UK Edition
Victorian family values are a myth, Archbishop tells Mothers' Union
The idea of a Victorian golden age of traditional family values is a “myth”, the Archbishop of Canterbury has insisted as he urged Christians to face up to the reality of divorce, cohabitation and gay marriage in the 21st century.
The Most Rev Justin Welby, who argued in the House of Lords against the legislation extending marriage to same-sex couples, said new family structures including same-sex unions are now a reality “whether we agree or not”.
His remarks came in a sermon to representatives of the Mothers’ Union (MU) from around the world at a special service in Winchester Cathedral to celebrate the organisation’s 140th anniversary.
Founded by Mary Sumner, a rector’s wife, in 1876, the Anglican-based group now has more than four million members in 83 countries.
In his address he singled out the MU’s formal aim of “supporting family life” at a time of rapid social change with attitudes to marriage and sex almost unrecognisable within little more than a generation. But he said that the “myth” of stable Victorian values was “just that – mythology”.
“Family life in Victorian times was under great pressure, especially in the poorest parts of the country,” he said.
“Mary Sumner acted out of concern not only for her own family but for a country in a terrible situation in which children were not nurtured, women were at risk, households were not stable and the church was not doing very much about it other than preaching.”
The Archbishop, whose parents divorced when he was a young boy and who recently learnt that his alcoholic father was not his biological father, said he had seen the importance of strong family in his own life from both sides.
“I know from myself that there is nowhere I can take my failures as safely as around the table in the family,” he said.
“And I know having grown up in a different environment, a different sort of household, what a gift of grace that is.”
He emphasised that change was “not always bad” but said the pace of the transformation had left many groups including churches “living in a culture that they have not yet begun to come to terms with”.
But he added: “It is not less nor more challenging now to have strong families in the 21st century than it was for Mary Sumner and the need for reliance on God is the same.”