Human Relationships

Christian understandings of human relationships proceed from knowledge that God is love and one who is known in relationships. This is summed up in the doctrine of the Trinity and the biblical idea of covenant which exemplifies love, respect and mutual self-giving and applies particularly to our understandings of intimate relationships such as marriage. However, society in England is changing. There are many challenges to our understanding of marriage - the changes in attitude towards sexual activity linked with increasing acceptance of contraception, the increased number of couples who delay or choose not to marry but live together, the increase in single households, the increasing ability of women to be financially independent, the acceptance of divorce, deliberate childlessness, polygamy, the increasing acceptance of homosexuality and committed same sex relationships and the increasing variety of ways people live together, all mean that,  in contemporary British society marriage is less of the norm. People look to the Church of England for guidance on these issues and this section contains some of the Church's responses to these challenges.