NUDISM IS NOT A RELIGION!

For nearly two thousand years western civilization has clung to the mandates of the Christian religion with one hand and to general disobedience with the other. The reason for this is that our religious directives have not been compatible with the carnal exactions of a material life. We are not only spiritually animated; we are also impelled by the demands of the flesh. Nature has provided us with intelligence as a regulating medium between these forces to insure appropriate indulgence for each, but religion with its narrow pattern of spiritual complacency has been incapable of such flexibility, so it has driven a wedge of disparagement between them. The Bible says: “A house divided against itself shall fall.” So it is not much wonder that our civilization is always in a jam.

Our emotional life and its affinities are censored and divided. Love is approved by religion, but lust or longing affection is vehemently condemned as an urge of the devil.

We cannot escape through any manner of false appraisal. Both love and lust are vital to the culmination of the mating instinct. The propagation of the race involves some physical qualifications and in the absence of affection masculine qualifications are suspended. Religion has supplemented its campaign against lust with a morbid concept of modesty. This interposes in connubial relations, and feminine response bogs down in guilty embarrassment and reticence. This precludes a realization of Love’s expectancies, and it invites infidelity.

The complete exclusion of lust or affection relegates us to a life of celibacy. The futility of trying to popularize this sort of physical destitution has prompted a compromise. We are accepted into the church that promotes these repressions and then are told, quite logically, that it is just impossible to live without sin.

There is a great variety of Christian beliefs, and as it is with women’s hats you may go shopping and select one that you think is most becoming, and, as you are going to sin anyway, of course the seductive thing isn’t supposed to be practical.

Or you may climb into the old chariot with the original church, but this was designed by the medieval, and it has still no shock absorbers to relieve you of jolting superstitions or even downright physical effacement that is often projected by a roadbed paved with the sadistic aggressions of a doctrine of mortification.

So, a review of nineteen centuries of religious history still provides us with a somewhat weird and uncanny picture of righteousness.

NUDISM does not advocate universal nakedness. In view of our esthetic developments in dress and consequent formalities, there are many circumstances in which nakedness would be a brash violation of good taste and cultural ethics, but on the other hand the esthetic should not be perpetually and fanatically stressed with indifference to more wholesome and vital considerations. Experience has proved that concealment makes no honest contributions to morality, and the fact is confirmed that nudity is not an ungovernable incentive to immorality and social disorder. To become accustomed to it is not only feasible but a vital step in the establishment of morality that is SOUND.

Religion has always indulged in a rancorous campaign against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Nudism has found that morality is far more effectively encouraged and promoted through the cultivation of earnest respect for the world, the flesh, and God’s scheme of things. In such an attitude only do we find the substance of decency.

Nudism is NOT a religion, but it is steadfast in its demands for consistency on the part of those who profess reverence and respect for an omnipotent and infallible Creator.

Religion that demoralizes us with obscenity complex, leaves us in about the same fix as the inebriate Irishman who, when asked what he would do if he were to die and meet his Creator, replied that such a circumstance would probably prove to be most embarrassing to both of them.

(Source: The Mar News,
reprinted in The Bulletin,
Volume 15, No. 9, September, 1966)