This book considers how homes, households, and domestic life are related to the Church. Early theologies glorified the monastic lifestyle as a way to transcend earthly attachments in favor of supernatural goods. Later thinkers have seen that functioning marriages and families themselves can lead us toward a more righteous society. Issues of gender quickly come into play. Are households the "woman's sphere"? Does this bar women from full participation in the Church? And what of the many people today who are neither married nor consecrated in a holy life? How do we think about the Christian "households" of such singles? Jana Bennett addresses these questions. She insists that both marriage and singleness must be placed in the context of the Christian story of redemption if the questions and problems at stake are to be fully understood. Surprisingly, she finds that Augustine of Hippo, much maligned by modern theologians, is the source of very fruitful reflection on these topics, showing us that both marriage and singleness are most properly set in the context of the salvation story. Most scholars today would agree that Augustine's works have exerted great influence on Western views of marriage, family, and sex. But they would also argue that this influence has been detrimental to a healthy understanding of these topics. However, through the lens of Augustine's work, Bennett shows that marriage and singleness cannot be considered separately, that gender issues are important to considering these states correctly and, most important, that the marriage between Christ and the Church is the first mediator in these states of life.

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 work, 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, a person who lived that way of being single, 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.

Description: Our known world, the world of twenty-first century Americans, is shaped and defined by consumer choice. The premise of consumer choice is that somewhere the perfect fit between product and purchaser exists. In the books on changing traditions the consumerist tone prevails--fundamentalists looking for an even more literal interpretation of Scripture, Protestants ""going home"" to Rome, feminists heading to the womyncentric sacred grove, conservatives fleeing inclusive rites, Catholics embracing the independent seeker church. But the consumerist impulse masks the kind of prayer and discernment necessary for living in Christian community and for following God. Twenty-first century Christians do make choices, but the hope is that they do so because they follow God. How then is one to answer the question of whether to stay or leave? Through meditating on the fruits of the Spirit that Paul addressed to the church at Galatia, a community that had several of its members wondering whether to stay or leave, Bennett and Nussbaum offer sage reflections about what it means to be led into and out of Christian communions. Endorsements: ""A friend of mine once said, 'You have an aisle seat in the Methodist Church.' He was right. Like many I have struggled with the question if I should stay or leave the church that formed me and that I love. So many seem to be dissatisfied with their church these days that the movement among churches is dizzying. Liberal Catholics become Episcopalians. Evangelicals turn to Orthodoxy. Nazarenes find freedom with the Methodists. But is this constant back and forth a sign of sin or can it be faithful? Does it violate the need for a vow of stability? Bennett and Nussbaum offer us a careful, biblically grounded means of discerning how we might be 'free to leave' or 'free to stay' in the context of the fruits of the Spirit. No one should jump from one church to another without spending significant time with these deeply considered reflections. Hopefully, as Bennett and Nussbaum themselves point out, this will be done in the presence of others."" --D. Stephen Long, Marquette University ""Searingly honest and beautifully written, Bennett and Nussbaum have given us a book, an amazingly gentle and peaceful book, about the painfully difficult decision they made when they became Roman Catholic. This book, I believe, is destined to be a classic."" --Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School About the Contributor(s): Jana Marguerite Bennett is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton. She is the author of Water Is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness (2008). Melissa Musick Nussbaum is a regular contributor to the liturgical journals Celebration and GIA Quarterly. She is the author of six books and numerous articles. Her work has appeared in Commonweal, Notre Dame Magazine, and National Catholic Reporter. She is a contributor to Take Heart: Catholic Writers on Hope in Our Time (2007).

This book takes theological questioning about the internet to greater depth, discussing traditional theological questions in light of Web 2.0 technology. The "problem" of the internet has plagued theologians for the past decade: some have claimed it as "gnostic" and evil because it denies the Christian doctrine of the incarnation and lacks serious engagement with others. Some have viewed the internet as presenting good possibilities for theological work because it allows provides a democratic arena for sharing ideas, unrestricted by traditional hierarchies and concerns. None of these considerations quite capture the problems or benefits that the internet provides. Jana Bennett reviews critically how Web 2.0 both develops from traditional theology and also how Web 2.0 may change the way traditional theology is done. Web 2.0 spaces do invite many more lay people to participate in theological conversations than in the past, but the conversations frequently become constricted because of the medium. At the same time, Web 2.0 also offers surprising spaces for renewing or revisiting questions that theologians have left aside. The book explores how theologians and other interested persons might carefully respond, neither totally rejecting nor wholly embracing Web 2.0 technology.