What God has not joined together: the rise of the humanist wedding

Aug 14, 2018 by

by Severin Carrell, Guardian:

Secular marriages are now the most popular in Scotland, prompting fresh calls for reform in England and Wales.

Robyn Hewatt and Andrew Downie were married with all the trappings of a traditional Scottish wedding: Hewatt’s father walked her down the aisle; she had maids of honour and Downie had a best man. A piper played at the door.

But there was no priest, minister or registrar to lead the ceremony. Like thousands of Scots, Hewatt and Downie were legally married by a humanist celebrant. For the first time last year, in what was once a famously religious country, the Humanist Society of Scotland married more people than the Church of Scotland.

Hewatt, 29, a gym instructor, and Downie, 34, a manager with the Screwfix chain, said their wedding on Saturday fitted their identity. “We felt we could make it more personal to us and our story. A humanist ceremony spoke more to us than a more traditional religious type of ceremony,” Downie said.

The catalyst for this dramatic shift came in 2005 when the then registrar general of Scotland changed the law on human rights grounds to allow humanist celebrants to conduct weddings.

Scotland categorises humanist weddings as a non-religious belief ceremony, with the same legal status as church-based and civil marriages. Humanists include atheists and agnostics, and those who say they are spiritual but who dislike organised religion. They embrace same-sex marriage, too, unlike most mainstream churches.

Read here

 

Related Posts

Tags

Share This