Christian Unity Candles

Alabamans march against HB 56, harshest anti-immigrant state law yet

Birmingham, AL – Nearly 2500 people came together here, June 25, to march and speak out against Alabama House Bill 56 (HB 56), recently signed into law by Governor Bentley. The bill is being called “the harshest anti-immigrant state law in the nation.” While many immigrant rights activists say, “the bill was inspired by SB 1070 in Arizona”, others describe the law as, “a pre-civil rights movement Jim Crow law enforcing inequality.” The new law is set to take effect on Sept. 1.

HB 56 turns K-12 public school teachers into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Schools will now be required to determine the immigration status of all their students at enrollment. HB 56 encourages teachers to report undocumented children and their families. This provision is meant to discourage undocumented families from enrolling their young ones into school, denying them a right to an education. The new law also places a ban on undocumented students attending any state colleges or universities. HB 56 makes it a crime to rent housing to undocumented people and even goes so far as to criminalize providing any form of transportation to undocumented people. The law requires police officers to racially profile and hold people in custody until their immigration status is determined.

Overwhelmingly, protesters wore white and carried candles to symbolize unity. The march began with prayers in both Spanish and English from Islamic, Christian and Jewish faith leaders. Protesters marched in dignified silence, at the request of the organizers. Activists at tables around the gathering site gathered petitions demanding the repeal of HB 56.

One of the organizers, Scott Douglas, head of the antipoverty group Greater Birmingham Ministries, looked at the very diverse crowd of protesters and announced, "You look like Alabama to me."

Students for a Democratic Society activist Scott Daniel, said, "Organizers expected 1000 protesters, and there are well over 2000 people here. That just goes to show that the people of Alabama will not be silenced, that our voices will be heard."

The protest drew the attention of local and national media, and it certainly drew the attention of Alabama's lawmakers who seek to criminalize and deny the rights of undocumented people. A broad movement of immigrant rights groups, religious organizations, farmers, small businesses, civil rights groups and students are uniting in state after state to oppose these new separate and unequal laws. The South is seeing a new movement for legalization and equality.

The Tradition of the Unity Candle | The Sweet Christian Bride

A favorite Christian wedding tradition is the lighting of the unity candle.  The set-up includes three candles: one that represents the bride, one that represents the groom, and one that represents their covenant marriage.

The way that the candles are lit reflects the leaving and cleaving of the bride and groom.  Genesis 2:24 says, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” 

Usually the mothers of the bride and groom light the bride’s and groom’s candles, the two outside candles, to mark the symbolism that out of their families the bride and groom came.  This step is most commonly done after the mothers are walked down the aisle and before the bridal party enters.

After the vows are exchanged, or after the pastor prounounces the bride and groom as husband and wife, the bride and groom move towards the candles, each taking their own lit candle and lighting together the middle pillar candle, symbolizing their two lives becoming one.

Being a fairly modern addition to the Christian wedding ceremony, the tradition stems more out of conceptual symbolism than out of historic ritual.  For example, the concepts that Jesus is the Light and that we are to let our lights shine before men in order to reflect God’s glory (Matthew 5:16) make the use of flames a poetic depiction of two Christian lives becoming one.  Once the two flames merge and create a new flame, there is no way to then separate out the two individual flames.  They are inextricably one.

God appeared to Moses in a burning bush.  Moses’ response was to “turn aside and look at this great sight”(Exodus 3:3).  Lighting the unity candles, with the understanding that the joining of two into one is the work of the same God who appeared in fire on the bush and in the pillar and to whom darkness is as light (Psalm 139:12), gives opportunity for the bride and groom, and for all the guests, to marvel at the work that God has done in this covenant marriage. 

“So they are no longer two, but one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matthew 19:6).