Nudity in religion

This article is about the differing attitudes to nudity and modesty among contemporary world religions. For nudity in ancient religions, see History of nudity.

Baptism of Clovis I (496)

Nudity factors into various religious traditions and teachings, and forms part of the basis for modern attitudes and behaviors regarding nudity.

Ancient religions

In the civilizations of the ancient Near East, being clothed was the norm. In both Egypt and Mesopotamia nakedness was situational and nudity relatively rare, associated with poverty, the humiliation of prisoners or criminals, the representation of childhood, and practical constraints such as working in water, while nudity was linked with sexuality, rejuvenation, and some ritual contexts.

Egypt

In ancient Egyptian iconography, social rank was defined by dress, so that nudity signified above all a lack of status; children, who had no status yet, were depicted naked. Nakedness could also be imposed as humiliation, as when offenders were stripped naked for a beating, and in a late tale Prince Setna, waking naked in the road, is too ashamed to stand before the pharaoh out of respect.

Mesopotamia

Early Dynastic votive plaques depict priests officiating naked: on a plaque of about 2500 BC from Ur, a nude priest pours a libation before a god at a temple. In the Sumerian poem of the descent of Inanna to the underworld, the goddess is compelled to shed a piece of her regalia at each of the underworld's seven gates, finally falling naked and powerless before Ereshkigal.

Greece

In ancient Greece, public nudity was institutionalized and carried religious meaning. The classicist Larissa Bonfante traces the Greek custom of athletic male nudity to ritual origins in the eighth century BC, from which it developed by way of initiation rites into the "civic" nudity of the Classical period while retaining significance in religious and magical contexts; the Greeks themselves saw the custom as setting them apart from the barbarians and from their own past. Bonfante contrasts the Greek institution with earlier Near Eastern attitudes toward nakedness and with those of contemporary peoples such as the Hebrews, Etruscans, and Gauls. Athletes at the ancient Olympic Games, held at Olympia from 776 BC until about AD 393 as part of a religious festival honoring Zeus, competed nude.

Abrahamic religions

Adam and Eve, painting by Lothar von Seebach

The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all recount the Genesis creation narrative in which Adam and Eve are unaware of their nakedness until they eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. After this, they feel ashamed and try to cover themselves with fig leaves. In Islam the garden is in Paradise, not on Earth. This is to show that women and men should be covered in clothing, for nudity has the stigma of shame attached to it. Each of these religions has its own unique understanding of what is meant to be taught with the recounting of the story of Adam and Eve.

The biblical Bathsheba and the apocryphal Susanna are portrayed as victims of the male gaze while bathing, though some later interpreters have blamed the women for the men's lust; the apocryphal Judith, by contrast, bathes publicly and deliberately seduces in order to behead the enemy general Holofernes.

Of particular concern for both Islam and early Christians, as they extended their control over countries that had previously been part of the Byzantine or Roman empires, was the local custom of public bathing. While Christians were mainly concerned about mixed-gender bathing, which had been common, Islam also prohibited nudity for women in the company of non-Muslim women. In general, the Roman bathing facilities were adapted for separation of the genders, and the bathers retaining at least a loin-cloth.

Judaism

See also: Tzniut

The Genesis creation narrative describes Adam and Eve as "naked and not ashamed" (Genesis 2:25) before eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Awareness of nakedness as requiring covering comes only after the Fall (Genesis 3:7), presented as a consequence of disobedience rather than part of the original divine design. Judaism does not share the Christian association of nakedness with original sin, an aspect integral to Christian doctrines of redemption and salvation; in Jewish thought, shame arose from the knowledge of good and evil rather than from nakedness itself.

In practice, Judaism developed detailed norms around body modesty (Tzniut), though these vary considerably between movements and communities. In more strict (Orthodox) communities, tzniut encompasses detailed rules of appropriate behavior. Conservative and Reform Judaism generally promote modesty values but do not regard strict tzniut rules as binding, permitting individuals to set their own standards.

Rabbinic sources distinguish between functional nudity and immodest exposure. The Talmud (Shabbos 118b) records that Rabbi Yossi dressed and undressed under his sheets to avoid standing bare even in private, which later authorities cite as pious practice rather than strict obligation. However, scholars note that male workers laboring in fields or fishing were commonly unclothed in ancient Palestine, as reflected in John 21:7 where Simon Peter is described as naked while fishing. A person entering a mikveh (ritual bath) does so without clothing or jewelry.

Orthodox Jewish Law (Halakha) traditionally placed greater concern on male nudity in religious contexts, viewing it as an offense against God, while female nudity was primarily addressed in terms of arousing sexual passion; thus private or female-only nudity was not inherently immodest. The category of ervah (nakedness) in halakhic literature is highly contextual—dependent on social norms, habituation, and setting rather than fixed body parts.

Care is needed when reading biblical texts, as some references to "nakedness" serve as euphemism for sexual activity. The story of Noah's nakedness involves Ham "seeing his father's nakedness," which many commentators interpret as involving more than mere viewing.

Christianity

Mainstream Christian denominations

Representation of baptism in early Christian art

The Christian Bible treats nakedness as innocent before the fall of man and as a symbol of the shame of sin afterward; in Genesis, God clothes Adam and Eve after their own covering of fig leaves proves inadequate.

The early Church reflected the contemporary attitudes of Judaism towards nudity, which the Old Testament generally views negatively; in Isaiah 20, Isaiah walks nude as a sign of shame.

The first recorded liturgy of baptism, written down by Saint Hippolytus of Rome in his Apostolic Tradition, required men, women and children to remove all clothing, including all foreign objects such as jewelry and hair fastenings. However Laurie Guy argues that complete nudity for baptism candidates (especially women) would not be the norm. He notes that at certain times and in certain places candidates may have been totally naked at the point of baptism, but the Jewish taboo of female nakedness would have mitigated widespread practice of naked baptism.

Later Christian attitudes to nudity became more restrictive, and baptisms were segregated by sex and then later were usually performed with clothed participants. Some of the Eastern Orthodox churches today maintain the early church's liturgical use of baptismal nudity, particularly for infants but also for adults.

Several saints, such as a number of the Desert Fathers as well as Basil Fool for Christ, practiced nudity as a form of ascetic poverty.

The Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo

Early Christian art included depictions of nudity in baptism. When artistic endeavours revived following the Renaissance, the Catholic Church was a major sponsor of religious art depicting subjects in various states of dress, including full nudity, by painters such as Raphael, Caravaggio, and Michelangelo; many such works remain displayed in churches, most famously the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Smith (1966), discussing logion 37 of the Gospel of Thomas, notes that early Christian art depicts nude figures almost exclusively in baptismal scenes and in Old Testament scenes that were held to be types of the resurrection, such as Adam and Eve in Paradise, Jonah emerging from the Great Fish, and Daniel in the Lion's Den.

Methodists of the conservative holiness movement interpret biblical teaching as requiring clothing that covers the torso and thighs.

In 1981, Pope John Paul II wrote in Love and Responsibility that "nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness", locating immodesty not in the body itself but in its treatment in ways that negate the value of the person.

Christian naturist sects

Main article: Christian naturism

The arrest of Adamites in a public square in Amsterdam

Sects have arisen within Christianity from time to time that have viewed nudity in a more positive light. For example, to the Adamites and the Freedomites, social nudity was an integral part of their ritual. The Adamites, an early Christian sect, practiced "holy nudism", engaging in common worship in the nude. During the Middle Ages, the doctrines of this obscure sect were revived: in the Netherlands by the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Taborites in Bohemia, and, in a grosser form, by the Beghards in Germany. Everywhere, they met with firm opposition from the mainstream Christian churches.

A religious sect in Canada that immigrated from Russia, the Sons of Freedom, went so far in the 20th century (1903–1950s) as to publicly strip in mass public demonstrations to protest against government policies which were meant to assimilate them.

Christian naturism contains various members associated with most denominations. Although beliefs vary, a common theme is that much of Christianity has misinterpreted the events regarding the Garden of Eden, and God was displeased with Adam and Eve for covering their bodies with fig leaves. De Clercq (2011) argues that the significance of the human need for clothing by far exceeds its theological meaning.

Islam

The practice known as purdah, i.e. the veiling of women in public, predates Islam in Persia, Assyria, and India. Islamic clothing for men covers the area from the waist to the knees. In the medieval period, Islamic norms became more patriarchal, and very concerned with the chastity of women before marriage and fidelity afterward. Women were not only veiled, but segregated from society, with no contact with men not of close kinship, the presence of whom defined the difference between public and private spaces.

Islamic countries are guided by rules of modesty that forbid nudity, with variations between five schools of Islamic law. The most conservative is the Hanbali School in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where it is widespread for women wear the niqab, the garment covering the whole body and the face with a narrow opening for the eyes. Hands are also hidden within sleeves as much as possible. The burqa, limited mainly to Afghanistan, also has a mesh screen which covers the eye opening. Different rules apply to men, women, and children; and depend upon the gender and family relationship of others present. The Sunni scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi holds that the intimate parts of the body must not be exposed to or viewed by others: for women after puberty this encompasses the whole body apart from the hands and face, while men must be covered from the navel to the knees, with exceptions among close relations; modesty extends even to covering the genitals when a person is alone.

Indian religions

Naga mystics, at the Hindu bathing ceremony of Ardha Kumbh Mela, at Allahabad

In ancient Indian cultures, there was a tradition of extreme asceticism (minoritarian) that included full nudity. This tradition continued from the gymnosophists (philosophers in antiquity) to certain holy men (who may however cover themselves with ashes) in present-day Hindu devotion and in Jainism.

In the 4th century BC, Alexander the Great encountered, in India, wandering groups of naked holy men whom he dubbed the naked philosophers (Gr gymnos: naked; sophist: knowledge). The philosopher Onesicritus investigated their beliefs and lifestyle. Pyrrho the Sceptic was impressed and incorporated nudity into his philosophy. The Gymnosophists were Hindus, but Jain and Ajivika monks practiced nudity as a statement that they had given up all worldly goods.

Buddhism

Early Buddhism rejected the ritual nudity practiced by contemporary ascetic movements such as the Jains and Ājīvikas. The Dhammapada (v. 141) holds that neither nakedness, matted hair, fasting, nor other austerities can purify one who has not overcome doubt, and the Vinaya, the code of monastic discipline, forbids monks from going unclothed even in private and prescribes a distinctive robe, in part to set Buddhist monastics apart from the naked ascetics of rival sects.

Hinduism

In Hindu thought, attitudes toward nudity are framed by the Puruṣārtha, the four ends of human life, which encompass both sensory enjoyment (kama) and liberation (moksha). In its spiritual aspect, nudity symbolizes renunciation of the highest type: a nude person or deity, such as some depictions of Kali, denotes one who is devoid of maya, or attachment to the body, and an embodiment of infinity.

Famous nude saints of Hinduism include Akka Mahadevi, Lalleshwari, Trailanga Swami, Harihar Baba, and Tota Puri. Among Hindu religious orders, only the sadhus (monks) of the Nāga sect can be seen nude. They usually wear a loincloth, remain in their Akharas or in isolation, and appear in public mainly during the Kumbh Mela; historically they were warrior monks who carried weapons and fought to protect Hindu temples and shrines.

Jainism

Digambara monk Acarya Pushpadantasagara with nude monks

In India, Digambara monks reject any form of clothing and practice nudity. Digambara (lit. 'sky clad') is one of the two main sects of Jainism. However, the Shvetambara sect is "white-clad" and their holy statues may or may not wear a loin cloth as seen in artefacts excavated from the Kankali Tila.

East Asian religions

Confucianism

The sinologist François Jullien argues that while the undraped figure is ubiquitous in Western art and also appears in the art of India and Japan, the nude is wholly absent from the Chinese artistic tradition, reflecting a fundamentally different conception of the human body. Confucian teaching regarded the body as a trust received from one's parents: the Classic of Filial Piety opens with the injunction that the body, "to every hair and bit of skin", is received from the parents and must not be injured, this being the beginning of filial piety.

Shinto

In Japan, hadaka matsuri ("naked festivals") are held mainly in the coldest part of the year and involve mostly male participants wearing only a fundoshi loincloth, if that. Participants purify their bodies by pouring cold water over themselves before petitioning the Shinto gods or Buddhist deities, a custom explained as approaching the divine in the state of a newborn free of impurities; the festivals are intended to cleanse the impurities accumulated over the previous year. At the best known, the Saidaiji Eyō at Saidaiji temple in Okayama, thousands of near-naked men are purified with cold water and then scramble in darkness for sacred wooden sticks (shingi) thrown into the crowd by a priest, which are believed to bring good fortune. The Sominsai, a naked festival held for more than a thousand years at Kokuseki-ji temple in northern Japan, in which participants cleansed themselves in a river before praying for abundant harvests and good health, was discontinued after its February 2024 observance because its aging organizers could no longer sustain it; women took part in that final observance for the first time.

Southeast Asia and Oceania

In Balinese Hindu society, women customarily went bare-breasted in everyday life into the twentieth century, while formal occasions such as temple ceremonies and dances called for greater modesty, with a decorative sash wound over the chest; the blouse spread only with Dutch colonial rule. Entering a Balinese temple today requires modest dress of locals and visitors alike, including a sarong and a sash.

In pre-Christian Polynesia, the treatment of the body's surface was bound up with the sacred. The anthropologist Alfred Gell argued that tattooing formed part of a complex array of symbolic techniques for controlling sacredness and protecting the self. Serge Tcherkézoff argues that early European accounts of Polynesian nudity rested on misunderstandings of local practices surrounding cloth, gifts, and ritual presentation. With nineteenth-century Christianization, missionaries brought new norms of dress; in Fiji, they imposed many changes on the dress and body modifications of the people.

African traditional religions

Across sub-Saharan Africa, mature women have long mobilized deliberate collective nakedness as a form of protest and sanction against male adversaries. The practice, often called genital cursing, owes its potency to the religious belief that spirits residing in women's bodies can be unleashed to cause misfortune in their targets, including impotence, disease, and death. Documented instances include the disrobing of women in Soweto to prevent the destruction of their homes and protests by Ivorian women in Côte d'Ivoire and Paris in 2011.

Christian missions in Africa made dress integral to conversion. Among the Southern Tswana of South Africa, nineteenth-century British Nonconformist missionaries promoted European clothing as part of the effort to remake African bodies and everyday life along Christian lines, an encounter in which cloth, clothing, and the human body became contested terrain between evangelists and Africans.

Indigenous religions of the Americas

In the art of the Classic Maya (c. AD 250 to 850), whose makers conceived of the body as an instrument of both honor and dishonor, complete nudity is rare and marks the degradation of war captives, who are depicted stripped of clothing and ornament in preparation for humiliation and sacrifice. In central Mexico, the cult of Xipe Totec, "Our Lord the Flayed One", made human skin itself into sacred dress: priests sacrificed captives, flayed them, and draped themselves in the skins in imitation of the god in rites of fertility and agricultural regeneration.

Among Indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin, apparent nakedness coexists with strict obligations of bodily adornment. In a classic analysis of the Kayapo of central Brazil, the anthropologist Terence Turner argued that the seemingly naked body is in fact fully covered in a fabric of cultural meaning, its paint, ornaments, and hair treatment forming a "social skin" through which the individual is joined to society.

Purification by sweating is central to the religious life of many Native North American peoples. In the sweat lodge ceremony, participants enter a dark, enclosed lodge naked or nearly naked for rounds of prayer amid the steam of water poured over heated stones, and the rite is described as a kind of rebirth. Among the Lakota, the sweat lodge rite of inipi ("to live again") has been a persistent component of religious life since its first recorded description in the late seventeenth century and remains a vital part of Lakota religion today.

New religious movements

Raelians in South Korea

Neopaganism

In many modern neopagan religious movements, such as Wicca, social and ritual nudity is (relatively) commonplace. In Wicca, the term skyclad refers to ritual nudity instead of social nudity.

Raëlism

In Raëlism, nudity is not problematic. Raëlists in North America have formed GoTopless.org, which organizes demonstrations in support of topfreedom on the basis of the legal and public attitudes to the gender inequality. GoTopless sponsors an annual "Go Topless Day" protest (also known as "National GoTopless Day", "International Go-Topless Day", etc.) in advocacy for women's right to go topless on gender equality grounds.

See also

See also: Christian naturism, Social nudity, and History of nudity

References

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Further reading

• Ableman, Paul (1982). Anatomy of nakedness. Orbis Pub. ISBN 978-0-85613-175-2.
• Basham, Arthur Llewellyn (1951). History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas, a Vanished Indian Religion. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 978-81-208-1204-8. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
• Biaggi, Cristina (1986). "The Significance of the Nudity, Obesity and Sexuality of the Maltese Goddess Figures". In Anthony Bonanno (ed.). Archaeology and Fertility Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean: Papers Presented at the First International Conference on Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean, University of Malta, 2-5 September 1985. John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 90-6032-288-6.
• Crooke, W. (July–December 1919). "Nudity in India in Custom and Ritual". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 49. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland: 237–251. doi:10.2307/2843441. JSTOR 2843441. Zenodo: 2412989.
• Ferguson, Everett (2009). Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8028-2748-7.
• Keller, Sharon R. (Winter 1993). "Aspects of Nudity in the Old Testament". Source: Notes in the History of Art. 12 (2). Ars Brevis Foundation, Inc.: 32–36. doi:10.1086/sou.12.2.23202933. JSTOR 23202933. S2CID 191415598.
• Kyriakidis, Evangelos (1997). "Nudity in Late Minoan I Seal Iconography". Kadmos. 36 (2). doi:10.1515/kadm.1997.36.2.119. ISSN 0022-7498. S2CID 162354519.
• Le, Dan (2012). The Naked Christ: An Atonement Model for a Body-Obsessed Culture. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-61097-788-3.
• Marinatos, Nanno (2002). Goddess and the Warrior: The Naked Goddess and Mistress of the Animals in Early Greek Religion. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-60148-6.
• Meggitt, Justin (24 January 2011). "Naked Quakers". Fortean Times. Archived from the original on 26 August 2014. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
• Miles, Margaret R. (2006). Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-59752-901-3.
• Moon, Warren G. (Winter 1992). "Nudity and Narrative: Observations on the Frescoes from the Dura Synagogue". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 60 (4): 587–658. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lx.4.587. JSTOR 1465587.
• Mormando, Franco (2008). "Nudus Nudum Christum Sequi: The Franciscans and Differing Interpretations of Male Nakedness in Fifteenth-Century Italy". Fifteenth Century Studies. 33: 171. Archived from the original on 19 August 2014.
• Randolph, Vance (October–December 1953). "Nakedness in Ozark Folk Belief". The Journal of American Folklore. 66 (262). American Folklore Society: 333–339. doi:10.2307/536729. JSTOR 536729.
• Riley, Gregory J. (2011). "A Note on the Text of Gospel of Thomas 37". Harvard Theological Review. 88 (1): 179–181. doi:10.1017/S0017816000030443. ISSN 0017-8160. S2CID 170566284.
• Schafer, Edward H. (June 1951). "Ritual Exposure in Ancient China". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 14 (1/2). Harvard-Yenching Institute: 130–184. doi:10.2307/2718298. JSTOR 2718298.
• Smith, Alison (1996). The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4403-8.
• Squire, Michael (2011). The Art of the Body: Antiquity and Its Legacy. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84511-931-7.

External links

• Christian Nudist Convocation : Supporting and Gathering Christian Nudists Archived 11 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine
• gotopless.org
• Raëlism: Publicity as a Recruitment Technique Archived 19 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine