Church Should Set up Model Instead of Warring on Family Issues

Warring churches and difficulties on divorce and homosexuality issues are being faced by the general Christian communities nowadays. These problems are in turn threatening Christian family values, especially among the younger generations.

When giving an address at the Mothers' Union in Westminster, London to mark the International Year of the Family, Mrs Jane Williams, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury referred to it. She said the “family” was near the top of the agenda for the churches and described a “generalised anxiety” about the family.

She criticised the wrong attitude that churches have used in tackling family problems nowadays. In the traditional western world, especially politicians, churchmen, and Para church organisations, they assume that parents should be all-sufficient and nuclear families are the bedrock of society.

Mrs Williams commented that the concept is a “romantic nostalgia”, it was once a time when families worked, and it was probably the time when everybody went to the church.

Describing the rising expectations of family life, she said, “Our Western society has put intolerable pressures on the family.”

Mrs Williams continued to explain the reason behind family problems and provided suggestions for the church about how to relieve the worsening trend.

"If war and AIDS have ravaged the shape of families in much of the world, unfaithfulness and divorce have done the same in this country. Too many of our children are growing up with no models at all of lasting, committed relationships, either in their family or the community around them,” she said, “What chance will they have of building for themselves
something they have never seen?”

“Some Christian communities are inward-looking and too ready to condemn rather than inspire,” she said. “Some demonstrate a willingness to reject each other and give up on each other that is the exact social mirror of what is going wrong in so many marriages.”

Jane Williams said churches should not react with “such anger and shock” to the wide varieties of family life now seen in society. Rather than warring, they should focus on building a community that allows families to flourish and grow.

“Commitment and a willingness to work through problems and pain together need to be re-learned at all levels of our lives, but not just in our personal relationships.”

Para church organisations campaigning on family policy have frequently resisted calls for recognising other forms of relationship not based on the legal conception of marriage as a contract. As a theologian, teaching part-time at Trinity College, Bristol, Mrs Williams, echoes the voice of theologians that a Christian conception of marriage is based not on a legal contract but on ideas of covenant.

Mrs Williams is the first archbishop's wife in nearly 150 years to bring up young children at Lambeth Palace. She is now a mother of two children.