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

Culture

Film & TV

21 February 2025

5 min read

A tale of two Romes

The Gladiator sequel’s dream of equality is baloney but telling.

Matt Lewis

Matt is a songwriter and musician, currently completing an MA in theology at Trinity College, Bristol.

Chariots thunder into a Roman amphitheatre.

Scott Free Productions.

I left the theatre quite disappointed by what I had witnessed. The original Gladiator, the Ridley Scott masterpiece, remains one of the most captivating historical epics in cinema. Every time I watch it, I feel I am stepping into another time. The sequel, by contrast, baffled me by how out of time it was, jarring me out of the action by its historical inaccuracies.

Whether it was the sharks in the Coliseum or newspapers a thousand years or so before their invention, these moments reminded me I was not witnessing an entirely truthful representation of Roman society. Perhaps I am asking too much - a movie is after all, a representation, and may tell us more about ourselves than the era it portrays.

But Gladiator II’s biggest anachronism isn’t newspapers or sharks, but the presence of Christian values in a pre-Christianised Rome.

The backdrop for the film is that the evil and insane twin Emperors Geta and Caracalla, have spread chaos across the world, relentlessly conquering foreign lands, imposing their will on others - in other words, doing what Romans usually do.

Against the emperors are a group of Romans who are tired with all this conquering and violence and want to build a new Rome. Throughout the film, they remind the audience constantly of Marcus Aurelius, the historic Roman emperor from the first film, who had a dream - ‘the dream that was Rome’. Rome would be a republic. But not just any republic.

Lucius, the hero of the sequel, in his final speech to the Roman army, sets forth what this dream could look like: ‘A city for the many, and refuge to those in need.’ The entire legion lay down their arms and cheer triumphantly for the dawn of this new Rome.

All of this is starting to sound rather close to home. Perhaps Lucius should march to the US border next.

We can imagine offscreen, Lucius walks into the Roman equivalent of the World Humanist Congress, to write a charter to declare the worth and dignity of every individual, and their right to freedom.

Anyone watching who didn’t know their history might be forgiven for assuming that this would mean an end to all the conquering, and the beginning of a just and equal society for all, regardless of gender, social status and nationality.

Unfortunately, this was not the dream of the Roman republic, even before ‘tyrannical’ emperors started ruling. Many of Rome’s biggest conquests happened during the era of the Republic. Likewise, democracy in Rome did not extend to all people. Slavery was rife. The dream that was Rome, was to have a group of men subjugate the world, rather than just one or two.

To be fair to Ridley Scott, his Rome has a little bit more nuance than I give him credit. Denzel Washington’s character Macrinus, the gladiator master, stands as a reminder of the hypocrisy of Marcus Aurelius’ ‘dream’. Macrinus was made a slave under Aurelius’ rule, bearing the brand of Aurelius’ visage on his chest, a reminder that he was Roman property.

The only real equality Rome has – Macrinus points out – is that a slave can violently overthrow an emperor. If equality is going to happen in Rome, it won’t be through reasonable persuasion, but violent revolution. And even then, equality won’t have the final say, but rather the oppressed simply becomes the next oppressor. This is the true spirit of Rome: the survival of the strongest.

Gladiator II reminds us that the values we find self-evident today, that Ridley puts into the mouth of Lucius and the other protagonists, were not self-evident to Rome. The dream that was Rome is a dream that we have. But how did we come to have this dream?

We have been shaped by this history in more ways than we know.

There was another revolution, that Gladiator II does not portray (at least not explicitly). This revolution explains why we look back on history wanting to see ideals of equality and justice. The German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, atheist and nihilist, writes about it in his work The Genealogy of Morality.

Nietzsche describes a war that happened between Judea and Rome. Rome was undoubtedly defeated, Nietzsche claims. Now, before we might accuse Nietzsche of further anachronism (the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD70 come to mind), Nietzsche is in fact speaking of a revolution in values.

He saw that the Roman ideal of ‘the prerogative of the few’: a small group of strong men imposing their will and subjugating others as the master race, was overthrown by the ‘prerogative of the many’ in the ‘slave revolution’. This revolution was brought about by a Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth, followed by his group of unlikely revolutionaries.

At the centre of this movement was one central image: a man dying on a Roman cross, a punishment meant for slaves and criminals.

God in human flesh dying as a victim of oppression, was an image that gave power to the powerless.

Nobility was no longer be found in inflicting suffering, but in enduring it for the sake of others.

Historian Tom Holland writes in his book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind:

‘The spectacle of Christ being tortured to death had been bait for the powerful. It had persuaded them … that it was their natural inferiors, the hungry and the humble, who deserved to inherit the earth’.

Holland traces this revolution and the ways in which this counter-narrative slowly seeped into Western culture, implanting a concern for the powerless. The welfare state, universal human rights, movements like #MeToo all find their source in this world-rupturing event.

Holland writes elsewhere: ‘The wellspring of humanist values lay not in reason, not in evidence-based thinking, but in history.’

We have been shaped by this history in more ways than we know.

Our generation suffers from cultural amnesia. We forget the reason for how we reason today. Our desire to see Rome (and our own nation, for that matter) become a home for the many and refuge to those in need, is a desire that has been shaped by Christian values.

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