BBC Radio Shropshire
Pippa White is 29 years outdated. Like many ladies her age, she enjoys Taylor Swift’s music, performs rugby and makes TikTok movies in her spare time.
The one distinction? She is a vicar within the Shropshire city of Whitchurch, sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses of her uncommon life to her hundreds of followers on the video-sharing app.
“It has been actually, actually constructive”, Ms White stated of the response from her viewers, whether or not that’s her congregation or her tens of hundreds of social media followers.
She hopes her TikTok will go a way in the direction of modernising the best way her church communicates with the broader world.
Talking to BBC Radio Shropshire, Ms White stated she had not been raised in a non secular family when rising up in Norfolk, however she had “all the time felt snug” in her village church.
She recalled that whereas discussing careers with a pal at college she had joked about turning into a vicar.
“I received this thunderbolt second of ‘Oh, perhaps I ought to really look into [that]”, she stated. “It simply sort of snowballed from there”.
Other than being a younger feminine vicar, Ms White can be breaking the mould posting on TikTok, the place she has amassed thousands and thousands of views.
Her account, @not_a_priestess, is broadly light-hearted, whether or not she is poking enjoyable at uncomfortable pews or exhibiting the viewers a day in her life.
Ms White, who says she doesn’t earn any cash from social media, believes it is crucial for younger individuals to see themselves mirrored within the Church of England.
“Looking for illustration of younger girls within the church is sort of difficult,” she stated. “I simply had a second of pondering that if I used to be sick of not seeing anybody like me on the market, why not simply do it myself.”
Her congregation, St Alkmund, has reacted properly to her social media success, Ms White stated.
“You stroll down the excessive avenue and somebody will say ‘oh, I noticed your Tik Tok’,” she stated.
“[The parish] loves the vitality of it as a result of they see a teenager within the church reaching out to, principally, different younger individuals,” Ms White added, noting that a lot of her older congregation “discover hope in that”.
“It is one thing new, and it is conserving the Church of England within the public eye in a brand new, refreshing approach.
“Generally I feel the Church of England is not superb at saying what we’re doing properly,” she stated, pointing to church programmes like meals banks and English language classes.
She added that the illustration of younger Christians is “typically from the extra conservative circles”.
“I’m very liberal, I am very inclusive in my theology… so it is about conserving that perspective within the public sphere.”