By Rhodes Murphy  ·  Photography by Fwee Carter

Perhaps unsurprisingly, nudity — whether social or ritualistic — has retained a problematic position in the Christian worldview. On the one hand, nudity is related to purity and Edenic bliss enjoyed by Adam and Eve before being sullied by original sin. Nudity was, and sometimes still is, a feature of baptism and conversion rituals in Christian and Judaic traditions. And despite its association with original sin, nudity permeates the art of the Christian world and includes depictions of the human body that verge dangerously close to outright eroticism.

For early Christian leaders building on the prudish Judaic stance toward nudity, the prohibition on nudity served a useful political purpose. As Christianity gained steam and became the official religious order of a newly minted Holy Roman Empire, the prohibition on nudity became an essential tool for early Christians to differentiate this new ecclesiastic and political order from earlier pagan systems of belief and traditional worship. Thus, despite explicit biblical evidence for such a claim, Christians embraced interpretations of scripture that conflated the human body with shame in accordance with earlier Judaic attitudes and the ecclesiastical imperatives of Christianity to differentiate itself from older, “hedonistic” rituals and systems of worship.

For Roman leaders, it was important that the emergent political and theological regime marked its difference from widespread popular pagan practices, such as the worship of Dionysus — a popular classical god who, despite holding conspicuous similarities to the Christian lord and savior, was surrounded by a cult of worshippers that celebrated indulgence, sexuality, and the chaotic beauty of the body. For Christian leaders, the bacchanalian rituals of Dionysian worship posed an ultimate threat to the social, political, and dogmatic order of the Christianized world.

But amidst the hostile atmosphere posed by Christianity to social and ritual nudity, there were still early sects of monastic Christian believers that sought to reclaim the naked body from the clutches of sin and shame. The most notable of such groups was the Adamites, an early Christian sect that gained prominence in north Africa in the 2nd century. The ancient Adamites sought to worship God by adhering to Edenic principals — rejecting concepts such as marriage and embracing ritual and social nudity in an attempt to reenact the innocence and shameless relationship enjoyed in the garden before the fall of original sin.

Declared heretical by the mainstream Church, the Adamites blipped in and out of existence through much of the Middle Ages, eventually regaining prominence in central Europe between the 12th and 14th centuries. The later European sects doubled down on social and ritualistic nudity, rejecting chastity and monogamy wholesale and declaring free love a requisite for entrance to the “Messianic kingdom.” These Adamites even rejected individual property and ownership — making themselves ever more at odds with the theocratic orthodoxy of the Catholic church and emergent capitalist ideologies. By the 15th century most of these neo-Adamite sects were exterminated by Christian authorities.

Though the Adamites may have been wiped out by the beginning of the Renaissance, the die had already been cast for the Christian fascination with the naked body. Today we find not only thriving communities of Christian naturists, but even more explicit statements delinking the body from the shame of the fall. Look no further than the comments of Pope John Paul II — hardly a loosy goosy Catholic — on the subject:

The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve intact its splendour and its beauty… Nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness… Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person… The human body is not in itself shameful… Shamelessness (just like shame and modesty) is a function of the interior of a person.

Only in the Catholic church would a statement like “the human body is not in itself shameful” be considered revolutionary, but that’s where we’re at.

Playful as they may be, these photos offer a glimpse into the heart of the Adamite ideal of reclaiming the body as a site of sensuality, enjoyment, and identification free from the shame imposed by a society searching for sins and sinners. At its heart, the Adamite ideal remains relevant in its rejection of a dogma built upon shame — in favor of a belief that the body should be celebrated for its inherent innocence and its ability to experience both pain and pleasure. Embedded within these ideals is the notion that social nudity brings people together; a community bonded by the shared sense of bodily vulnerability, stripped of both the physical protective barrier formed by the material we wear, as well as the class distinctions we ascribe to it.

Finally, to strip the body of shame and clothing is to embrace — whether Pope John Paul II approves or not — the reality of our sexuality as human beings, not only masculine but feminine. It should be noted that most of the Western prohibitions on nudity and the body focus on the female body. In striving to inhabit the “Edenic state,” the body may safely explore both sides of its nature without the threat of shame being imposed by an overtly gender-based society. To embrace the body without shame is to embrace not only the visual distinctions between bodies, but also the wide spectrum of desires and sexual appetites that body may experience or inhabit.

In a world obsessed with creating binaries and distinctions about sexuality and the body, the garden remains an important metaphor, regardless of anyone’s personal religious attitudes. The garden is the place where one can fully inhabit their own body without shame. If this is the case, then the delights of the garden of Eden can be enjoyed anywhere at any time, as long as one is comfortable being shameless.