Evangelical Singleness

Not so long ago, I Googled the phrase "Evangelical Singleness." I ended up with little besides one (fairly good) term paper written by a seminary student, and an article on Beliefnet.com discussing the fact that "True Love Waits" doesn't hold a lot of water for someone who's still single at thirty. For whatever reason, Evangelicals (that is, to paraphrase historian Mark Noll, Christians that take the resurrection of Jesus as fact and not myth) don't do singleness well. In the blog series that will follow here in a total of five further installments, I plan to explore in some limited sense the problems with evangelical approaches to singleness as they affect both single adults and the wider evangelical church.

I have chosen the phrase "Evangelical Singleness" to describe this series for several reasons. First, "Christian singleness" would make little sense because the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches already have a well-thought out and convincingly articulated theology of marriage and singleness: for them, singleness is better. Mainline Protestants have diverged from Evangelical understandings of the human family and sexuality to the point that I don't feel comfortable lumping them together with Evangelical Christians. When Evangelical attitudes towards singleness are isolated, a series of possible questions begins to emerge: Do single adults consistently maintain a second-class position in evangelical churches? If so, why? Is there any legitimate goal for Evangelical singles besides marriage? When Evangelical teachings on sexuality are limited to exhorting teenagers to "save themselves for marriage," how can Evangelical Christians manage their sexuality when marriage is not in their future?

Secondly, and in a more positive light, I have chosen the phrase "Evangelical singleness" because single adults have a special gift that can be used for the good of the work of the church. In fact, I will argue in a few weeks that single adults are under a biblical mandate to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to the work of God in a way that married people cannot. Single people ought to be the front line workers in the church's work for the good of the world.

I will explore these issues and perhaps a few others over the next five weeks. I hope you will share your thoughts and reactions along the way.