Theme A: Relationships and Families

This theme examines how religious and non-religious people approach personal relationships, including sex, marriage, divorce, family life and gender equality.

Key topics

Sex and relationships: Different religious and secular views on sexual relationships before marriage, outside marriage, and same-sex relationships. Most traditional religious teaching reserves sex for heterosexual marriage; many modern/liberal religious people and humanists hold more inclusive views.

Marriage: For most religious traditions, marriage is a sacred covenant. The purposes of marriage typically include: companionship, the procreation and raising of children, a framework for sexual expression. Civil partnerships are now legal in the UK.

Divorce: Traditional religious teaching (e.g. Catholic, Orthodox Christianity; conservative Islam) opposes divorce or restricts remarriage after divorce. Liberal and Reformed traditions generally allow divorce as a recognition of human fallibility. Humanists and non-religious people support divorce as a personal right.

Contraception: Catholic teaching prohibits artificial contraception (Humanae Vitae, 1968); most Protestant, Muslim and Jewish traditions permit it.

Gender equality: All major religions have texts that affirm the equal worth of men and women AND texts that have been used to justify different roles. Contemporary debates include women's ordination, gender-segregated worship, and traditional vs egalitarian family models.

Family: Types include nuclear, extended, blended (step-families), same-sex parent families. Religious teaching typically affirms the nuclear family as ideal while showing pastoral care for other family forms.

Exam focus

• Give specific quotations or teachings from your two studied religions
• Present both religious conservative and progressive views within each tradition
• Include humanist/secular perspectives
• 12-mark questions require balanced argument and conclusion