The book is in two parts. The first part dealing with the findings from questionnaires and interviews with about ninety single women. The majority were under forty and the main issues raised by these women were:

1. The churches attitude towards single women
2. Issues to do with men and dating
3. Issues about feeling single and the future
4. Loneliness and social need
5. Roles and ministry within the church
6. Practicalities of living and working within contemporary society

The second part of the book offers a theological overview of singleness concentrating largely on 1 Corinthians 7. In addition, at the end of the book there are ten proposals for the church. These are based on the findings from the questionnaire rather than from the theological findings.

Kristin Aune argues that singleness is on the increase in society and that a large proportion of people in evangelical churches are single women. If all categories of single are included i.e. widowed, divorced, separated, married to a non-Christian husband and never married they make up about a quarter of the churches population.

The questionnaire taps the experience of this particular group of single women. The answers are very varied and the interesting thing is that although the majority reported a positive view of singleness. The comments, however, reveal many concerns if not a rather depressing catalogue of woes. It would appear that many single women feel overlooked in leadership, ignored socially, and under pressure to be married and not well supported in the struggle to remain sexually pure unmarried. Many admit to a low level of teaching on singleness and what they have had as coming form national events such as Spring Harvest rather than in their churches. Many of the answers given are quoted extensively and don’t always follow on from each other which makes it hard to grasp the overall picture apart from the feeling that there is great variety.

After the sometimes depressing results of the questionnaire the theological section is well worth the wait. Kristin takes a refreshing look at 1 Corinthians 7 and sees Paul writing in the Corinthian context ‘affirming’ and ‘subverting’ the role of women at the time and thus recasting both marriage and singleness to reflect the new state of the Christian. She argues from these Scriptures that the gift of singleness is not a calling for the select few but for all who are not married. It need not be permanent, but viewed this way singleness becomes more than the period of waiting for a marriage partner. This also means the church must repent of any idolatry of marriage and unthinking encouragement of people into pairs. Marriage, she argues, was the order of creation, but singleness is the order of the new Heavens and new earth. She suggests that one of the reasons why God has allowed for this large number of single women in the church is to redress a lost balance between the past and the future. In fact she goes as far as saying perhaps so many single Christian women exist ‘In order to depict correctly to the world this tension between creation (where the pattern is married and child bearing womanhood) and re-creation (where the pattern is single womanhood in which neither marriage or childbearing exit)’. Both marriage and singleness must be supported by the church.

This is indeed a challenge to the church to recognise that a large proportion of their congregations are feeling the tensions between the already and the not yet acutely and often painfully. This book brings the problem to the surface and offers a theological understanding of it.

The book concludes with ten recommendations that could better address single women and the issues they face. The most fundamental challenge is to churches to be communities that look like Jesus’ redefinition of family i.e. those who follow him. In this community people would be valued and built up regardless of gender or marital status. Other recommendations address structural changes such as thinking about the needs of the different categories of single women, never married, separated, divorced, widowed and even including the category of women married to non-Christian husbands.

It’s a stimulating read for single women themselves, for married people to understand the issues and for church leaders to think how some of Kristin’s findings and recommendations could be used.

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