ABSTRACT
The Church of England confronted wartime challenges under new leadership after the resignation of Archbishop Lang on 21 January 1942. The obvious successor to Lang was William Temple, who became the new Archbishop of Canterbury after thirteen years as Archbishop of York. In the past Temple had adhered to the Church’s definition of marriage as a lifelong union. He advocated strict standards for the Church in that he opposed the blessing of a remarriage after divorce. By the time that he became the Archbishop of Canterbury, Temple was alarmed by the increase in the number of divorces. According to his biographer, F. A. Iremonger, the Archbishop came to believe that the problem at the heart of the growth in divorce was ‘the fulfillment of personal desire at the will of each individual, which he regarded as “disastrous for public policy” ’. 1 The familiar argument that divorce was harmful to the community appeared even more serious in wartime. In an address to the Church of England Men’s Society in July 1943, Temple emphasized the significance of sexual relationships:
To use that function of our nature as an opportunity of passing amusement always involves treating another person as a plaything or a toy. That is destructive of the freedom we are fighting to maintain, for the heart of that freedom is the dignity of personality. 2
From this perspective casual sexual relationships and marital infidelity appeared almost unpatriotic.
