Despite the fact that almost half of all Americans are single, singleness remains an often overlooked oddity in American culture and in Christian communities. Christians ought to be the people who most support singleness, given what scripture and tradition suggest, but this does not seem to be the case. In this exciting new book, Jana Marguerite Bennett examines a variety of usually forgotten models of singleness: the never-married, the casually uncommitted, the committed but unmarried, the same-sex attracted, the widowed, the divorced, and the single parent. Each chapter in Singleness and the Church takes one of these models and considers the cultural commentary, Christian debate, and a holy guide-figures like Paul, Augustine, Aelred of Rievaulx, Elizabeth Ann Seton, and Dorothy Day -in order to offer a new perspective on singleness, the church, and what it means to be a single Christian disciple. In Singleness and the Church, Bennett provides a fresh new theology of single life, a starting point for restoring singleness, in all its amazing varieties, to its rightful place in Christian tradition.

Jana Marguerite Bennett is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Dayton. She is also the author of Water is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness (Oxford University Press) and blogs for Catholic Moral Theology.

Chapter 1 - Loneliness: The Character of a Single Life? Chapter 2 - Choice: Never Married and Paul Chapter 3 - Desire: Uncommitted Relationships and Augustine Chapter 4 - Perfection: Committed Relationships and John Wesley Chapter 5 - Friendship: Same-Sex Attracted, Single, and Aelred of Rievaulx Chapter 6 - Proclamation: Widowhood and Elizabeth Ann Seton Chapter 7 - Grace: Divorce and Stanley Hauerwas Chapter 8 - Sufficiency: Single Parenting and Dorothy Day Conclusions