THAT FAMOUS FIG LEAF

A study explores Christianity’s relationship to the human body.

This latest book from Thompson (Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would, 2004) delves into the vexed and ambivalent relationship between Christianity and the naked human body. The author takes a standard Christian stance that humans are the handiwork of God and therefore implicitly divulge something of his thinking. “The body reveals these mysteries by demonstrating the attributes of God in both form and function, design and behavior,” Thompson writes. “The body teaches us who God is.” The author grapples with the subject of physicality through a delightfully wide array of readings, ranging from Lady Gaga and St. Teresa of Ávila to canonical Christian writings and a variety of blogs on many subjects. He looks at Christianity’s long history of instilling shame and revulsion in its followers regarding the naked body, and he presents a broad survey of more contemporary writings designed to counter that tradition. Thompson is a proponent of a far more wholesome view of nudity, asserting that nothing fixes unhealthy body images faster than spending “quality time” with other bodies. Rather than a stigma, he tends to think of getting naked as becoming closer to the Creator of that nakedness: “I am throwing off the last remaining connection to society and its rituals, thus baring my soul to God with nothing in the way.” Some of the author’s claims will strike many readers as odd, especially in light of the progressiveness of his general argument. He mentions that Adam and Eve lived in 4000 B.C.E., for instance (the ancient Egyptians had been farming and manufacturing for thousands of years before that date), and he repeatedly references his own “struggles” with same-gender attraction. But his overall approach to his subject is refreshingly affirmative. “Lack of information creates confusion about sex, and lack of affirmation creates shame about the body,” he writes in one encouraging passage. “This confusion, and conflation, informs our impropriety.” Christians having questions about their own bodies will find a wealth of captivating content in these pages.

An intriguing, wide-ranging attempt to renovate the way Christians relate to naked bodies.