What if the problem with desire is not that we want what we can't have, but that we don't want it enough? What if it's in the gap between wanting and having that desire does the work which keeps us longing, yearning, hoping, burning, hungering, thirsting, calling, praying? A world that promises satisfaction is one that sells us imitations of our desires, and tempts us to settle for them.

This is the world in which we find ourselves, and Holiness and Desire is a wise and profound exploration of it, using the tools of Christian theology but also those of culture criticism, literary analysis and memoir. Here, the church's internal debates about sexuality are only one symptom of a larger unease over our whole relationship with desire.