Married couples who stayed together are unsung “heroes” according to the head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

Speaking at the launch of National Marriage Week, Dr Williams said that the institution of marriage was “for life; and that doesn’t just mean life-long, important as that is. It means for life; that is for an enhanced kind of human experience.”

He went on to stress that marriage “says to the children of that marriage, it’s quite possible to live as a human being, not afraid at any moment that you’re going to be let down, abandoned”.

As such, marriage was vital in building the trust necessary for the maintaining of a stable society.

The alternative, the Archbishop continued, were “transient and fraught, intense and violent relationships” which characterised gang culture.

“If that’s the only kind of stable background people know, well we can expect the disasters that we see.”

Marriage, on the other hand, had given society a “moral geography” which had been created by an earlier generation. Those who were now prepared to downgrade the importance of marriage were “trading off the inherited capital of a stability and yes, a prosaic heroism that’s evolved over generations”.

He added that the “commentating classes of north London” may not be able to fully appreciate the value of marriage, or the costs associated with its decline, “but you don’t have to go very many miles to see what the cost is for people who can’t take that sort of thing for granted.” (The speech can be read in full here.)