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I am an atheist and I got married in a church because my Christian wife-to-be wanted to be married in a church in front of all her family. Who is the hypocrite:
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Some people call me a hypocrite for being married at all, they seem to have swallowed the Church's propaganda that marriage is the invention of God. This idea is nonsense. Marriage was common if not universal throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East centuries before the Hebrews or Christians made any impression on the world stage. The Egyptians, Greeks and Roman classical civilizations all had notions of marriage and weddings long before they had any dealings with the ancient Hebrews, who were of course very much into polygamous marriages, courtesans and masters taking sexual advantage of their female slaves so hardly the greatest advertisements for Yahweh's monopoly on morality, monogamy and concerns with sexual abstinence and propriety.
Religions exist to take over people's lives. It's what they do. Stupid ideas that don't try to take over your whole life are called superstitions or whimsies. Naturally religions want to foster the idea that they own the patent on marriage, weddings, monogamy, sexual fidelity and morality. Criticizing them for it is as pointless as criticizing lions for being carnivores. Of course religions will claim to own the patent on marriage, they think they know why the universe exists and the answer to the meaning of life so it is rather disingenuous to be surprised at them making a few outrageous claims now and then. Claiming to be the reason the sun rises and the flower opens is the nature of the beast, but you don't have to believe them. You don't have to believe that because they want you to believe that their god invented marriage that he actually did. For goodness sake think for yourselves here! Marriage is a good thing. It is a religious truism that all good things are god things (unless they're abominations). It is my attitude that if a person doesn't believe God made the world because gods didn't/don't exist it is rather stupid to believe that somebody else's god somehow made marriage. I believe marriage exists, I don't believe gods exist therefore no god can have invented marriage, if you believe marriage is good it is totally ridiculous to be against it in order to spite a god you don't believe in because he is meant to have invented it.
Judging marriage should be done on the merits of the institution of marriage itself not according to your attitude to an agency that other people mistakenly credit the establishment of that institution to.
The other institution that wants to be included in everything is of course the state. While some revolutionaries have considered monogamy bourgeois and of no concern of the people's revolution that has been the minority view, states know marriage is a sound institution and it cannot be defeated so it should be embraced. In France most people now go through two distinct ceremonies, they get married in the mayor's office and they have a wedding in a Catholic church. The secular state decided no longer to recognize church weddings as the markers of marriage. This seems to me going a bit too far. I prefer the British approach of offering state sanctioned secular wedding services in local government buildings which must be free of all religious connotations on the one hand or to allow wedding services in (licensed) churches on the other. Couples also have the option of a civil wedding followed by a church blessing, this is often used when the church isn't completely comfortable with the circumstances, such as when couples have divorced. This approach makes sense. Of course the worst scenario is the blurring of state and church in which state officials and premises get dragged into some dodgy voodoo ceremonies and the power of the state is deliberately confused with the authority and approval of the religious sect.
Being an atheist I don't have a set of absolute rules to run (or ruin) my life. The religious don't want me to have any morals except for one. It makes their life a lot easier if I reject all forms of morality except one. They want atheists to be murderous, thieving, lecherous, immoral, nihilistic and suicidal scumbags who somehow get very guilty and angst-ridden about hypocrisy. Screw that.
Was I being a hypocrite in taking part in a religious ceremony? Possibly. But consider the alternative, stand up for “my principles”, refuse a church wedding and have to tell everybody invited to the wedding exactly why we weren't having a church ceremony. Was it really worth all that hassle? Was it worth upsetting the grannies and giving the bigots ammunition? I decided it wasn't. Five or six people there knew I was simply saying the words without meaning them, the rest took everything at face value. I did take my vows seriously, the only things I did not believe in was all the references to God, only most of it.
Isn't it time for churches to recognize that this situation is far from rare? Many times there will be people wanting to get married where one half of the couple wants to include God and the other half does not. Would it be wrong to devise a ceremony that allowed asymmetrical vows? The current arrangement is very much in the interests of the church, the church writes the script and makes everybody pretend they agree with every sentiment and dogma, there is no room in any church service for objection, equivocation or reservation. It gives the impression that everybody in that church agrees with every word uttered throughout the ceremony. I would be quite surprised if that was the case in any more than 10% of the wedding ceremonies these days.