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The gospel of Jesus Christ is not against nudity, although a lot of LDS folk beliefs oppose it, D. Michael Martindale, an avowed naturist, said at the annual Sunstone Symposium in Salt Lake City Friday.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints balk at those who practice nudity because they find it contrary to teachings about modesty and the requirement that faithful Mormons wear sacred undergarments day and night, Martindale said.
The modesty question is easy to respond to, he said.
"What we feel modest wearing today would have scandalized Brigham Young. What we wear to the swimming pool would horrify us if we wore it to church," Martindale said. "Modesty is a fluid concept."
True modesty is in the heart and the mind and not in the amount of fabric we drape over our bodies, he said.
Some also have objected to social nudism, presuming it increases illicit sexuality.
Nonsense, Martindale says. "Rather than diffusing lust, clothing creates it. We make certain parts of our bodies more mysterious, more alluring. That heightens sexual awareness."
A naturist resort is one of the least sexual places on Earth, he said.
As to the question of garments, he said there is a line in the instruction given to bishops saying that the proper wearing is between an individual and God. Martindale feels he is closer to God when he sheds his clothes as long as it's in an appropriate, respectful settings. As long as he is doing so for the right reasons, he feels God would understand.
When Martindale began hiking naked, for example, he experienced nature without artificial barriers for the first time, he said.
Nudity, he argued, improves a person's psychological, social and emotional health. It can decrease self-consciousness in a youth and body-obsessed culture. Children are conditioned from an early age to hide their bodies or feel shame in nakedness.
Martindale does not want to convert anyone else to the idea of nudity, he said, but does want to be left alone to practice it as he feels is appropriate.
"I am very serious about what I believe," he said, "but I am constantly at risk of going to jail for it."
The United States and especially Utah have not been particularly welcoming to nudity, even in the creative world.
Davie Pace, a writer who is immersed in Utah's dance community, said it is important to look at the human body "as a work or art, in biology and in an erotic context," Pace said. "The use of the nude body in dance and art has a rich history and rhetoric that is a useful corollary to naturism."
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