Lauren Winner's book on the Christian understanding of chastity is radical and different because it explores and expounds Christian sexual ethics on the basis of the Christian gospel and casts it as a practice to be lived out in the life of the Church.

Sex is a community concern because sex is an integral part of an individuals formation both as a person and a community member. Winner shuns a shallow ethos of "saving oneself" to make sex "more special" but rather understands it as a way of being faithful to a holistic commitment to Christian discipleship in a community. Sex already is special, and a communal Christian commitment teaches us to be faithful stewards of sexual desire.

Her final chapters on "what singleness teaches the church" and "the practicalities of repentance" are amazing and deeply needful words for a Christian culture that is deeply confused as to the ground of its thinking about sex.