'Living together' is no longer remarked upon, even in the children of Anglican bishops or Tory MPs. Whereas around one in twenty women marrying in the late 1960s had cohabited before their wedding day, by the end of the 1990s the figure had risen to nearly eight in ten. The traditional Christian teaching that sex outside marriage is sinful no longer seems plausible, or even morally advisable. In Just Cohabiting?: The Church, Sex and Getting Married Duncan Dormor provides a lively short history of the church's complicated and uneasy attitudes to sexuality and marriage, and analyses its failure to respond to the revolutionary shift in sexual behaviour, gender roles and family life that has taken place in Europe and North America in the past forty years. He argues for a radical reappraisal of the church's position, proposing that in a chaotic climate for relationships, in which couples desire marriage yet fear commitment, the church should embrace cohabitation as part of 'becoming married'. DUNCAN DORMOR is Dean of St John's College, Cambridge, and lectures in the sociology of religion. He is a co-editor of Anglicanism: The Answer to Modernity (Continuum 2003).

Just Cohabiting: A Christian Re-evaluation of Living Together and Pre-Marriage Course Guest Journal

Just Cohabiting: A Christian Re-evaluation of Living Together

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