Nude Church! Pastor Bares Soul and More

reply to post by halfoldman

A Baptist word on how women shouldn't wear pants to church to avoid "gender confusion" (although biblically men didn't wear pants):

Funny, our women wear whatever they are comfortable in, some wear pants, some wear jeans, some wear dresses. We have a school code for dress. The point is to be a humble servant, not a naked servant. The first generations of christians didn't wear fancy clothes. They usually only had one set of clothing, never used deoderant and were on the run from Rome and pharisees so more often than not they held service in catacombs and tombs so orthodox jews and roman soldiers wouldn't find them.

Originally posted by lonewolf19792000
reply to post by halfoldman

 

Nowhere does Jesus say nudity is required to form lust.

You're providing more than enough viewing material to create lust. Thats all you need to create the catalyst for lust which is why hebrew women were covered from head to toe under rather muslim like garments, minus burka and hijab.

It's debatable whether lust itself was a "thought-crime" in the OT as it became in the NT, but ultimately to completely avoid hetersosexual lust a burka would be required, although few Western women nowadays would agree to such restrictions.

On the other hand, during colonial Orientalism, European men found the Muslim veil very erotic, and it created a kind of voyeuristic lust in that it drew attention and fascination to what was hidden.

reply to post by halfoldman

It's debatable whether lust itself was a "thought-crime" in the OT as it became in the NT, but ultimately to completely avoid hetersosexual lust a burka would be required, although few Western women nowadays would agree to such restrictions

The Tenach was under the Old Covenant of the flesh. When the New Covenant came, it shifted to Spirit but even before then Yeshua was teaching that if you even looked at woman with lustful thoughts you already commited adultery in your heart and mind.

Matthew 5:27-28

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

It was a "thought crime" in the OT as well as according to YHWH. The tradition of men turned it into a required action. if a High priest entered the Holy of Holies thinking about banging the neighbors wife in the presence of YHWH he would be struck dead instantly which is why they always had to tie a red scarf around their ankle, incase YHWH found them with impure thoughts so their bodies could be dragged out of the Holy of Holies and buried.

reply to post by lonewolf19792000


See, I wouldn't even argue against this. We should clothe the parts of us that are sexualized, at the very least. And not because it embarrasses us, but because I want to treat this stuff as special to me, and a gift to my husband. I want to keep the sexuality of it, not lose it. And I hate clothes--well, except the necessary parts that it takes to keep skin from sticking to skin--that's just nasty.

The thing is that my first experience with a guy from Norway was over the topless bathing. He grew up with topless bathing, and he didn't care for boob because he was around them all the time. Nothing special to him. Flashing him with that wasn't even remotely interesting to him. The only part of a girl this dude wanted to see was between their legs, and that's all he thought about. What a waste!

For the other end of the extreme, you have my father. Getting Dad to talk about the first thing that he noticed about my mom is funny. It starts with her feet--not that I know if he has a foot fetish, but that he noticed that she kept her toes painted, and that they were clean, and kept in good shape. (Got to remember, this is Swampland: sandals covered in mud, with mud splatters up your legs is relatively normal.) To this day, he enjoys her feet being kept clean and decorated. Problem is, it's not hard to go from plain liking my mother's feet to having a desire to see all nice/neat/clean feet, and getting aroused by that. Thank God he's never stated anything like that to me (partially because he goes out of his way to not think like that, part because it's MOM who turns that man's head--as he puts it). But the point is, for men like my father and worse, a woman would have to never wear sandals.

And it's not like it stops there. For some men, a baby bump is a turn-on, and we can't lock up women during pregnancy. A nose ring, a tattoo, having a brain in their head, shape of joints, extreme waistlines, eyes through a burqa, ect. There's no way a woman can cover all the ways a man lusts. It' just not going to happen. All we can do is be modest for our societal norm--and that changes regularly, within a generation.

Christ wore a dress and was not called a tranny. David offended his wife, and no one else. Most women in the Bible covered their faces before their husbands saw them. When the church went to Crete, there is no evidence of them preaching against the breastless dresses the women wore. Now, do I have a problem with the church at the nudist colony? Yes, because they are on the leading edge of what society would call immodest--but it's not my congregation, so there's not much I could do about it, other than complain on here.

Interesting to read more on specifically Christian naturism, which interprets clothing as the sexualization of the body.
There are also other naturist resorts with churches.
Although the clip has provoked revulsion rather than lust, naturism has a long tradition, and they would deny it has anything to do with lust.
They also have certain prohibitions where being naked would not be appropriate, including biblical prohibitions against temple prostitution and orgies, forcing people to be nude (as would also increasingly be the case in reactionary police states, from strip searches upon arrest to prisons, although conservatives usually support this www.nytimes.com...), public indecency in the modern sense or historically in the temple in Jerusalem.
I suppose for those who cannot contain their lust at nude bodies it wouldn't be recommended (and most naturists would ban such people), but conversely for those who find clothing attractive and lust provoking it might be worth a try.
Resisting lust is ultimately up to the individual.
But once again it is an assumption to say that nudity itself equals lust.

The gender difference also goes back a long way, and St Jerome advised female nuns to avoid the women's public baths, although no such prohibitions seemed to exist for male gymnasiums.
The loins of Christ were only covered on Catholic statues around 500 BC.
The major dressing of the tropical world became the project of the Victorian age, and naturism seems to have developed as a reaction to Victorian concepts about the body.
For men nude swimming was an institutionalized custom until recently, and ordinary magazines equated nude swimming in male groups as a healthy and vigorous aspect of masculinity.
Yet strangely nowadays female nudity in film is still more acceptable than male nudity.
So it seems unlikely that naturism itself is a recent attack on public morals, or that it leads to the sexualization of society.

Anyway,some interesting points and counter-arguments on Christian naturism:
en.wikipedia.org...
The definition is quite insightful:

Christian naturists are Christians found in most branches and denominations of Christianity who practice naturism or nudism. They find no conflict between the teachings of the Bible and living their lives and worshiping God without any clothing, believing that covering the body leads to its sexualization. Thus, the common notion that nudity and sexuality go hand-in-hand is seen as a worldly point of view. The Christian definition of the human body should be separate, distinct, and non-materialistic. If clothing truly controlled lust and immoral sexual activity, then these would not be occurring to any great extent.[1]

Many Christian naturists have very little disagreement with the core beliefs of long-established churches, and may even be a member. They feel the error of mandatory dress is cultural, rather than anything related to salvation. Nor is such an error unprecedented. For example, in the 20th century, churches largely abandoned any teaching which promoted racial separation and segregation.[2] Likewise, Christian naturists perceive a gap between scripture and Victorian era modesty (which to some extent is still observed today).

Organized Christian naturism is known to exist in the United States,[3] Canada,[4] United Kingdom,[5] the Netherlands,[6] and Brazil [7] mainly as a parachurch. Public rules of conduct are similar to those of family-oriented naturist resorts. Any inappropriate sexual activity (including lust) is considered to be against God's Word.[8] Although Christian naturists may frequent public beaches and secular resorts, most do not accept New Age and humanist philosophies which sometimes occur in other aspects of naturism.[9] This includes all forms of nature worship. (The etymology of the word "naturism" was never related to nature worship, but derived from the French au naturel, meaning "to be in the natural state.")[10]

reply to post by halfoldman


lol, the Victorian Era did a lot to give Freud reason to be right. To adhere to what the Victorians claimed to be, and what we tend to think of them, now, is a really sexually repressed bunch of freaks. And I mean that literally.

reply to post by CynicalDrivel

Yeah, the Victorians do seem that way, although if one scratches beneath the prudish surface one can find the first photographic "porn" and erotica in art that no longer had to represent reality, the sexual exploitation of the lower classes (many upper class men lost their virginity to their maids), and men enjoyed widespread sexual adventures and concubinage in the colonies. Yet, the upper and middle classes of females were controlled through repressive stereotypes, and it's little wonder that the resulting "hysterical woman" became the interest of science.

Generally, since the framework of the thread is nudity in religion, I'm a bit surprised that nobody has yet defined "lust", the apparent danger in nudism (simply being naked) or naturism (a philosophy that focuses on philosophical aspects of being naked, usually in nature with various historical appeals to hygiene, non-materialism, social equality or freedom from pollution).

I've found very little to define "lust" so far, at least in any sense that divides it from a drive, a desire or a passion.
Even the New Testament verse that says men can take one wife if it stops them from burning with "lust" has many different versions. bible.cc...
It generally seems that they can take one wife if it alleviates the drive that some men would feel where they could no longer resist acting upon their desires, or where it interferes with their religious duties.
It certainly varies from the OT commandments to multiply, even with polygamy and concubinage.
Nevertheless, concubinage survived well into the colonial age, and Pizarro took care to baptize his Native American concubine Dona Angelina, whose people saved the Spaniards at the Battle of Lima.

Clearly there's "good lust" and "bad lust".
Especially since a lot of evangelical Christianity is against what it perceives as gender bending and homosexuality nowadays (as if the two were fused), it focuses on re-inscribing masculinity and femininity through the signs of clothing and hairstyles.
This is well illustrated in my clip of the Baptist preacher's sermon on the previous page, for example.
However, androgyny is actually the body without seductive lust, at least for most heterosexuals and most of the gay minority.
Cults that became neutered and non-sexual, like Heaven's Gate, actually cultivated androgyny.
So the irony is that one cannot re-inscribe femininity or masculinity without re-inscribing lust!
Telling women to become more feminine through clothes is actually telling them to become more lust-provoking for men.
This is a huge double standard on "lust".
Ideally it might be a case of you can look; but don't touch - but that is latent lust.

Furthermore, the nude body already has a superficial gender without lengthy sermons on how to signify gender with clothing.
It's not marketable (perhaps only with perfumes and deodorants, which actually signify little without clothes), nor does it carry signifiers of class or sin - nobody can tell whether a naked woman in a nude congregation is a prostitute or slut, for example.

It's all very confusing, because in essence the nude congregation would be closer to a non-materialistic congregation that affirms natural gender without judgements on who is using gender to be more vain and provocative.

It seems nowadays the conservative churches want a Goldilocks solution - male and female dress must be "just right", or appropriate.
Clothing must be gender specific just to the extent where it doesn't signal public "lust" to the opposite gender.
So a man can wear a phallic tie without exposing the "serpent".
Women can have big hair without exposing the "bush".
But all this focus on "reverting to masculinity" is in any case totally historically ignorant on male fashions, and it's nothing but thinly veiled erotica for the clothed.
Clothes seem to summon a highly sexualized discourse.
Being totally covered or totally nude might be solutions, but that's bad for business and prosperity models in a capitalist society, and nobody wants to put the fashion industry out of business.

Nevertheless there's an increasing reliance on the OT, and it might be leading to increased restrictions in some sects.
Especially in the context of moral competition with Islam, the philosophy for a Christian hijab or even burka for women is already present.
On the other hand "freedom" is also a propagandistic virtue, so without a political mandate thankfully persuasion is used against those who aren't "just right" in their gender-appropriate and yet "non-lustful" outfits.
Perhaps militarism has governed concepts of modesty between men and women (modesty for men in male groups was a practical impediment to generations that faced conscription), but it seems quite clear that clothes have a historical and cultural meaning that is highlighted by the naturally nude body.

Just a quick correction.
In my second post above I wrote that images of Christ had their loins covered in "500 BC"; this should of course be in AD 500.
Then to expand on the above, the nude body can also be marketed with products and alterations to a degree, although this wouldn't really be the naturist philosophy.
However, naturists aren't the only people to get naked (everyone does in some situations).
Whatever industries might focus on the body itself, I think they are very minor compared to the clothing and textile industries.
Currently Western clothes donated to charities alone fuel a constant billion dollar industry in the poorer countries.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
The question becomes what to do with it all when cheap Asian clothes and shoes make the "charity industry" redundant, even in Third World countries.
So far nobody cares, as long as all the nylon is made into gender appropriate garments.

I don't think naturism will become a mass industry or movement, although it will probably grow to an extent.
Perhaps it has to do with age-old longings for freedom, and a sense of over-coming one's embarrassment as self-affirmation.
Perhaps it will also have to do with a fatigue of the sex industry as the only place where Western people see naked bodies nowadays, and the inadequacy and lack of reality that promotes.
Stuck between prudishness and the sex industry many bodies feel inadequate.
According to a recent documentary a lot of men feel inadequate about their physical endowments, even those that fall well into the normal range.
Perhaps this points to the true source of all this anxiety about constantly expressing masculinity through clothes and short hair.
That line of thinking wasn't heavily pushed in the 1970s, or even in the 1980s, when metal bands like Stryper had hairstyles that would have been the envy of any Orange County housewife.
It seems machismo in those years was secure enough for heterosexual glam rock.
This generation of teens is not the most gender-bending by far - yet listen to the preachers and one could swear this was a generation of transvestites!
That points to insecurity and anxiety, and naturism could address those fears in re-acquainting people with human bodies in a non-threatening and non-fabricated environment.

Nah, they don't go to the OT for their command on clothing.

Yes, a lot of the NT was about simplifying laws, but there's still some harsh rules to deal with in the NT.

Thing is whether this is supposed to be a law for all, or a discussion of what needed to happen at Corinth:
1Corinthians 11:4-16

4 Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. 5 But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved. 6 For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head. 7 For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. 8 For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; 9 for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake. 10 Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. 11 However, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things originate from God. 13 Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, 15 but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair is given to her for a covering. 16 But if one is inclined to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor have the churches of God.

This is where a lot of the movements that have their women cover their hair comes from. This is where the tradition of women wearing hats in church, but men not being allowed to comes from. But the issue is with how you read verse 16. In most English translations it reads as, if you have a problem with it, this is what the rest of the churches do, so get over it. In Greek, it reads like: if anyone is upset with this reasoning, this is not something that the rest of the Church's practice. So there was something in Corinth that required this recommendation from Paul...something that is only hinted about in the text, and we only tuely get by studying Corinth culture.

reply to post by CynicalDrivel

Yes, thanks for pointing that out, very true, they could go to either testament.

In South Africa the Dutch Reformed Church was the main white (and thus governing) church, and they practiced the hat rule for women in my youth.
Today many of their congregations are less strict, and some have become very liberal, while others follow traditions more in line with US evangelical churches (to which they've lost considerable membership over the years).
Similar restrictions can also be found in 1 Timothy 2.
According to verse 9 specifically braided hair, pearls and costly array are mentioned as ill-advised.

I think I had our fellow debater on the thread Lonewold1979200 in mind with the OT, who wrote on the previous page:

You're providing more than enough viewing material to create lust. Thats all you need to create the catalyst for lust which is why hebrew women were covered from head to toe under rather muslim like garments, minus burka and hijab.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

But sure, verses on dress are found in both testaments, although they are not consistently applied as commandments.
But in a certain and growing stream of Christian thinking on literalism they may be seen increasingly as justified and necessary.

Hmm, now I'm intrigued on the Corinthians ...

From what I remember, you're going to pull up some information on "The Corinthians" in Regency culture in England--they do get their info from that older era.

reply to post by CynicalDrivel

Very interesting, thanks for that.
I just Googled it.

Interesting that one of them was Beau Brummel, who shares a name with South Africa's eccentric "king of nude", who ran a nudist farm in the 1980s.
Rumors exist that not everyone who frequented was interested in naturism, but the final collapse came in 1993 when shareholders resisted his admittance of gays and blacks (society then was extremely conservative).
www.tinasusman.com...

More recently in 2007 he tried to revive his fortunes with "whites only" resorts, which attracted the interest of the SA Human Rights Commission, although he denied this was racist and merely reflected the demographic interest in nudism. Luckily for him people find him very funny rather than offensive.

Most astoundingly (and perhaps hilariously) he wanted to open a nude resort in the conservative Afrikaner enclave of Orania.

There could be a lot more white skins on display in the Northern Cape’s Afrikaner-only enclave of Orania if nudist king Beau Brummel has his way, Die Burger reported on Thursday.

Brummel apparently plans to open a nudist farm in the town in three weeks. Although not afraid of potential opposition, he said he would first have a word with the town’s preacher.

“This old nudist is not scared of anybody.
I invite the town preachers to come and visit, but they must please bring their own sunscreen lotion.

“Tell everyone that Orania is becoming nude. The nudist king is on his way and I’ll make sure that they become famous,” he was quoted as saying.

He would not disclose the farm’s exact location but said he would invite journalists to the opening, as long as they came in their birthday suits.

Freedom Front Plus leader in the Northern Cape Carel Boshoff joked that residents were wondering if Brummel knew how cold it got in Orania. He however suspected that the news was a joke.

“We don’t know of any such development and have not given our permission. Brummel is riding on Orania’s back to further his own interests.”

Brummel also brushed off claims that he was being racist by opening a whites-only nudist colony.

“It’s difficult enough to try and get people of different races who are fully clothed to live alongside one another, but what about different races without their clothes?”

Boshoff said they were more concerned about Brummel’s race remarks than the nudity. “He’s sending a wrong message about something that implicates us, which isn’t true.”

www.mg.co.za...

Although he became a celebrity with his open challenges to conservatism in the old SA, he is a figure of mirth rather than offense, and he doesn't represent naturists in SA in any way.
Perhaps interestingly he was once the singer for the British rock band The Noblemen.
Just an anecdote from the stranger side of nudism.