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Marriage and the Churches in the 1930s: Royal Abdication and Divorce Reform, 1936–7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

G. I. T. Machin
G. I. T. Machin
Affiliation:
Department of Modern History, University of DundeeDD1 4HN
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Extract

In a general history of modern England A. J. P. Taylor stated that by the 1920s England ‘had ceased to be, in any real sense, a Christian nation’. He was no doubt referring to declining membership and attendance figures in most Protestant Churches (not the Roman Catholic Church), and may have been implying that there had been substantial abandonment of traditional belief. In regard to traditional morality, based on Christian precepts, he found greater laxity but no very noticeable decline; and this conclusion seems to be generally supported by Church experience in trying to uphold established morality in the inter-war years. Church assembly records and church newspapers show constant concern with familiar moral enemies such as drunkenness and gambling, and possible new dangers in the shape of films, broadcasting and information about birth control. Gambling was increasing because of the popularity of football pools and greyhound racing, but drunkenness appeared less common than before 1914, and the cinema was reasonably harmless (a Cinema Christian Council and other bodies striving to keep it so), as also was television when its broadcasts began in 1936. None the less, the general decline in church attendance was an indication of an increasingly secularised society in which the Churches, taken as a whole, had diminishing influence, and arguably this had a weakening effect on traditional morality.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 1991 , pp. 68 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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18 Parl. Dec. cccxviii. 1,611–12.

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32 Ibid. 11 Mar., 526 (letter from C. H. Langley).

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36 Daily Worker, 12 12. (article by R. Palme Dutt). Contrast the constitutional rectitude of the Labour New Statesman: ‘Once Mr Baldwin had made it clear that the Government would not support a morganatic marriage, only the enemies of democracy would have urged that the King was still free to make a personal appeal to the country over the heads of his Ministers’: 12 Dec, 965.Google Scholar

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44 Micklem to Revd Alan Don (Lang's chaplain), 17 Dec; ibid. 22, fo. 423, also 424.

45 Reith to Lang, 14 Dec, ibid. 192, fo. 380.

46 Quoted in Guardian (Church of England newspaper), 18 Dec, 894.

47 Ibid. 1 Jan. 1937, 9–10; 8 Jan., 25.

48 Mew Statesman, 19 Dec. 1936, 1,024.

49 Ibid. 26 Dec, 1,059.

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57 Pad. Deb. cccxvii. 2,100 (Sir Francis Acland), 2,104 (Sorensen), cccxxiv. 585–9 (Sorensen).

58 Ibid, cccxxiv. 593.

59 Ibid, cccxvii. 2,118–19. Cf. D. N. Pritt: ‘If it is really true that the dissolution of civil marriages… morally breaks up a nation, why is it that most people in Western Europe recognise that, on the whole, the Swedes and the Danes are among the best, the cleanest, and the most sound and moral people in Europe? They have a wide divorce law, far wider than anything in the Bill’: ibid, cccxxiv. 602.

60 Ibid, cccxxiv. 578–80, 589–93, 604–8, 614–16.

61 Ibid. 580–3 (Commander Bower).

62 Ibid. 630–3.

63 Herbert, The Ayes Have It, 178–90; Parl. Deb. cv. 730–86, 812–48, cvi. 566–94.

64 Revd Alan Don to Mrs Theodore, Woods, 23 Jan. 1937, Lang Papers, 152, fo. 303; printed leaflet, Mar. 1937,Google Scholaribid. fo. 317; Church Times, 27 11. 1936, 616, 4 12, 644, 11 12, 683, 5 03. 1937, 280, 284–5.

65 Lockhart Lang, 235.

66 Parl. Deb. cccxvii. 2,112 (Lieut.-Commander Agnew). Cf. ibid. 2,116–17, and cccxxiv. 632 (E. Thurtle); cccxxiv. 595 (Mrs Mavis Tate).

67 Year Book, 1938, 250–1, 259–61