Quoted By:
My brother is a minister. He has been a minister now for about 11 years. I went to the same religious school he did but studied Earth science (cool degree).
Anyway. He and I had a very pleasant conversation today over the phone. Somehow it lead to nudity and what the protestant religion we've belonged to since we were children believed in.
Went something like this:
A couple decades ago our missionaries went to reestablish communications with religions in the former Soviet Union, especially to find out what was left of several protestant religions after the atheist regime collapsed allowing people to practice Christianity again. They were shocked to find out that many of the old religions were still practicing even under soviet rule. Over the years we have begun rebuilding, at great effort, our church in Russia. About 2 years ago my brother went to Europe and there met some of the ministers from the Russian Federation. One of the issues they actually brought up during the conference he attended was some of the ministers bathing with other men's wives. This was the response: The men AND their wives defended the practice on several points.
1st. This has been their cultural heritage in Russia for generations going so far back into deep time as to assume thousands of years.
2nd. Couples bathe together. At no time were men alone with 'other men's wives' as the rumor had suggested.
3rd. It is considered an opportunity to bond together as couples and old friends. One quoted an old saying that you don't truly know someone until you've spent time with them naked.
4th. It is an opportunity for young people to see other people including their parents and the elderly naked. They argued that in the prudish west the first time a child sees another human being naked is on the internet where people have been digitally manipulated leaving children with a false and abnormal understanding of their own and other people's bodies.
