A young vicar has bagged millions of views on TikTok by sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses of her unusual life.
Pippa White, 29, has over 20,000 followers on the social media app and her posts have been liked more than 500,000 times.
Pippa, from Whitchurch, Shrops, says her @not_a_priestess account gives a light-hearted view of what it is like being a female vicar.
“It’s been really, really positive,” she told the BBC. “Trying to find representation of young women in the church is quite tricky.
“I just had a moment of thinking that if I was sick of not seeing anyone like me out there, why not just do it myself?”
Members of her congregation at St Alkmund’s Church are full of praise for Pippa’s TikTok success.
“You walk down the high street and someone will say, ‘Oh, I saw your TikTok’,” she said.
“[The parish] loves the energy of it because they see a young person in the church reaching out to, mostly, other young people.
“It’s something new, and it’s keeping the Church of England in the public eye in a new, refreshing way.
“Sometimes I think the Church of England isn’t very good at saying what we’re doing well.”
Pippa added that the representation of young Christians is “often from the more conservative circles”.
“I am very liberal, I’m very inclusive in my theology… so it’s about keeping that perspective in the public sphere,” she said.
Rugby-playing Pippa, who is a huge Taylor Swift fan, grew up in Norfolk before moving to Shropshire.
She first discussed becoming a vicar as a joke with a friend while at university.
“I got this thunderbolt moment of, ‘Oh, maybe I should actually look into that,” she said. “It just kind of snowballed from there.”
Explaining her TikTok name, she previously told the BBC: ““Before I went into the Church, I was a barmaid.
“I had a regular [customer]… and every time I’d say I’m going to be a priest, he would shout across the pub, ‘Priestess!’
“It’s really petty of me, but when I went onto TikTok I was like, you know what? I’m not a priestess, I’m a priest”.”
One video Pippa posted showed her going on a night out and then leading a church service the next day.
She recalled: “People were really shocked that I go out like any other girl in her twenties. The comments were wild.
“It’s not like we get given a rule book of like, OK, now you’re a priest, you can do this, you can’t do that.
“People get really shocked that we’re allowed downtime… they think we sit in our living rooms and read the Bible in the evening… I went and saw Taylor Swift on her Eras tour, which was amazing.”
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