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.

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Trauma

9 May 2024

5 min read

Bitterness and weaponised words can’t soften scars

Finding peace for Daniel Anjorin, Salman Rushdie and Bishop Mar Mari.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A man sits being interviewed and holds a hand to the side of his face, one lens of his glasses is tinted black.

Salman Rushdie discusses his attack.

BBC.

Knife crime around the world is unacceptably high, and with around 50,000 offences expected this year in the UK, it is sadly no surprise when we hear tragic news stories involving knives and sharp instruments. Recently, it was the terrible circumstances of the death of Daniel Anjorin that made the headlines. The gentle, much-loved, 14-year-old boy was on his way to school in East London when he, along with several others, was randomly attacked by a man with a sword. He died from his wounds shortly after being taken to hospital.

I happened to be in the middle of listening to Knife, a memoir by Salman Rushdie, when the news broke of that tragedy. It is another heart-rending story. Rushdie describes how, in 2022, during a speech he was giving about the need to protect writers, a man ran onto the stage and frantically stabbed him 15 times. Rushdie was airlifted to a hospital and survived the attack but lost an eye. Then began his difficult physical and emotional journey towards recovery, documented in the book he never wanted to write.

It was not the first time Rushdie had been the victim of aggression. In 1988, following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, the Iranian government called for Rushdie’s death by issuing a fatwa against him. His book was perceived to be blasphemous to the Islamic faith, and despite ten years of round-the-clock police protection in London, he faced several serious assassination attempts.

The fatwa was lifted in 1998, but twenty-four years later, Rushdie was clearly still not safe. He recounts the moment when he saw the man running at him in the darkness as he gave his lecture.

“My first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was: So it is you. Here you are…. It struck me as anachronistic. This was my second thought: Why now? Really? It’s been so long. Why now after all these years? Surely the world had moved on, and that subject was closed. Yet here, approaching fast, was a sort of time traveller, a murderous ghost from the past.”

I can’t imagine how I would cope in his shoes. I have not had to experience the daily fear of assassination for decades as Rushdie has. In all my years of delivering speeches and sermons on stages around the world, I have never had cause to even contemplate the possibility of an attempt on my life. Nevertheless, I was surprised to hear in Rushdie’s voice, the words he chose to say to his attacker:

“If I think of you at all in the future it will be with a dismissive shrug. I don't forgive you. I don't not forgive you. You are simply irrelevant to me, and from now on, for the rest of your days, you will be irrelevant to everyone else. I'm glad I have my life and not yours and my life will go on.”

Rushdie admits that his words are his weapons – and he certainly uses them to good effect. They are sharp. They are designed to eviscerate. They are calculated to cause pain. They express derision towards his attacker. Part of me cheers him on: a defenceless man in his seventies who walked into a lecture hall expecting to give a speech to rapturous applause but left barely alive as the victim of a brutal frenzied attack. Like the plot of every action movie I have ever seen, the story seems to have a happy ending – the hero is saved, the bad guy is locked up and justice is seen to be done.

But there is another part of me that knows these Hollywood endings can’t be trusted. Those 27 seconds of violence have clearly left Rushdie reduced to spitting insults at a young man in prison. He claims his life now is “filled with love”, but sadly there is little evidence of it in the way he addresses the radicalised 24-year-old. Bitterness and weaponised words, however eloquent, can’t soften the scars, nor do they make the world a safer place.

Indeed, I have found it difficult to forgive the comparatively trivial experience of being metaphorically stabbed in the back.

I can’t help but compare Rushdie’s reaction with that of Bishop Mar Mari Emanuel. The day before Knife was published, the Iraqi-born bishop was preaching at his church in Sydney, Australia, when he too was attacked by a young man with a knife, and, like Rushdie, ended up losing an eye. The attack was an overt terrorist act against Bishop Mar Mari, a controversial figure who has spoken dismissively about the Islamic, Jewish and LGBTQ+ communities.

Despite the striking similarities between the two men’s terrible ordeals, the contrast in their response couldn’t be starker. Speaking just two weeks later at a Palm Sunday service, Bishop Emanuel affirmed that he had forgiven his teenage assailant:

‘I say to you, my dear, you are my son, and you will always be my son. I will always pray for you. I’ll always wish you nothing but the best. I pray that my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ of Nazareth, to enlighten your heart and enlighten your soul your entire being to realise, my dear, there is only one God who art in heaven…. the Lord knows it is coming from the bottom of my heart. I’ll always pray for you and for whoever was in this act. In the name of my Jesus, I forgive you. I love you, and I will always pray for you.”

Woven into the fabric of every form of Christianity is a commitment to love and forgiveness, clearly exemplified for us here by Bishop Mar Mari. His words resonated around the world this week as he returned to the pulpit where he was stabbed, bandage over one of his eyes, to speak out with kindness and compassion.

I am deeply challenged by the bishop’s response. I have never experienced the physical pain and emotional trauma of a knife attack. Indeed, I have found it difficult to forgive the comparatively trivial experience of being metaphorically stabbed in the back. I know how hard it is, to be gracious to those who deliberately cause pain to me or to my family members through their actions. Like Rushdie, I sometimes I would like nothing more than to see them locked up, living a loveless, meaningless, irrelevant life. But this is not the Christian way. I follow Jesus who forgave the soldiers driving nails through his hands and feet, so I must strive to be compassionate to those who do us much lesser harm, as well as seek, in his name, to tackle the underlying causes for the greater dis-ease in society.

The issues that lead to knife crime are many and complex. They include poverty, fear of victimisation, gang culture, radicalisation, distrust of authorities, lack of education, experience of violence in childhood, and much more. Whatever we can do to tackle these problems, we do for the sake of love and peace in our world. Perhaps as we seek to overcome these things together, we can work towards a day when what happened to Daniel Anjorin on 30th April can never happen again.