Читать книгу Living in Love and Faith - Bishops of the Church of England - Страница 36

The statistics above are drawn from the Office of National Statistics, with the exception of the ‘Divorce’ infographic where information was also sourced from the Marriage Foundation. For full source references see endnote 64 on here.

The forms of companionship and intimacy possible for married and cohabiting people are not the only forms of companionship and intimacy available. A single life is a life shaped by different possibilities of relationship, not by an absence of relationships. Nevertheless, the church has often mirrored negative cultural attitudes towards singleness, including tacit assumptions that to be single is to lack completeness and to be lonely. Many single people in the church and across society would insist that their single status is not what defines them. It does not dictate their capacity for fulfilment or the contributions that they are capable of making.⁶⁵