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And what would change in the social fabric of the church if we replenished our communal imagination with the canon of celibate saints who display a portrait of singleness both purposeful and engaging? How might singles think differently of themselves if the church classified them not with the language of what they lack (single), but with the language of a fidelity they may freely assume (celibate)?

Christians are familiar with Scriptures such as Matthew 19, where Jesus speaks of "eunuchs" who have "renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven," or 1 Corinthians 7, where Paul writes, "It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am." Singles, Paul said, are "concerned about the Lord's affairs—how [they] can please the Lord." Evangelical pastors justify the celibate life with those passages, but hardly ever promote it as a desirable calling. Therefore, I had to begin by rediscovering a picture of celibacy.

The "American family dream"—the icon of mature adulthood typically passed down to us through the verbal and visual culture of our churches—pictures first a wedding, and next a well-groomed set of children in front of a two-story house with a basketball hoop in the drive.

I draw a caricature only to reiterate Rodney Clapp's caution in Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options. The image of family inherited by the evangelical tradition, Clapp says, is not biblical, but rather bourgeois—a sentimental shelter designed to serve as a "haven and oasis, an emotional stabilizer and battery-charger for its members." Clapp does not deny that these functions are part of the design of the family to serve a great human good, but when these insular values become ends in themselves, the dream of Christian family is too small. Much like the single, the family becomes a body unto itself—set up for life, but alone.

The picture that needs to be restored to evangelical consciousness, Clapp suggested in 1993, is the picture of "church as first family." He writes, "With the coming of the kingdom—a kingdom that manifests itself physically as well as spiritually, socially as well as individually, and in the present as well as in the future—Jesus creates a new family of followers that now demands primary allegiance."

In Christ, Paul had a narrative framework for his singleness. Paul proclaimed himself a celibate man. In love with the mission of the church, he never hedged his bets. He was not single "just because," and he was not single alone. Rather, Paul viewed himself as a man uniquely free to warm to the humanity of all people and to rally them together as his mothers, brothers, sisters, and sons. The tradition that grew up around this supra-familial realization of the kingdom is celibacy.

Enlivened by an understanding of the church as first family, celibacy has stood alongside marriage for two millennia as an embodiment of a vocational narrative that's wider than individual ambition and more enduring than the American dream.

"Here is a vision shown by the goodness of God to a devout woman … in which vision are very many words of comfort, greatly moving for all those who desire to be Christ's lovers," wrote Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century English anchoress. The design of her lean-to shelter, attached to the back of a church, was the design of her life: by day, she prayed the hours; between prayers, she stood at her shelter's open front, exchanging news and banter, counsel and prayer with the merchants who passed by in the lane.

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September 2008, Vol. 52, No. 9