No one talks about being single in the Church after your 50s, but the Church has a lot to work on

Hatty Calbus shares her perspective on being a single Christian woman and encourages church leaders to make more effort with unmarried women in their congregation.

Have you been waiting forever for a Christian husband? Quite possibly. Are you hideous of face and personality? Probably not. Marcia Dixon, author of Black Christian and Single, reported that 65 per cent of British black Caribbean women are single, with 59 per cent never having been married. 

In the UK Church overall, women outnumber men by two to one and the ratio of single women to single men gets put as high as eight to one. Those statistics are all shocking, so where are the headlines in the Christian press? Obviously a bad marriage is painful, and churches need incisive engagement courses so couples find out if they aren’t truly suited. But right at the start of the Bible God says: “It is not good for humans to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).