ReShonda Tate Billingsley writes Christian fiction directed at African-American women and teenage girls. Some of her books feature single characters using their faith to cope with issues. She left her job as a television news reporter in Houston to write full time.

Christa Ann Banister of St. Paul, Minn., drew on her experiences with single life for her 2007 novel Around the World in 80 Dates: Confessions of a Christian Serial Dater.

Monique Moultrie is a professor of religious studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta, who specializes in women/gender studies, African-American studies and sexuality – specifically on African-American single Christian women.  She says more black women are single – and likely to stay that way – than any other population.

Read the results of a 2013 Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends survey on how Americans view marriage.

Read a July 13, 2007, U.S. Catholic story about Catholics and online dating.

Read an Oct. 15, 2006, New York Times article about married couples becoming a minority among U.S. households.

Read a January 7, 2011, column at the website of First Things that rounds up a number of recent books and articles on views of the Virgin Mary among Protestants.

F. Stanley Jones is a professor of religious studies at California State University, Long Beach. He is the editor of a collection titled Which Mary?: The Marys of Early Christian Tradition.

Stephen J. Shoemaker is an associate professor of Christian history in the department of religious studies at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He has written widely on the Virgin Mary in early Christianity and in Gnostic traditions and teaches a course on early Islam.