Description
Book SynopsisChristianity Today Book Award Winner The digital revolution has ushered in a series of sexual revolutions, all contributing to a perfect storm for modern relationships. Online dating, social media, internet pornography, and the phenomenon of the smartphone generation have created an avalanche of change with far-reaching consequences for sexuality today. The church has struggled to address this new moral ecology because it has focused on clarity of belief rather than quality of formation. The real challenge for spiritual formation lies in addressing the underlying moral intuitions we carry subconsciously, which are shaped by the convictions of our age. In this book, a fresh new voice offers a persuasive Christian vision of sex and relationships, calling young adults to faithful discipleship in a hypersexualized world. Drawing from his pastoral experience with young people and from cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines, Jonathan Grant helps Christian leaders understand the cultural forces that make the church's teaching on sex and relationships ineffective in the lives of today's young adults. He also sets forth pastoral strategies for addressing the underlying fault lines in modern sexuality.
Table of ContentsContents
Foreword by James K. A. Smith
1. Adjusting Our Vision:
Christian Formation and Relationships in a Sexualized Age
Part 1: Mapping the Modern Sexual Imaginary
2. Seeking the Truth Within:
Love, Sex, and Relationships within the Culture of Authenticity
3. Three Paths to Freedom on the Road to Nowhere:
The Dead End of Modern Liberty
4. We Are What We Acquire:
Consumerism as a Corrupting Dynamic
5. The Hypersexual Self:
Sex and Relationships as Happiness Technologies
6. Churches without Steeples:
The Loss of Transcendence and the Atomistic Worldview
Part 2: Charting a New Course for Christian Formation
7. Searching for Truth That Transforms:
Introducing a Christian Social Imaginary
8. Seeing the Good Life and Becoming What We See:
The Role of Vision within Sexual Formation
9. Getting to the Heart of Things:
Redeeming Desire and Becoming Our True Selves
10. Living the Gospel Story:
Narrative Discipleship within the Narrative Community
11. Becoming What We Do:
The Formative Power of Practices
Epilogue:
Melodies of Heaven
Index
