Fault, Breakdown, and the Church of England's Involvement in the 1969 Divorce Reform

The 1969 reform of the divorce laws was part of a wider trendtowards the relaxation of family law that took place in mostwestern countries in the 1960s and 1970s.In Britain, the legislationresulted only in a regime of partial no-fault divorce. Thiswas the result of a compromise between church and state, whichis investigated in this article using Lambeth Palace papersand the archives of the Church of England's Moral Welfare Council. In particular, we focus on the origins of and reasons for theprofound shift in the Church's views on divorce that occurredin the 1960s. These had as much to do with changing views asto the source of sexual morality and the difficulties of imposingan external moral code. However, because divorce law reflectsa view of marriage, it was impossible for the Church to acceptfull no-fault divorce, which would have meant divorce by mutualconsent and have threatened the idea of marriage as a vocation.The compromise reached allowed the Church to go on treatingChristian and civil marriage as compatible. ^*The authors' names appear in alphabetical order.