Many pastors in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden are disrupting family wedding plans by forbidding fathers from escorting their daughters down the aisle.  That’s the way to ensure traditional, story-book weddings.

Brides in Stockholm who want their fathers to walk them down the aisle are likely to be told it can't be done, as some pastors are refusing to allow the practice they say is sexist, a pastor said on Friday.

"In Sweden we have worked hard in many different ways to eliminate everything that is unequal," a Lutheran Church vicar in the Stockholm region, Yvonne Hallin, told AFP.

She said she would not allow the custom in her parish, and noted that Stockholm's bishop issued a recommendation in 2003 that pastors discourage it.

Rev Hallin’s edict upset one bride who is planning to get married today.  The whole family is flabbergasted.

The decision caused consternation in the bride's family. The mother of the bride, who chose not to be named, said it was an old tradition in her family for the bride to be walked down the aisle.

"I think my daughter can decide for herself how she wants to do it. She's thirty years old and is extremely aware of equality issues," she told news agency TT.

Sorry, Mom, but Rev Hallin is sure she knows what’s best for your daughter, even if your daughter doesn’t.

Eva Brunne, diocesan dean and assistant to Bishop of Stockholm Caroline Krook, chimes in with the claim that fathers walking brides down the aisle is an alien custom.

Brunne told The Local that the tradition of giving away a woman was un-Swedish. Traditionally, Swedish couples walk down the aisle to the altar together.

The practice of being given away "only came into our church in the seventies and eighties through American TV shows," she said.

If you’re going to be that way about it, why stop there?  Christianity is an alien religion.  I seem to recall that it originated in the Holy Land, long before the 1970s.

So, Church of Sweden bishops and pastors are enforcing arbitrary and high-handed rules to prevent a practice that has no bearing on the propriety or legality of weddings.  If only they were so punctilious about preaching the gospel.

The Church of Sweden is definitely in the vanguard of socio-political rectitude.  It adopted a rite for blessing same-sex "partnerships" in 2005.

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