which those muscu- lar Christians of a bygone age used to take to get them from their church in Glen Prosen to the one in Glen Clova. Nowadays, it’s mainly used by hikers, whom the late Dennis used to accost as they were putting on their anoraks in the car park, urging them to join his congregation. ‘But I can’t attend your service. I’m a Buddhist,’
said one. ‘Och, that won’t matter,’ replied Dennis. ‘We’ve had dogs in my church before now.’ We had a slight problem in getting one of the
girls baptised, because my wife and I weren’t yet married. That posed no problem for Dennis: ‘It’s your daughter that’s being baptised, not you,’ he intoned. The service was marvellous even if Dennis locked the three of us in the vestry until it was time to baptise Josephine, as he didn’t want a greetin’ bairn spoiling one of his invariably brilliant sermons. A lot of people with only the faintest religious
faith insist on having their children baptised. Unlike weddings, which can be attended just by the bride and groom’s relatives and friends, a baptism and its vows are supposed to be made in public before the eyes of the congregation. This often nowadays means a whole parcel of strangers turn up on a Sunday and fumble their way through the ceremony, all the time looking embarrassed to be in a place of worship. This is the way of the modern secular world
and I suppose the Kirk’s view is that it’s better if people cleave simply to the ceremonial aspect of Christianity than abandon it altogether. It is a shame, not to mention deeply hypocriti-
cal, for people to use churches in this way. But at the end of the day when it comes to weddings and christenings, it wouldn’t really be Christian for the Church to close its doors to these part- time believers, now would it?
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