2.5 stars

Winner seemed a little confused about her end goal. On the one hand, she spends a lot of time talking about the spirituality of sex (intuitive, abstract concepts) and on the other hand, she tries to address some very practical, lines-in-the-sand guidelines for sexual purity; she winds up failing on both accounts, as she often is contradictory.

My major concern is that her arguments are often not rooted in Biblical text, but rather on her or another person's opinion and reasoning. For instance, when she speaks of masturbation, she comes to the conclusion that occasional masturbation is acceptable, but it shouldn't be a regular thing. Her support? One pastor's opinion. In another instance, she tells of a mentor who advised her and her now-husband to refrain (while dating) from doing "anything sexual that you wouldn't be comfortable doing on the steps of [a public building]." (p. 106) Though it seems like good advice on the surface, it overlooks the fact that comfort levels vary, and the more we do something, the more comfortable we become with it. God's standards, on the other hand, are not relative or subject to changing comfort levels. She also fails to really explore the fact that sexual sin, at its core, is a matter of the heart. (She concludes by saying that she and her boyfriend kissed to their hearts' content and stopped just short of taking their clothes off. There are a whole lot of things you can do with your clothes on, so that's not reassuring!)

Since this is a book on chastity, I was expecting a little more attention to be paid to singleness and celibacy. (Even though chastity isn't a synonym for celibacy, most people associate the two terms.) Actually, most of the book is focused on marriage. Even in the one chapter specifically designated to celibacy, Winner still ends up addressing marriage. (Since she wasn't a virgin before marriage, and she began dating/became engaged to/married her husband all while writing this book, it stands to reason that she had little experience with singleness and celibacy, and I can see why she had a difficult time focusing on the topic. That doesn't really help those of us who are single and celibate, though.)

If you're single and looking for a book that focuses a bit more on that lifestyle, I would highly recommend Singled Out: Why Celibacy Must Be Reinvented in Today's Church.

Having said all that, here are a few quotes that I did appreciate:

"For the point of chastity is not that you turn your attention away from other people to make you more attractive to them but that you turn your attention away from sexual and romantic entanglements with other people and orient yourself toward God." (p.131)

"The unmarried Christian who practices chastity refrains from sex in order to remember that God desires your person, your body, more than any man or woman ever will." (p. 128)

On confronting others' sexual sin: "I was once asked what I would say to a friend whom I knew was having premarital sex... I [replied] that the first step in speaking to my friends about sex was making sure that we enjoyed relationships built on top of hundreds of ordinary shared experiences – plays attended together and pumpkins carved together and accompanying one another on doctors appointments and changing the oil together... Community doesn't come about simply by having hard, intimate conversations. Having hard, intimate conversations is part of what is possible when people are already opening up their day-to-day lives to one another." (p.59)