A Vision Retrieved
Contemporary dialogue on singleness leaves a lot to be desired. Danielle Treweek aims to show a better way—and succeeds.
Review by Jake Casale
Though I attempt to steer clear of Twitter at all reasonable costs, it was on a Twitter chain whose subject I have long since forgotten that I first stumbled on Danielle Treweek’s writing. Since then, I have poked my head into her Substack and heard her speak on a podcast or two. I find her voice on the topics of singleness and marriage in the contemporary Christian church refreshingly rigorous and disarming, while maintaining a welcome degree of pastoral sensitivity. It’s no secret that the evangelical church has produced quite a bit of reflection on these topics in recent decades, much of it characterized by various shades of practical and theological shallowness (and, frankly, a whole lot of cringe). Not only does Treweek’s new book The Meaning of Singleness continue her reliable record of contributing genuinely helpful reflections to a very muddy discourse, it also elevates the conversation to a plane otherwise rarely reached.
The Meaning of Singleness is tough to categorize. It is too academic to call it a popular-level work. On the other hand, it is such a grounded response to the real conversations happening around singleness in society that it’s hardly a dry theological tome. Right out of the gate, Treweek proves that she is a master of discourse analysis. She wastes no time in grappling, in acute detail, with the complexity of addressing a lexically slippery term like “singleness” and the contextually diverse life textures experienced by unmarried people across spectrums of age, romantic history, parenting status, and much more. She then lays out how broader Western culture and the evangelical church have contributed to the multiplicity of prominent contemporary narratives surrounding singleness. In doing so, she demonstrates the “uninhabitability” of the loudest of these appraisals: singleness as a deficient, second-class state compared to marriage and romance. The bulk of her analysis is directed at how evangelicalism, in particular, has woven this idea throughout its social imaginary and ecclesiological structures.
After thoroughly diagnosing the problem, Treweek moves into the meat of her project—a theological retrieval of singleness. Her book is an exercise in mining the historical Christian tradition for resources that might aid the church in rehabilitating its imagination of the unmarried form of life. She brings the reader through a broad survey of church history—from the early centuries through the Middle Ages and Reformation—tracing the evolution of how the Western church’s leaders and influencers understood and contested the state of being unmarried. Treweek explores several fascinating threads here—from chaste marriages to a more expansive construct of virginity than the word connotes to modern ears. She capably and sensitively represents these numerous historical phenomena while refraining from exercising ethical judgment about their implications; her posture of careful attention and curious, thorough investigation endeared Treweek to me as a guide worth watching.
What she unearths, ultimately forming the basis of her eventual response to the question at hand, is that the unmarried form of life was considered to carry profound eschatological import for the first 1500 years of the Christian tradition. Put another way, Treweek contends that singleness was thought to communicate something vital about the ultimate ends of human history and being, in light of the death and resurrection of Christ. The exact nature of this signal was debated, but its weighty presence was widely acknowledged. However, after the Reformation and Industrial Revolution, marriage and romance took on the role of offering human beings a kind of existential completion in the church’s social imagination. As a result, they displaced and obscured the weight of singleness. Treweek claims that a key dimension of this weight is rooted in singleness’s testimony that the covenantal bonds of Christian relationships are built, not on biological ties, but on spiritual union with Christ, which will characterize all relationships in the age to come. Single Christians, by virtue of the nature of singleness itself, communicate where all human relationships are headed.
The gift of singleness is not a superpower bestowed by God among a special few, but is manifest in every Christian who finds themselves single.
My summary above is a paltry oversimplification of Treweek’s incredibly layered treatment of singleness, but as I’ve digested her evidence and arguments, I keep returning to a particular facet of her vision. In evangelical discourse, the value of singleness is often imagined in terms of utility—a single person has more time and freedom to do more for their church and the kingdom of God. By contrast, Treweek’s retrieval locates the value of singleness in its very being, precisely because it tangibly embodies a dimension of the eschatological end of humanity that marriage cannot. As she notes, there is a radical inclusivity in this view of singleness; any unmarried Christian, whether they are unmarried by choice, circumstance, or a complex interplay of the two, equally evinces the vision. The gift of singleness is not a superpower bestowed by God among a special few, but is manifest in every Christian who finds themselves single.
As a single person myself (who may or may not experience the odd battle with performance-based identity), I received this notion like a soothing sip of warm tea. A vision of life as inherently gifted and dignified, wholly separate from whatever utility that life produces, is a healing vision indeed. The robust theological work that Treweek undertakes to arrive at this vision only makes it all the more revitalizing.
While this work is one of the book’s distinctive strengths, it also highlights a minor corresponding weakness in the final section; her conclusions on singleness necessarily spark a dizzying array of implications for several other meaningful Christian categories (friendship, self-denial, etc.). While she makes admirable efforts to corral airtime for many of these ramifications, there simply isn’t enough space to adequately flesh each one out. The resultant series of sub-conclusions, while thoughtful, are not all presented with the same level of exegetical rigor that characterizes the journey of retrieval in the earlier chapters. I agreed with many, and some I questioned. I have no doubt Treweek could undertake a fuller presentation of this theology’s wider ramifications—to her credit, she readily acknowledges that these could fill their own individual books, and I eagerly hope she writes further on these topics. As is, the change in pace and relative depth in this particular book’s home stretch felt a bit jarring. But, given that she doesn’t claim to have the last word on these implications and invites the conversation to continue beyond her work, I find it easy enough to reimagine this aspect as a feature and not a bug.
Indeed, The Meaning of Singleness’s relative absence of bugs is an accomplishment in and of itself, given the baggage its central topic carries from the broader discourse. Treweek doesn’t gloss over the harm of this baggage, but neither does she skimp on the beauty and fullness of the vision that the Western church has forgotten and may yet be able to reclaim. I will be revisiting her work often in the months to come, as I suspect will others who have grown weary of how this subject is typically discussed at church potlucks and family reunions and are hoping for a richer perspective. The foundation of that perspective is here, one that I hope sparks the beginning of a better conversation within and outside the walls of the church.
Jake Casale lives in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 2017 and has worked on public health/health systems strengthening efforts both domestically and abroad. He currently works as an analyst for digital health company Cohere Health.
The Meaning of Singleness: Retreiving an Eschatalogical Vision for the Contemporary Church was published by IV Press on May 9, 2023. Fare Forward thanks the publisher for providing an advance copy to our reviewer. You can purchase a copy of your own here.
