THE GREAT DIVORCE CONTROVERSY
By Edward S. Williams
Belmont House Publishing (http://www.belmonthouse.co.uk). 464 pages. £25.00
ISBN 0 95299 393 7
Divorce is a modern evil which has resulted from the abandonment of biblical teaching. Starting with this premise, Edward Willams traces how we got here, and how bad the situation really is. In his professional life he is a public health statistician, which has given him an expertise at interpreting public documents and how to present a huge mass of facts and figures. He communicates these in an intelligent and interesting way. Although he peppers his survey with anecdotes and opinions, the underlying facts are always close at hand.
About two thirds of this book is a history of divorce, from the Reformation to the modern day, with increasing depth of detail as it reaches our own time. For me, his summary of the Reformation, especially in England, was most interesting. He gives a vivid account of the attempt by Cranmer to introduce divorce and remarriage into Church of England law. This was narrowly defeated when Elizabeth I introduced a new emphasis on indissolubility, which then became the basis of the 1662 marriage service and all subsequent liturgies. His account of the growing debate and the twists and turns of the modern legal and ecclesiastical commissions are masterful, though often too detailed. This section is a Christian version of Lawrence Stone's book Road to Divorce (OUP 1990).
