Anna Broadway
11 min read ⭑
“I took one of the biggest steps of faith in my life. I quit my job. I packed up my housing. I set out for a trip around the world, funded by my modest savings, and trusted that God could someday bring a book out of this.”
Writer and editor Anna Broadway didn’t choose the single life. Still, she’s decided to use her “reluctant chastity” to offer a fresh perspective on God’s call to sexual purity for singles in the church. She’s traveled to around 50 countries, interviewing nearly 350 single Christians to better understand how Christians experience singleness around the globe—from aging to housekeeping and cooking to sexuality. Today, Anna is opening up about what helped her through a crisis of faith during her college days, God-led detours she’s faced in her writing, and the role prayer has played through it all.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
This is hard to answer for several reasons, but what came to mind was the foods I wanted to make and eat in the aftermath of getting held up at knifepoint. I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at the time, a few days past the one-year mark for fieldwork on my book about singleness, Solo Planet. I’d returned to Sao Paulo to replace the passport during my holdup.
While staying with the immensely kind family that hosted me in Sao Paulo, I found myself craving things from my childhood: gingerbread cookies and, ultimately, an eggless applesauce spice cake I love. Shopping abroad always involves some flexibility. What surprised me, though, was the one ingredient I couldn’t find: applesauce. Since it’s easy enough to make, I bought several apples instead.
I like to put a lot of spice in my applesauce. As I was cooking it some time later, I couldn’t believe how strong an emotional reaction I had to the smell. I didn’t grow up making applesauce from scratch. But somehow, the smell of the cooking apples, cinnamon, and other spices moved me almost to tears. I’ve never had such a strong emotional reaction to smell, much less while cooking applesauce.
I guess it somehow made me feel safe and cared for that day, like things were going to be okay. People often asked what foods I missed during my travels, but because I could cook, it wasn’t much. God always provided the ingredients I needed—or a good enough substitute.
Attribution
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity (or activities) do you love engaging in, which also help you find essential spiritual renewal?
I’m obsessed with finding ways not to waste things. For a year or so in California, when I lived in a place with no trash collection (long story), I actually smuggled compost into the neighbor’s green bins. I wasn’t putting in anything that didn’t belong there, and they never filled their bins, so I figured it was okay.
Fast forward to life in Anchorage, where I’ve lived since 2019. Composting here is more complicated. We have long, cold winters. In warm months, compost could attract bears. So composting here ramps up several levels. Somehow, though, I’d managed to find ways to compost until I moved into my first apartment this past fall. (Prior to that, I’d rented rooms in homes, many of which had city compost collection.) The apartment complex only has trash bins, so I already have to cart my recycling away myself. But compost is trickier.
For a while, a friend a few miles away let me put my compost in her bin (here, they’re pink for some reason). But then she took a six-week trip. So I posted in a huge local Facebook group called Find Olive the Things. The city’s compost pilot program only runs during warm months, but I found a lady a mile away who composts through the winter. And has chickens. And a worm bin.
So she very kindly lets me bring my compost by. Whenever a visiting friend remembers to put their tea bag in the compost, my heart swells. God doesn’t waste anything either.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you hide it?
I really struggle with running late. Somehow I tend to think showing up early would, in many cases, waste time. But my plans to simply show up on time often run amok. So I often battle the stress of being late or almost late.
Winter adds an extra challenge here that can complicate my time estimation. First, I have to put all my winter gear on and gather everything I’ll need for my trip. Since I often try to group errands to save on gas, that’s usually several things. Then I go downstairs to my car where, currently, I have to open the passenger door to free one side of the frost shield for my windshield. Then I walk to the driver’s door to free the other side and start the engine to warm. Depending on the day, I might also need to unplug the block heater for my engine and coil up the cord, since we don’t have reserved parking spots. (They recommend plugging in your engine at 20 degrees and colder.) If we’ve had snow, I might have to scrape off my car. And even if no new snow has fallen, I might have to scrape other windows. Once on the road, I have to drive slower, depending on the extent of ice and snow.
But truthfully, I’ve always struggled with it. My family dubbed me “last-minute Lucy” in high school. You can’t hide tardiness, just its motives. I think it’s hard to face my limits.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I’m within a few weeks, or maybe a few days, of finally holding something that spent years as a dream. At one time, it was even a kind of nemesis. When I first got the idea of another book on singleness, I was like “Why, God? Ugh.” I’d already written a memoir of reluctant chastity (2008’s Sexless in the City.) So when I got the idea of another book on singleness in my 30s, I started it very reluctantly.
Then for several years, I got “detoured” into a deep examination of racism and race-based injustice. Looking back now, I think that was all part of God’s preparation because, in 2017, I got this huge, scary, crazy idea: What if I quit my job to spend a year researching singleness all around the world? Then I realized it wasn’t a new idea, just a bigger version of the old one. Maybe that’s part of what convinced me.
Six months later, I took one of the biggest steps of faith in my life. I quit my job. I packed up my housing. I set out for a trip around the world, funded by my modest savings, and trusted that God could someday bring a book out of this.
Everything took longer than expected. Everything. (Isn’t that biblical?) But this March, that book—Solo Planet—officially enters the world. It draws on conversations with nearly 350 people from nearly 50 countries. If we let it, I think it could change how the church thinks about singleness—and itself.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
How do I describe the role of prayer in these past six years? I started most interviews for Solo Planet with prayer. I had people praying for all the needs throughout the trip. God even, remarkably, provided a Portuguese-speaking night manager of a condo building to pray with me shortly after I got held up at knifepoint. I will probably cherish the memory of that multilingual prayer for the rest of my life.
That prayer marked a turning point, actually, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Up until then, my deepest connection with God on the trip usually happened on my own. (When the thief took the bag holding my 26-year-old Bible and a battered guide to listening prayer, the latter was one of the first things I reproduced—a now-tattered copy I still use today.)
But a lot of really hard stuff happened around the one-year mark. Besides the holdup, I got parasites again and lost my literary agent. An airline lost the suitcase with much of my trip wardrobe. I was feeling really burned out.
When a Mexicana Christian living in Argentina asked how I was coping, it got me thinking. I eventually contacted pastors at my old church in California to ask if anyone could pray with me by phone. Over the months, I found a few weekly prayer buddies. When COVID-19 hit a few months after my trip ended, they proved an incredible bulwark and anchor. Things have changed, but I still pray weekly with one of those buddies.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you right now?
I think I’m leaning more on the Bible lately than I used to. That involves two particular things. First, one of the prayer partners I gained during COVID-19 came through my old church. The pastors there (in California) started organizing a virtual community early in COVID-19. I joined from Anchorage for some calls where they used an app, Daily Prayer, to pray through some of the Psalms. (I believe it draws on the Book of Common Prayer’s “daily office.”)
Those calls evolved, but one woman and I still talk and pray once a week, still using the Psalms. It always expands my prayers beyond just my life. And it’s inspired me to pray through other passages of Scripture on other occasions. On my own, I usually read a verse, then pray in response, then repeat. It really excites me the way God can use that to open up a passage sometimes. I’ve done it with Genesis 2, Exodus 13-14, and even much of John’s gospel. I love how it slows me down.
Then, about a year ago, I discovered the Listener’s Bible. It has daily recordings that take you through the whole Bible in a year. I had last tried going through the whole Bible in a year when I was 11 or 12—as a reader. So I’ve been really surprised how relatively short some of the recordings are. But I’ve really come to love this way of experiencing the Bible. Some books are really hard, but it’s added so much richness to life.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed the game and changed your heart? What radically altered your life? What changed your reality?
When I entered my first real crisis of faith a few years into college, I felt really unprepared for my sense of wilderness and disconnection from God. Despite my thorough childhood reading of the Bible, I hadn’t grasped how frequently its characters, too, went through long and confusing seasons with God. I thought something was wrong—and so wrong that I might end up an atheist.
One thing that really helped me: the intergenerational relationships at my local church. Age peers in the campus ministry I was in mostly discouraged my questions, as if they would destroy my faith. But the older, wiser Christians at my church knew how much of the Bible involves people wandering in the wilderness for one reason or another. Although they knew where my questions might lead me, they also knew what hard questions an honest faith involves. They knew hard questions could draw me to God, just as Job’s did. No church is perfect, but God doesn’t give us an alternative to our local body, however broken and flawed. I’ve been to church services I couldn’t even understand, and God has met me there. I went to a church service I couldn’t understand and in which the pastor misinterpreted his text (which I could identify), and God still met me. Give his body a chance.
A second big help in my crisis was Daniel Taylor’s The Myth of Certainty.
Lastly, Tim Keller’s preaching (2002-2006) really helped me connect grace and the gospel to my emotional life.
We all have things we cling to to survive (or even thrive) in tough times—times like these! Name one resource you’re savoring and/or finding indispensable in this current season, and tell us what it’s doing for you.
I was going to say the Listener’s Bible again, but actually, I want to go with city sidewalks instead. Most of you probably have them. New York City was where I first really came to love and lean on prayer walks, though I still try to fit them in here when I can. Snow or summer, bears or ice, there is absolutely no substitute for the kind of prayer I get in while walking.
Typically, my longest and most intense prayer walks involve intercession. But in New York (well, actually, Brooklyn), they started from guilt and desperation. The guilty prayers involved my neighborhood. I’d tried to leave New York and felt convicted about how much I’d struggled to keep a 15-minute prayer commitment for my city. So I started praying for just one block between my apartment and the subway. Each time I walked it, I prayed. What amazing fruit God brought of that! And I’m sure I saw just the first few seeds.
The desperate prayers involved my first book, Sexless in the City. Over a three-week period one summer, I started walking up and down one avenue at night, often 40 minutes at a time. Prayers ranged from concern for the man I liked at the time to where I was stuck on writing my memoir. Three weeks into my new habit of near-daily weeks, I realized my heart had changed. For the first time ever, I felt a sense of worship for God that I’d only reserved for humans before.
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
I’m figuring out work and writing in this new season. One sphere of uncertainty: Where will Solo Planet go? What will readers make of it? But the research and writing also involved a major career change. I stepped away from full-time work in my late 30s. I had never been all that ambitious professionally, but I quit at a point when I started moving toward supervisory roles. Had I continued, I probably would’ve taken on more responsibilities.
Instead, I’ve spent most of my savings and nearly six years living much closer to the poverty line than I expected to. God has provided pretty amazing abundance—especially food, to supplement my ongoing part-time work—but I sense a new season ahead. I don’t know what that’s going to look like.
Last summer, I finally made the commitment to empty my California storage unit and move everything up to Alaska, even though my closest family lives in Virginia. I knew I wanted to do that, but I struggled to commit until I heard Beth Moore say something about the lack of a call to leave. I realized I sensed no call to go outside Alaska.
Since leaving New York, it seems each move has been more and more about the community. The work has followed that. But even what “work” pays and what doesn’t can prove a funny thing. Writing this reminds me that it’s time to revisit my wonderful Priscilla Shirer Elijah study. Time to do another “day” or two’s study in that book.
For the first time since 1976, there are more singles than married people in the U.S. This might be surprising, considering that it’s easier to meet people now than ever before with the growth of online dating sites.
And yet the American church still falls short in understanding singles—how to minister to them and include them in community.
We’ve got a long way to grow. Maybe the best place to start is reading books like Anna’s Solo Planet. Or reaching out to someone in a different phase of life than you and asking them how they experience church.
Who could you reach out to this week?
Anna Broadway is the author of Solo Planet: How Singles Help the Church Recover Our Calling. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, TheAtlantic.com, Christianity Today, The Journal of the History of Sexuality, and other publications. She is the author of Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity and contributed to the books Venus and Virtue, Disquiet Time, Talking Taboo, and Faith at the Edge. She holds an M.A. in religious studies from Arizona State University. Learn more at annabroadway.com.
