Britain, for its part, has for some time banned religious music in civil weddings. The Government announced yesterday that it repealed the ban on any mention of religion in civil ceremonies, but continues the ban on hymns and readings from the Bible or other sacred texts. The purpose of these rules is to create a clear distinction between the civil services and church wedding services. The somewhat relaxed rules now allow music "as long as these contain no more than an incidental reference to a god or deity in an essentially non-religious context". All hail the secular society. Brits had 180,000 or so civil ceremonies in 2003 compared with 86,000 religious ceremonies.