I am a member of the group Open Beliefs Scotland (OBS). One important strand of OBS work is acting as an NRS-accredited “belief body”. This means that OBS wedding celebrants can legally marry people under Scots law.
Of course I’m not a wedding celebrant – I mainly focus on funerals, end of life ceremonies and ecological grief work. But the work of these belief bodies goes beyond simply acting as the registration vehicle for legal marriages. In OBS’s case, the group runs a series of semi-public talks and discussions on issues of interest to the celebrant community and a wider audience.
Last night we were discussing “spirituality”. Laura Gordon opened by noting that at the coronation of the new king, various religions were represented as well as (and this was seen as innovative) Humanists. But what, she wondered, about all the people who fall somewhere in between?
The people who are so familiar to celebrants. The people who are not members of any religion and who want a service that is essentially non-religious….but maybe includes a favourite hymn or prayer. Or a reading from scripture. Or, most commonly of all, some words that recognize that their loved one is still in some way “there” and maybe even “reunited” with a spouse.
Because most people, even if they’ve never set foot in a church (or temple, or mosque…), hold some beliefs and ideas about the afterlife, the transcendent, about there being “something more” or “something bigger and beyond the everyday”.
Such ideas are rarely part of a fully worked out metaphysical view of reality. Just a sense in most of us that there is more to this life than we can easily perceive. And this is where the word “spirituality” can be useful. When I was studying for my masters dissertation on the growth of celebrancy in Scotland, I examined this concept. And it was clear to me that the word gets used in different ways all the time. I found an academic analysis of how it is defined in healthcare literature. The authors found that in 27 different studies, there were essentially 27 different definitions! It can be used in a traditional religious sense, or used in neuroscience literature, or deployed to sell scented candles…
But maybe this very ambiguity is actually useful to describe experiences and feelings that are otherwise hard to articulate. A case of “knowing what we mean” even if we can’t fully explain or describe.
From an OBS and independent celebrant (SICA) point of view, we wondered if it was helpful to set out a more positive case for “acknowledging spirituality” rather than simply defining ourselves in terms of what we are not. Being able to embrace and celebrate different spiritual traditions and elements or performing ceremonies that are totally religion-free, but always in alignment with the families and couples we work with.
Typical cases include among others:
- couples whose families belong to different traditions
- people who do not belong to any religion but want explicitly to make reference to an afterlife or “something bigger” – typically they may want us to state that spouses separated by death are now reunited
- people whose identity (eg LGBTQ people) causes estrangement from their religion but who still believe in the core values of their faith
- people who are active members of a given religion but who know that their tradition will not allow for the kind of person-centred ceremony that a celebrant can craft
- people who have no religious faith but who appreciate the solemnity and wisdom of scriptural passages (“To every thing there is a season…”) or a childhood hymn
Thanks to Laura and Susan Fraser for organizing and leading a stimulating and thoughtful discussion.
Michael Hannah, Broughty Ferry, 27 July 2026
