“Chastity is one of the many Christian practices that are at odds with the dictates of our surrounding, secular culture. It challenges the movies we watch, the magazines we read, the songs we listen to. It runs counter to the way many of our non-Christian friends organize their lives. It strikes most secular folk as curious (at best), strange, backwards, repressed.” –Lauren Winner

“Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues.” –C.S. Lewis

In the 1998 movie Pleasantville Tobey Maguire plays a modern-day teenager fascinated with late-1950s America, as brought to him through the miracle of Pleasantville television re-runs in all their black and white glory. The high school kids of Pleasantville are as bright as their smiles; the basketball team never loses because they never miss a shot. Houses, cars, and groceries are cheap, but love does not seem so: dates are fun and wholesome; chivalry is alive and well; marriages are cherished and healthy despite the ever-separate twin beds.

But then something alarming changes Pleasantville: color – sparsely and subtly at first, and then more dramatically, everywhere. The explanation? It seems writer/director Gary Ross is saying that the people of Pleasantville are discovering who they really are as they blossom into color. And it is not a coincidence that the teenagers’ primary method of “self-discovery” is sex out at Lover’s Lane.

As Pleasantville vividly implies, the more black and white world of the 1950s did indeed transform into the more colorful sexual revolution of the 1960s, promising self-discovery, but also shaping for the worse the morals of multiple generations who have come along since. And while Christians have fought to present abstinence as an alternative through books like Elisabeth Elliot’s Passion and Purity and large-scale initiatives like the Southern Baptists’ “True Love Waits” campaign, chastity within the church (and especially among the church’s twenty-something singles) may be statistically no better than that of the world.

The year is 2005. Do we know where our virtues are?

So “20th Century”

Three years ago, then 26-year-old author Lauren Winner was labeled by World Magazine as “The Christian Cosmo Girl” because of an essay she wrote entitled “Sex and the Single Evangelical” that took a permissive line towards premarital sex. She later struggled with her practice, repented, and started cultivating the discipline of chastity. Today, the 29-year-old is married and known as a “new breed of public intellectual: young, hip, and vocal about her Christian beliefs,” as her press release reads. She recently released her third book, Real Sex: the naked truth about chastity.

“Chastity as I understand it,” said Winner, “is simply the discipline of being faithful in our sexuality to the call and demands of the gospel. So, all of us are called to chastity. For married people that means only having sex with your spouse—fidelity. And for unmarried people, it means abstaining completely from sex.”

So why another book? Didn’t Elliot’s Passion and Purity—and countless other books—say what needed to be said?

Yes and no.

“Books that I was given when I became a Christian in my early twenties about … sex and chastity seemed like they were written for people who lived in the nineteenth century,” said Winner. “They didn’t speak to the culture that I was living in. I hungered for a book that was theologically orthodox and took seriously the traditional teachings of Scripture and the Church about chastity and sexuality, and that also robustly engaged the broader culture I was living in.”

True Confessions: Twenty-Something Singles (and Their Pastors) Speak Up

When talking with twentysomethings (as people are getting married later in life, this comprises a good number of single people today), it becomes obvious they share Winner’s past sentiments about the lack of honest discussion of sex and chastity in the Church.

“I am particularly bothered by euphemisms and other tactics to avoid frank discussion about gender roles and sexual activity,” said Cara Hunt, age 28, a television news anchor in Fairbanks, Alaska. “We hush talk about sex in church and in the home but then expect individuals to be equipped and emotionally adjusted to go from no sex and possibly no physical relationships to a healthy, active sex life.”

“I almost never hear Christians talk about sex in terms of a high view of marriage,” laments Jeremy Huggins, a 30-year-old student in Spokane, Wash. and a Covenant Seminary grad. “Usually, it’s just ‘bad, bad, bad.’ I need to hear more ‘good, good, good.’”

“Growing up, talking with an adult openly about sex and sexuality was taboo,” said a 27-year-old from Florence, S.C. “I first learned about sex from my friends in elementary school and then the mandatory sex education classes in school. This, coupled with the fact that premarital sex is a sin, made the topic seem shameful. And yet God made us sexual.”

So just what is (or isn’t) being taught in churches, Sunday Schools, and youth groups regarding sex and chastity?

“There’s a lot of emphasis in youth groups on saving sex for marriage,” said Ellen Sweeris, a 24-year-old nurse in San Francisco, Calif., “which I think is great. I largely attribute my unswerving belief that sex is for marriage to the fantastic teaching I received in the church as a teen. However, the teaching and exhortation on this subject sort of dropped off around college. It’s actually a lot harder at this point in my life to be celibate, but I’m not getting the same level of encouragement at church to keep waiting. I have fantastic friends who fulfill this role for me, but it would be nice to have it acknowledged in a more formal setting, other than just a more-or-less silent expectation that we’re not having sex.”

“The biggest mistake or pitfall,” said Catherine Clark, 28, of Alexandria, Va., “is not understanding and talking about sexuality as something meaningful, something holy and revelatory. When parents, pastors, and other leaders are too embarrassed to talk about sexuality, or more focused on saying ‘no’ to bad behaviors than they are focused on expressing the positive meaning of sexuality, they give the impression that sex is something bad or dirty."

“Likewise, when parents and ministers (or leaders) are open and frank about sexuality but too focused on ‘plumbing,’ the matter-of-fact biology of sex, forgetting about the mysterious revelation of love, they sell sex short. Open and honest beats embarrassed and close-mouthed, but parents and pastors need to share the whole Christian vision of sexuality.”

This sounds good in theory, of course, but it’s not that simple practically, at least not according to pastors who work with twentysomethings in PCA churches and campus ministries.

“I think there are many complex reasons why these things aren’t addressed more in the context of teaching to single adults,” said Rev. Bryan Counts, pastor to singles at Village Seven Presbyterian Church in Colorado Springs. “One reason they don’t always come up at Village X (one of Village Seven’s two singles ministries) is that at the beginning of the community several years ago, there was a conscious effort to make sure Village X didn't become a ‘meat market.’ They wanted real community without feeling like church was the equivalent of a local bar: a place to meet new girls…or guys. The intention was good, but it has probably worked against us some in not being able to address these very relevant topics, ones some of our folks confess to struggling with.”

“Perhaps because we fear sounding legalistic or offending our older members, pastors have avoided talking on the issue of sexual temptation almost completely,” said Rev. Ricky Jones, R.U.F. campus pastor at Mississippi State University. Preachers will occasionally make vague references to ‘sexual immorality’ or ‘adultery,’ but I have never heard a Sunday sermon that addresses why sexual sin is dangerous, how to fight sexual temptation, or that even defines the boundaries of sexual immorality. Our twentysomethings are immersed in a culture of sexual deviancy, and the church has remained silent.”

But is the issue really only one of pragmatism and offense? Or are there deeper denominational fears at work that are holding the church—particularly the PCA—back? Rev. Rich Lambert, pastor of New St. Peter’s Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas, wonders. “We are so afraid of a maladjusted view of sanctification that we beg off of (teaching) it all together,” Lambert said. “A number of our PCA churches teach ‘the doctrines of grace’ but never give an expectation as to how grace should be operative in us, what it should do to us. We teach regeneration of the heart, but not the doctrine of the ‘new man.’ We assume it will follow, and I think it is a bad assumption. I heard a Presbytery examiner ask a candidate for ordination, ‘Define justification and touch on sanctification.’ I thought to myself, ‘Well, there’s our problem.’”

Sex Is Not Private

In the chapter entitled “Communal Sex (Or Why Your Neighbor Has Any Business Asking You What You Did Last Night),” Winner prescribes a biblical approach to addressing the needs singles are mentioning. And the Church is called to be very much involved.

“I was trying to suggest that here we live in this hyper-individualized society and we really have in America this pervasive notion that what I do with my body is really no one’s business as long as I’m not hurting anyone; this is really a private decision. Even the Church has absorbed that radical individualism. This myth of individualism and the idea that my body and what I do with it is my own business really underlies almost everything else that we think and do about sex."

“Also, Paul is pretty clear about this … that in Christianity, the individual is not the unit of ethical meaning. The community and the Body of Christ—all of our Christian metaphors are communal. We are the Body of Christ … so, I think this is one of the places where Christianity has something to offer the surrounding society—an alternate understanding that sex is not individualistic, that it is rather deeply communal.”

This understanding, says Winner, is for both married and single people alike.

“The purposes of marriage in the Christian story are communal purposes. In other words, God gave us marriage not simply so that my husband and I can enjoy each other’s company forever, but also because our marriage and everyone else’s marriage tells a story to the broader community about faithfulness and loyalty, and I think that’s part of why the New Testament so often uses marriage as an analogy in explaining Christ’s relationship to the church."

“Singleness, I think, also tells a story, a story to the Church, a story about dependence on God, and also a story about the eschatological moment wherein there will be a wedding feast between Christ and his Church, but an eschatological moment when I won’t be married to Griff. I will instead be in the fullest way possible his sister.”

But are singles willing to be part of this story? And how can the church help tell their story?

“In all honesty,” said one 26-year-old in Chapel Hill, N.C., “some days I want to go to the closest bar and make out with a random guy. Either that, or I want to walk down the street and yell, ‘I would like to [have sex] and get it over with.’ But, me being a stubborn girl who hasn’t even kissed anyone yet, I have my pride holding me against doing that. Deep down, I do make my decisions based on ‘rational’ things like not wanting to get pregnant, not wanting the emotional baggage, and wanting to be obedient to God and let my body be a temple or whatever Christian term you could spout out.”

“Over the years,” said Huggins, “I’ve come up with as many ways to feel better about my singleness as an overly-analytical Reformed kid can. And the only one that’s ever been corroborated, that I haven’t felt insulted by, is that there are so many beautiful ways that I can serve my married friends that I couldn’t do otherwise. I’m not sure why that doesn’t feel denigrating—maybe it’s because it comes from those who love me, those I trust.”

Sweeris agrees: “I think what I appreciate the most is the acknowledgement that it’s hard to be abstinent in a society that says, ‘If it feels good, do it.’ I am encouraged when people tell me, ‘It was worth waiting for,’ from their own personal experiences. I’ve also learned just as much, if not more, from people who have been honest with me about their own failures. Hearing about the consequences of premarital sex from someone firsthand is very powerful.”

The Response to Real Sex

Initially, unmarried Christians were the primary audience Winner had in mind for Real Sex. But as the writing continued, that group grew to include pastors and other influencers like parents and teachers who work with singles. Then, when Real Sex released in April, a flurry of media attention ensued: World Magazine, Christianity Today, and Books & Culture, (among others) all ran feature pieces, excerpts, or reviews, agreeing on the need for renewed discussion on the topic of chastity. But it wasn’t just the religious media who were paying attention. The New York Times did a feature article and gave a positive review; literary magazines and websites like Publisher’s Weekly raved; Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor and ABC’s Good Morning America called for interviews.

“I think part of that interest comes from the fact that the excesses of the sexual revolution are now just so obvious,” says Winner. “When you have middle-schoolers having oral sex…surely, even the most secular parent has to agree that that is a deeply disturbing trend. I actually feel encouraged and think that maybe we’ve come to a new place where even if Christians and non-Christians aren’t going to see eye-to-eye, we’ve come to a place where we can have fruitful conversations with one another.”

“Of course,” says Winner, “I don’t think I’ve written the perfect book on chastity, but the book seems to be sparking some conversations that are perhaps a little more willing to engage the surrounding society … I have been very encouraged to see a little bit more intentionality than maybe we saw ten years ago in terms of wanting to speak honestly with our church communities.”

It may not be much, but when it comes to cultivating chastity within the Church, every little bit helps.

Craig Dunham is a student at Covenant Theological Seminary and co-author of TwentySomeone: Finding Yourself in a Decade of Transition. For more on Dunham, visit www.twentysomeone.com.

You can join Lauren Winner and Craig Dunham at the upcoming Real Sex conference, March 17-19, 2006, at Glen Eyrie Conference Center in Colorado Springs, visit www.gleneyriegroup.org or call 800-944-GLEN (4536).