HookThe year marriage became a minority pursuit
The 2021 census recorded something that had never been true before: fewer than half the adults of England and Wales were married or in a civil partnership. The same year, 51% of babies were born outside marriage — the first majority since civil registration began in 1845 — and fewer than one wedding in five took place in a religious ceremony. Within two generations, the institution at the centre of this theme has gone from social default to one option among several, and the fastest-growing family type in the country is the cohabiting couple.
Theme A examines what the religions teach about sex, marriage, divorce, family and gender — and what happens when the society around those teachings largely stops following them. That double focus is exactly how AQA marks it. AO1 wants the teachings stated accurately, including the differences inside each religion, because Methodists and Catholics do not agree about same-sex marriage any more than all Muslims agree about contraception. AO2 wants you to test statements against those teachings and against the Britain in the paragraph above. One exam rule to bank now: when a question names the main religious tradition of Great Britain, it means Christianity, and one of your views must come from it.
ModelSexuality and sex outside marriage: the teachings themselves
Start with the shared ground: both Christianity and Islam treat sex as God's gift with a proper home, not as a sin in itself. Traditional Christian teaching places that home inside marriage — Catholic doctrine goes furthest, holding that every sexual act should be both unitive (bonding the couple) and open to procreation, which is why sex before marriage and adultery are rejected; adultery is prohibited outright in the Ten Commandments. Many liberal Protestants now weight the quality of the relationship — faithfulness, commitment — over the wedding certificate, and accept committed cohabiting couples as being on the road to marriage. Islam draws the line in the same place but with different vocabulary: sex is a right and a delight within nikah for both spouses, while zina — any sex outside marriage — is a grave sin, and haya (modesty) governs dress and behaviour for men and women alike.
On homosexuality the spread of positions is the exam's favourite contrast. UK law protects same-sex relationships; religious responses range across the spectrum. The Catholic Church distinguishes orientation, which it does not treat as sinful, from sexual acts, which it does — while insisting on respect and condemning unjust discrimination. Evangelical churches typically hold that marriage is opposite-sex only. Quakers, the United Reformed Church and — since a 2021 vote — the Methodist Church conduct same-sex marriages; the Church of England blesses same-sex couples (agreed 2023) but does not marry them. Traditional Islamic teaching prohibits same-sex acts; some British Muslims distinguish orientation from behaviour, and small inclusive Muslim groups exist. Learn the spectrum, not a cartoon of it.
ModelMarriage: sacrament, covenant, contract
Across both faiths the stated purposes of marriage rhyme: companionship, faithful sex, children raised in the faith, and a stable cell for society. The status of marriage differs, and that difference does exam work. For Catholics marriage is a sacrament — a channel of God's grace, lifelong by nature, dissolved only by death. Most Protestants describe a covenant: solemn promises made before God. Islam's nikah is a contract: offer and acceptance before witnesses, plus mahr — a gift, often money, owed to the bride and legally hers. A contract sounds less romantic than a sacrament until you notice what it buys: agreed terms, and a defined exit. Tradition also presents marriage as completing half of a Muslim's religious life, which explains the social expectation to marry. Arranged marriage — families introduce, both parties freely consent — remains normal in many Muslim communities and is not forced marriage, which Islamic law condemns and which has been a crime in the UK since 2014.
Two modern pressure points sit on the spec. Cohabitation: most churches still commend marriage as the proper home for sex, though many clergy in practice welcome cohabiting couples and steer them towards it; Catholic and Islamic teaching continues to hold sexual cohabitation to be wrong. Same-sex marriage: legal in Britain since 2014 under the 2013 Act, with the Church of England legally barred from performing them — while Quakers actively campaigned for the law. Religious opinion sits on both sides of the statute, which is precisely the fact to deploy in an evaluation.
MechanismContraception: where the traditions split three ways
Catholic teaching starts from openness to life: because sex should stay open to procreation, artificial contraception — pill, condom, coil — is rejected, a position restated in the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. Natural family planning, timing intercourse around the fertile cycle, is permitted for serious reasons. Notice the logic: the objection is to the method, not to the idea of spacing births.
Most Protestant churches concluded differently: contraception within marriage is responsible stewardship of family size. The Church of England began accepting it in limited circumstances at the 1930 Lambeth Conference and the acceptance has broadened ever since. Islam lands nearer the Protestant position than students expect: a majority of scholars permit reversible contraception with both spouses' consent, reasoning from classical jurists who tolerated withdrawal as birth spacing; permanent sterilisation is generally disliked without medical need. Both Catholic and Islamic teaching object to anything believed to act after fertilisation — because at that point the question stops being family planning and becomes the status of an early life. Non-religious views, which this theme explicitly includes, treat family planning as a plain good: autonomy plus child welfare.
A 4-mark question: Explain two contrasting religious beliefs about contraception. In your answer you must refer to the main religious tradition of Great Britain. That instruction means Christianity must supply at least one belief. Model answer, two developed points. Point one: Catholic Christians reject artificial contraception (1 mark), because every sexual act should remain open to new life, so only natural methods of spacing births are acceptable (development, 1 mark). Point two: most Muslim scholars permit reversible contraception where husband and wife both agree (1 mark), following classical rulings that allowed couples to space births — though permanent methods are discouraged (development, 1 mark). Two beliefs, genuinely contrasting, rule satisfied, four marks in about five sentences.
MechanismDivorce and remarriage: promise-keeping against compassion
The Christian argument begins with Jesus's teaching that marriage joins a couple into a union human beings should not pull apart. Mark's gospel records that teaching without exception; Matthew's account allows one, for sexual unfaithfulness — and that textual difference maps almost perfectly onto the church divide today. Catholic teaching holds a valid sacramental marriage to be indissoluble: civil divorce may be tolerated for protection or finance, but remarriage while a spouse lives is excluded — unless a church tribunal grants an annulment, a ruling that a true sacramental marriage never validly existed in the first place (grounds include lack of free consent or deception). Anglicans and Methodists treat divorce as a failure and a lesser evil, and permit remarriage in church at the minister's discretion.
Islam permits divorce while disliking it: a well-known hadith ranks it as the lawful act God likes least. Talaq (pronounced by the husband) is followed by the iddah, roughly three months' waiting — a built-in cooling-off period that also establishes paternity; khul' lets the wife initiate, typically returning her mahr. British Muslims generally need both a civil divorce and a religious one, often through a sharia council. For AO2, run the ethics both ways: promise-keeping and children's stability argue against easy divorce; compassion for spouses trapped in broken or abusive marriages argues for it. The strong answer names which consideration should win, and why — not just that both exist.
CaseFamily and gender: the theme's evaluation engine
The spec's list of family purposes — procreation, protection, education of children in the faith — is visible in practice: baptism promises and godparents on the Christian side; Muslim children taught salah and Qur'an, often at after-school madrasah classes. Family types matter too: nuclear, extended, blended, single-parent and same-sex-parent families all appear in modern Britain, and extended households remain common in British Muslim communities. Both faiths treat care of elderly parents as duty rather than favour: the Qur'an pairs the worship of God directly with kindness to parents, and the fifth commandment demands honour for father and mother.
Gender is where the theme bites. Genesis presents male and female alike as made in God's image, and Paul writes that ethnic, social and gender divisions lose their force among those united in Christ — yet other passages instruct wives to submit to husbands, and churches weight these texts differently. The Church of England ordained women priests in 1994 and consecrated Libby Lane its first woman bishop in 2015; the Catholic Church reserves priesthood to men and holds that position definitively. Islam teaches that men and women are spiritual equals with identical core duties; traditional readings assign husbands responsibility for provision and protection — a Qur'anic description of husbands as maintainers of wives is read by some as hierarchy, by others as a job description — while Muslim women increasingly serve as scholars, chaplains and mosque leaders. Both faiths formally condemn gender prejudice; both are accused of practising it. That tension is a 12-mark statement waiting to happen, so rehearse it before the examiner writes it for you.
Plan the 12-marker: Religious teachings about families no longer fit modern Britain. Paragraph one, agree and argue it: under half of adults married, 51% of births outside marriage, cohabitation the fastest-growing family type — and even churches have moved (remarriage after divorce, same-sex blessings), which suggests the old teaching itself has had to bend. Then evaluate it before moving on: strong on facts, but it describes what people do, not whether the teaching is true — popularity is not truth. Paragraph two, disagree and argue it: the core teachings — faithfulness, stable love, children's welfare, honouring the old — fit any century; what has dated is cultural packaging, not principle, and faith communities still deliver enormous practical family support. Evaluate that too: persuasive, but it quietly concedes some specific rules have dated. Final paragraph: a justified conclusion that follows from your weighing — for instance, the statement is right about form but wrong about substance. Argue, evaluate, argue, evaluate, conclude: that shape is what the top level of the mark scheme describes.
VocabularyKey terms the mark scheme pays for
TrapsMisconceptions that cost marks
ExamWhat examiners want
On the contrast questions, watch the wording like a hawk. If the question says the main religious tradition of Great Britain, that is AQA's code for Christianity: one of your two beliefs must be Christian or the answer is capped. And contrasts may come from within one religion — Catholic against Methodist on remarriage after divorce is a perfectly valid pair, and often quicker to develop accurately than reaching across to a religion you know less well.
The mid-tariff explain question rewards reference to religion's sacred writings, and accurate paraphrase with attribution scores: the Genesis teaching that male and female bear God's image, Paul's claim that divisions lose their force in Christ, the Qur'an's pairing of worship with kindness to parents. Name where the idea comes from and state it in your own words — a precise paraphrase beats a mangled quotation. Precision with the law does the same job for application marks: same-sex marriage under the 2013 Act, forced marriage criminalised in 2014.
On the 12-marker, religious arguments are compulsory — an answer built only on secular reasoning caps out — while non-religious views (the spec names atheist and Humanist perspectives) earn credit alongside them. The discipline that separates the top level from the middle is evaluating as you go: after each argument, one sentence on why it convinces or where it leaks, instead of a bolted-on paragraph that begins with the words 'In conclusion'. Then make the conclusion actually follow from the weighing you did. And remember SPaG rides on the 12-mark answers: paragraphs, sentences, and the technical terms — sacrament, annulment, nikah — spelled the way this page spells them.