Ellen Knight
BBC Radio Shropshire
Shropshire’s vicar with hundreds of thousands of TikTok perspectives
Pippa White is 29 years previous. Like many ladies her age, she enjoys Taylor Swift’s tune, performs rugby and makes TikTok movies in her spare time.
The only distinction? She is a vicar within the Shropshire the city of Whitchurch, sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses of her atypical lifestyles to her 1000’s of fans at the video-sharing app.
“It is been in reality, in reality sure”, Ms White stated of the reaction from her target audience, whether or not this is her congregation or her tens of 1000’s of social media fans.
She hopes her TikTok will move a way against modernising the way in which her church communicates with the broader global.
Chatting with BBC Radio Shropshire, Ms White stated she had no longer been raised in a non secular family when rising up in Norfolk, however she had “all the time felt relaxed” in her village church.
She recalled that whilst discussing careers with a chum at college she had joked about changing into a vicar.
“I were given this thunderbolt second of ‘Oh, possibly I must in truth glance into [that]”, she stated. “It simply more or less snowballed from there”.
With the exception of being a tender feminine vicar, Ms White could also be breaking the mildew posting on TikTok, the place she has collected hundreds of thousands of perspectives.
Her account, @not_a_priestess, is extensively light-hearted, whether or not she is poking amusing at uncomfortable pews or appearing the target audience an afternoon in her lifestyles.
Ms White, who says she does no longer earn any cash from social media, believes it is crucial for younger other people to peer themselves mirrored within the Church of England.
“Looking for illustration of younger girls within the church is somewhat difficult,” she stated. “I simply had a second of pondering that if I used to be unwell of no longer seeing somebody like me in the market, why no longer do just it myself.”
Her congregation, St Alkmund, has reacted smartly to her social media luck, Ms White stated.
“You stroll down the top side road and any individual will say ‘oh, I noticed your Tik Tok’,” she stated.
“[The parish] loves the power of it as a result of they see an adolescent within the church attaining out to, most commonly, different younger other people,” Ms White added, noting that lots of her older congregation “in finding hope in that”.
“It is one thing new, and it is retaining the Church of England within the public eye in a brand new, refreshing method.
“On occasion I believe the Church of England is not superb at pronouncing what we are doing smartly,” she stated, pointing to church programmes like meals banks and English language courses.
She added that the illustration of younger Christians is “regularly from the extra conservative circles”.
“I’m very liberal, I am very inclusive in my theology… so it is about retaining that standpoint within the public sphere.”
