Too Much But Not Enough: The Church, Sex and Singleness
Inside Chapter Six of 'Single Ever After'
For single Christians, the topic of sex often feels like a no-win conversation.
Outside the church, we’re told that sex is who we are. Within the church, the loudest message is often just one “No” after another. And somewhere in the middle, many singles are left feeling shamed, silenced, or simply confused.
“Christian author Stephen McAlpine calls our day in the 21st-century West the “Sexular Age”. He’s on to something: our culture is not only deeply secularised but also profoundly sexualised. Our individual sexual appetites, instincts, desires and wants are not simply considered foundational to what it means to be a human being but to what it means for each of us to be the individual human person that we uniquely are. Throughout most of history, sex was an activity humans did for the sake of procreation, pleasure and partnership. But now, sex lies at the heart of who the world says we are; to not be having sex with whom we choose is to be less than fully ourselves.
Unfortunately, it is not only the world that has put sex at the very heart of human identity. We Christians have actively helped co-author the Sexular Age in which we now live. It is for this reason that we need to reckon with the part the church itself has played in our society’s obsession with sex.”
Single Ever After (p. 110-111)
I didn’t write Chapter Six to add more rules about sex. Nor did I write it to throw out the Bible’s grand vision for it in place of a cheap, deeply flawed, knock-off imitation. Instead, I wrote it to ask this question:
What is our sexuality actually for?
Not just what to do with it, but how to think about it as part of our humanity… and our discipleship.
Because here’s the paradox: we Christians have made too much of sex. But in doing so, we’ve also made it far too little of it. We’ve shrunk it into either a moral danger or a self-fulfilment KPI, with no more expansive or enduring vision to guide us.
This chapter moves through history, theology, and reality. It traces how the Reformation, in rightly challenging distorted ideals of celibacy, unintentionally planted the seeds of a theology—and a church—that now aligns disturbingly well with our modern “Sexular Age.”
It also confronts the loneliness and invisibility many single, faithfully abstinent Christians feel: a future-shaped, theologically grounded vision of sexual personhood.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your (married or single) sexuality has meaning apart from having sex itself, this chapter is for you. And if you’re a single Christian who is weary of feeling like your sexual personhood is always framed as deprivation, deficit, or sacrifice, I hope this chapter gives you a bigger, better and much more biblical story to inhabit.
Over to You
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For many years, I have observed that the world effectively says, 'You're no-one unless you're having sex.' The church then, rather than counter with a bigger and better vision, simply overlaid on that, 'But sex belongs in marriage' and then drew the false conclusion, 'You're no-one unless you're married.' In one conversation when I was single I was pointedly told, 'Marriage is the norm,' to which the obvious conclusion was that I was therefore abnormal, and I wondered what on earth these people really made of Jesus.
I’ve been through a gamut of thoughts on sexuality. After overcoming decades of fallout from young childhood exposure to pornography, I’ve concluded that sex is for procreation, pleasure, and partnership, yes, but it’s also a mysterious foreshadowing of our surpassingly intimate communion with Christ in eternity.
Actually, it starts now: when we feed deeply on the Lord through prayer and the Word, there’s an otherworldliness where time stops and the satisfaction is unsurpassed. It seems strange to connect sex that way, but I think that’s the ultimate point. I can’t believe God would deny something so “essential” to half the population without having more in mind. All of our earthly lives foreshadow what’s to come.