Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity

SEX. Splashed across magazine covers, billboards, and computer screens - sex is thrilling, necessary, unavoidable. And everybody's doing it, right? In Real Sex, Lauren Winner speaks candidly about the difficulty - and the importance - of sexual chastity. With nuance and wit, she talks about her own sexual journey. Never dodging tough terms like "confession" and "sin", she grounds her discussion of chastity first and foremost in scripture. She confronts cultural lies about sex and challenges how we talk about sex in church (newsflash: however wrong it is, premarital sex can feel liberating and enjoyable!) Building on the thought of Wendell Berry, she argues that sex is communal rather than private, personal rather than public.Refusing to slink away from thorny topics, Winner deftly addresses pornography, masterbation and the perennial question of "how far is too far?" Winner also digs deeper; What does chastity have to do with loving my neighbor? How does sexual behavior form habits and expectations? With compassion and grit, she calls us, whether married or single, to pursue chastity as conversion and amendment of life.Real Sex is an essential read for single Christians grappling with chastity, for married Christians committed to monogamy, and for those who councel them.

Lauren F. Winner is an ordained Episcopal priest and the author of numerous books, including Girl Meets God, Real Sex, Mudhouse Sabbath, and Still, which won the Christianity Today Book Award in Spirituality. She teaches at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Books & Culture, and other periodicals.

Winner of more than a dozen Audiofile Earphones Awards and a three-time Audie nominee, Bernadette has been honored to narrate the work of Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Shirley Jackson and Anne Rice to name but a few. In the non-fiction category she has recorded the philosophy of Ayn Rand and the autobiographies of Barbara Walters and Katharine Hepburn. Popular favorites include Memoirs of a Geisha, The Devil Wears Prada and the Betty Smith classic, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Bernadette studied at The Royal National Theater in London and lives in New York.