Not sure if the term is to be “Christian atheist” or “Cultural Christian” or something else. According to Wikipedia, a Christian atheist means someone who follows the teachings of Christ but does not believe in a god or God or Jesus as a god or presumably Jesus himself as a human being. A Cultural Christian sounds closer to someone-who-is-atheist-but-weds-in-a-Christian-church. According to Wikipedia, it means a secular/irreligious person who identifies with the Christian culture, but not the religion or beliefs. Or is there really no special term at all? I know that religion and marriage are separable concepts, but the idea of an atheist marrying inside a Christian church makes it sound like that the atheist actually likes the Christian culture, as if the culture is rich with years of tradition and familial history (hey, it’s possible that an atheist may have devout Christian ancestors!). Please don’t take offense in my question, but I am still wondering how the atheist-in-a-Christian-church works out. If a person consistently rejects the church’s teaching that there is a god by saying that there is no god, then what is the likelihood that the church will perform a sacrament of marriage for the atheist? I suppose the church can forgive the non-Christian or atheist of being an atheist and perform the sacrament anyway and then pray that the atheist will convert into a Christian sooner or later or allow God to be the judgement of the atheist’s irreverence in the afterlife.
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I think “Cultural Christian” is a good term, at least for countries like the US. We also have a concept of a Easter and Christmas Christian which basically means that the person only shows up in church on Easter and Christmas (the two most important Christian holidays and the ones associated with the biggest cultural activities and liturgical extravagances), though it doesn’t necessarily seem to indicate that the person is a nonbeliever per se, only that they are not very committed in a personal sense.
I think a description of many atheists who marry in a church might be less “Cultural Christian” than “appeasing the relatives” or “avoiding years of umbrage.” YMMV.
The Catholic church will officiate over weddings between a Catholic and a non-Catholic, provided that the Catholic spouse promises to raise the children as Catholic, and the non-Catholic spouse promises not to interfere with this.
Also, many of these “cultural Catholics” are baptised into the Catholic church, even if they don’t go to church regularly. The Church would prefer that such folks would come to Mass more often, of course, but it still recognizes them as official Catholic.
Observation: America isn’t just another country, is it? It’s like a whole other world. I know more atheists than theists and have attended few church weddings. These questions being asked about atheist weddings the way one would ask about betrothal ceremonies of the native populations on an alien planet are surreal to me.
I call myself a cultural Christian because I celebrate Christmas and Easter, and I live in a culture primarily influenced by Christianity so my worldview is coloured by Christianity in ways I’m probably not even aware of. My country doesn’t have public holidays on the holy days of non-Christian religions, and there’s no tradition of celebrating other religions among my neighbours or peer group so culturally they haven’t had an impact like Christianity has. My entire atheist family celebrates Christmas enthusiastically, but entirely secularly (I bet among them you could find some who’ve never realised the word breaks down into Christ Mass. There’s just no thought of religion whatsoever. It’s not what Christmas means to us).
So what do you call an atheist who gets married in a church? Well, my mother was what you’d call begrudging. She did it because she thought she had to. She’s one of the few members of my family who actively hates religion. She was given a Bible to celebrate her marriage, and took a pair of scissors to it.
Some of my other acquaintences you’d call compliant. They do the church wedding thing because family expect them to, and they don’t care enough to fight it.
Some haven’t got around to figuring out that they aren’t actually Christian. They tend to only attend church for baptism/wedding/funeral type events. They marry in a church because that’s what you do, and they baptise their children because that’s what you do, but there’s nothing else left of the religion in their lives… certainly no worship of God, just mindless adherence to the big rituals of life.
Some choose a church because it’s a beautiful building to hold a wedding ceremony in. I investigated marrying in a particular church because my great great grandmother was christened, married and buried there (not on the same day). I decided against it because they wouldn’t let me hire it for a non-religious ceremony. I only valued it as a site that had seen significant events in my family going back to the 1840s, not as a religious building.
There are many reasons an atheist may have a church wedding, but it doesn’t make them anything other than an atheist.
I’m an atheist who married in a Catholic church, just because my wife was a Catholic and that’s where she wanted to get married. So I guess it was a case of “appeasing the relatives”.
Aw… how sweet. Sometimes, I wonder what it must be like to have relatives or ancestors who are Christian. One of the things that I personally admire Christianity is the elaborate details. The church services seem like the church treat one’s important moments in life (birth, marriage, and death) as meaningful. Though the worship of God never really called into me, I find that the church services, like singing hymns and doing community service, are great ways to engage oneself with the community, especially if one’s own personality is terribly shy and socially awkward. I sometimes wish that I had a Christian family or a religious family, just to experience the feeling of celebrating holidays religiously, so I could be part of the community… I could join a church, but I am not very fond of water, and I have heard that baptism is required to become accepted. Not cool to be wet or completely submerged in water. It appears that Christian church-goers actually want to make friends with people (that’s what I have always felt). Then again, I am not sure how many people would join a church merely out of companionship and perceived meaning to one’s life rather than the actual beliefs of the church.
I have read The Picture of Dorian Gray for English class once, and there was a part where Dorian Gray was enamoured with Catholicism. I wonder if he liked the elaborate details. Not sure why Oscar Wilde wrote that, though.
Why would the type of building you got married in require you to have a special designation? I was married in a Christian church, but I’m not any kind of Christian, cultural or otherwise. If I’d gotten married next to a trout stream, would that make me an angler?
Colour me surprised that you’re from an atheist background. Your questions have been framed like someone with little or no personal experience of atheism. I rarely encounter an adult who professes a complete lack of knowledge about the wedding rituals in their own culture.
Sorry if I sound that way. I wasn’t really pretending that I wasn’t unaware of wedding rituals in my own culture. If I gave out some hints, that would certainly give away my ethnic background, would it not? So, I had to be very cautious with how I phrased it. I actually wanted to know if there was a term for an American atheist or Western atheist marrying inside a Christian church, and whether or not it made any difference to be an atheist in Africa or Asia. How would the customs be different? Surely, not everyone who is an atheist would follow a Western-styled or Judeo-Christian-styled wedding! Maybe an atheist in the Middle East would have a Muslim-styled wedding without the overt religious references from the Koran… Just a thought.
I am an atheist, raised Catholic, and married in a Catholic church because my wife is Catholic and that is what she, her parents, and my parents wanted. I told the preist I was atheist and that was fine with him and it was fine with me. Not receiving communion was the awkward part, but no big deal.
Most people get married in a church because it is a nice place for what many may call a sacred ceremony, please note that does not mean it is religious. Sacred is a whole different thing.
I (the non-Catholic) had to promise nothing of the sort, and this was back in 1973 when I think they were stricter about it. I’ve been told earlier (I’m not sure how much earlier), the non-Catholic had to promise to raise the kids Catholic. I suspect I would have done that if forced and have been lying and not felt bad about it at all.
Just for the record, when I got married (2007) they did have this requirement. My husband and I both lied and felt fine about it - he’s catholic but respects that I’m not and neither or us feel that religious indoctrination is a good choice for our kids.
in 1987, my non-Catholic husband didn’t have to make any promises- but he did have to know that I promised to do “all in my power” to raise the children Catholic
I was raised by non-theistic parents; but my mother believed that children should be exposed to Christianity and took us to the largest local open-and-affirming churches in the towns we lived in: first Episcopal, then UCC. (While she’s a lapsed Catholic, she has a lot of gay friends, and didn’t want us to be taught homophobia with our religion.) The are a lot of people in New England who don’t believe in God but occasionally attend worship services; mostly the Unitarian Universalist but a lot of Quakers and UCC-goers too.
I declared myself an atheist around 12 (my mother didn’t admit incidentally that she wasn’t a Christian until both of her children came out as non-believers, having not wanted to influence us), and though I’ve learned that using that word makes most religious people very upset and no longer use it to refer to myself, I continue to both semi-openly disavow any belief in God and to identify myself as culturally Christian (and more particularly, culturally Protestant, since going to open-and-affirming churches means that you’re tight with the WASP establishment, who in New England tend also to attend such churches), and to celebrate Christmas and Easter.
This has nothing to do with marriage. I live in Turkey right now, and if I marry a Muslim girl (which is incidentally prohibited by the Quran), I would not identify as culturally Muslim. I remain culturally Christian, and if I ever have children, whether with a Christian, Muslim, nonbeliever, or Jew, I’d like to raise them to also celebrate Christmas and Easter, and to read the Bible.
We had a term for someone who was only a punk at shows: part-time punk. I have used this “part-time” description for just about everything of the sort. Though it does have a bit of a disparaging tone.
You know if you let people know where you are from it might be easier to answer questions like this, just saying.
It will be different for each country, each has its own rules on marriage. I’m sure there are many non-believers having religious weddings, many probably would not identify as atheist. Whether they do it openly will depend on the official probably.