Japan reports high demand for fake Pastors
Japan reports high demand for fake Pastors
July 8, 2005Posted By weddings
More articles on the Weddings topic: Wedding News
In Japan there are approximately 127 million people, and less than 2 million of them are christian. Strangely though, approximately 75 percent of weddings in Japan now are christian style ceremonies.
Even more strange, people are actually preferring that fake pastors perform the ceremony, rather than real ones.
The reason for this is that the real pastors and priests generally inject too much religion into the ceremony for the average japanese family.
The pastors are generally provided for couples by bridal companies, who now have a few general requirements for their pastors:
- absolutely not overtly religious
- the pastor should be a man who comes from an english speaking country
- he should show up on time, remember his lines, and not mix up names
- he should be able to perform the ceremony in 20 minutes.
The Japanese seem to favor Shintoism for childhood age ceremonies, Christianity for weddings, and Buddhism for funerals.
The passion for western style weddings began booming in the 1980's by the televised weddings of Prince Charles and Lady Di. In a tradition bound Shinto wedding, the ceremony is more about the merger of two families than a christian wedding which revolve around the themes of love and commitment and making the bride a princess.
Many hotels are now removing Shinto shrines in favor of western style wedding chapels.
