About My New Book
I consider my latest 596-page work, Nudity & Christianity, to be my
"magnum opus." It
represents the fruit of thirty years of research, meditation, discussion and
many personal experiences. Though much of the material is new, I have included
the best of my twenty-three years of naturist publishing. Although all of my
previous publications were highly photographic, this latest is 100% textual, in
hopes of reaching those who might be intimidated even by the most tasteful depictions
of God's greatest material creation--the human body. The insightful ideas of
dozens of authors from various denominations are represented here, from Pope
John Paul II to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis to Kahlil Gibran and even Mark
Twain.
The purpose of this book is to
encourage readers to probe the reasons for wearing clothes. Today, Western
convention tends to assume that "nude is lewd," but it was not always
that way. For half the Church's history, catechumens--men, women, boys, girls,
and infants were routinely baptized together, nude, by full immersion. Today,
we recoil at learning this, but how have cultural attitudes toward the body
changed to effect this reaction? I ask those hard questions about the body and
the meaning of true modesty, and exhort Christians to lead the way in asserting
God's definition of the body, rather
than Playboy's. Instead of allowing
pornographers to define the body for us, and then create a virtue of modesty to
fit that false definition, Christians should assert God's definition as found in Scripture and Church Tradition. When
we view the body as Jesus did, our definition of modesty becomes radically
different from what is conventionally presumed.
Two highly detailed indices (Scriptural
and Topical) make this an excellent and easy to use reference book. Suppose a
reader wants to see what various authors have had to say about Noah's drunken
nakedness. They can either look it up in the Topical Index under
"Noah," or in the Scriptural Index under "Genesis 9:18-27."
In my introduction, readers are
exhorted to live what they learn.
See
the complete Table of Contents.
Click
Publisher
for information on purchasing Nudity & Christianity directly
from them ($25).
Or,
for an autographed copy ($32 postpaid), go to Cunningham's Store.