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- Path: sparky!uunet!comp.vuw.ac.nz!waikato.ac.nz!bthoms
- From: bthoms@waikato.ac.nz
- Newsgroups: rec.nude
- Subject: Re: Christian nudists
- Message-ID: <1992Nov18.132922.12276@waikato.ac.nz>
- Date: 18 Nov 92 13:29:22 +1300
- References: <1992Nov16.135854.12190@waikato.ac.nz> <kg60826@pro-harold.cts.com>
- Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
- Lines: 39
-
- In article <kg60826@pro-harold.cts.com>, leed@pro-harold.cts.com (Lee Dronick) writes:
-
- >
- > Bibical tradition is a few thousan years old! New fangled religions! Give
- > me that old time religion, Taoism. As to nudity being only a few decades
- > old, get real. Clothing became compulsory due to Queen Victoria and her
- > anal-retentive hang-ups. Nudity has been a lifestyle since day one or which
- > ever day your God is supposed to have created "Man" If one was cold they
- > wore something, if not they bared skin as necessary to be comfortable.
- >
- ...
- >
- > It's been a long time since I read the bible but I remeber passages about
- > homosexual practices. In my opinion (not humble) homosexuality is a God
- > given since God is the ultimate source of all creation. Sorry to stray from
- > the topic of nudity.
-
- My opinion remains humble, and I certainly don't disagree with anything
- Lee says, however, as a rather bumbling ancient history research student
- in my spare time, naked people have existed for centuries, nudists haven't,
- and homosexuals have existed as long as humanity, but gays/lesbians haven't.
- My point, albeit obscure, is that you cannot treat literal texts referring
- to ancient social phenomena to criticise or proscribe modern social
- phenomena for which there is no equivalent. The best example is the modern
- jurisprudence which starts to accept that "exposure" is not necessarily
- "indecent", when (20 years ago) there would have been no question. Many
- theologians argue that gay and lesbian relationships are not proscribed by
- the Bible, because the (few) references there are refer to homosexuality
- from a heterosexual social perspective, not a gay/lesbian one (i.e. the
- basic social rules are different). Similarly (yes there is a point) some
- churches condemn nudism on the basis of scripture, but since Jesus never
- met a nudist (maybe as opposed to a naked person) in the first century AD,
- the concepts need to be re-evaluated for a community where nudity is not
- necessarily sexual, crude, suggestive or offensive. I would be more hopeful
- if such churches handled re-thinking better. ...and, for the record, most
- of the time, nudity is a normal social experience, but sometimes it feels
- so good that it is spiritual!
-
- Brent Thomson, Waikato, NZ
-