The passing of this Act did not help the growing number of people who refused to belong to any Christian Church at all. Another wave of illegitimate children appeared: the sons and daughters of atheists and socialists who refused to solemnise their marriage with a religious ceremony. A law on civil marriage in satisfied these groups as well. Marriage was now possible without any religious involvement at all.41 This hardly meant that society had adopted an authority built on secular rationality, even though secular values began to have a considerable attraction to many people. However, our WVS landscape had radically changed. The urban economy was in the ascendant, while the rural economy was retreating. Traditional religious values were no longer the undisputed ideology of the state. The individual, not the extended family had become the focus of the law. By way 135 survival vs. self-expression traditional vs. secular-rational authority 41 J. Janson, Debatten om civiläktenskapets införande i Sverige. (Lund 1964: Lunds univ., diss.)
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