A series of contemporary crises in culture, religion, and sexuality are affecting profoundly traditional celibate and conjugal lifestyles. These crises pose a special challenge and task for today's theologian: a re-thinking of the relation between religion and culture and a re-thinking of the Christian understanding of sexuality. The Sexual Celibate attempts to meet that challenge.
The author addresses the question, "How do we understand celibacy in the context of the theology of the sexual life and in what does the sexual life of the celibate consist?" From both a theoretical and a very practical viewpoint, he enters into the world of both the sexual and spiritual life of the celibate. His purpose is to show that the dichotomy between sexuality and spirituality and between celibacy and marriage is destructive and inappropriate. Integration, he insists, lies in seeing how we can be both sexual and spiritual simultaneously, and in seeing that choosing one way of life does not imply the inferiority of the other.
The sexual life is, as the author notes, by no means the most significant aspect of a celibate's life. But today's crises require an intelligent and Spirit-filled discussion of a problem that too often dichotomizes the lives of both the married and the celibate. The Sexual Celibate demonstrates clearly that it is possible to be both sexual and spiritual wether celibate or married and that such an integration is for the greater glory of God.