The minister, dressed in a great liturgical robe, stood before a simple wooden cross. He gazed at the congregation before him, sitting in folding chairs or on blankets spread on the ground. A slight smile creased his face.
"We're going to do something unique this morning for a worship service," said the minister, who declined to be identified. "We're not going to take up a collection."And so began Sunday worship outdoors at the first Christian Nudist Conference, a gathering of some 45 "naturists" from around the country who believe that clothes do not make the Christian.
But as they gathered to play and pray in Longwood, N.C., - in the heart of the Bible Belt - two issues they kept coming back to were the desire for Christian nudists to become more accepting of themselves and to win greater understanding from other Christians.
It's not easy being a Christian nudist, they say.
Carol Love, owner of the Whispering Pines Resort where the conference took place, remembered one woman coming up to her in tears.
"I don't know if it is the Lord after me or the devil after me," she told Love. "I just feel if Jesus came back and saw me, he'd be embar-ras-sed."
Christian churches have long had mixed feelings about the human body, at once celebrating it as being created in God's image and at the same time espousing modesty to protect against sinful urges of fallible human beings.
The biblical foundation goes back to the account of Adam and Eve in Genesis, where public nudity is associated with the first sin.
In the creation account in Genesis 2, nudity was part of the idyllic state in the Garden of Eden: "And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed."
But after they eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge, Adam attempts to hide his nakedness from God. His relationship with God is changed.
"And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them," according to Genesis 3:21.
In the Fig Leaf Forum, a newsletter for "Bible-believing" Christian nudists, John Kundert writes that Adam was hiding from God out of fear, not shame at his nakedness. He also contends that God clothed Adam as a loving act brought about by the physical necessity of life outside the garden.
"Nothing in these scriptures conclusively shows that shame resulting from nakedness played any part in this drama," Kundert writes.
Kundert believes that Christians, as redeemed people who have been forgiven by God, "need never, ever hide from our Creator again."
At the conference, the Rev. Gene Smith of Lexington, Ky., said that the practice of nudity follows his spiritual beliefs.
"When I became a Christian, my sins were covered," Smith said. "There is nothing I have to hide. I really feel that's the way my relationship should be with humankind also."
Deacon Larry Shreve of the Old Shallotte Baptist Church, just down the road from the nudist resort, doesn't get too excited about Christian nudism.
"My personal opinion is that as long as we believe Jesus Christ died for us, that's the main thing," he said.
But it is not something he would be in favor of in his church.
"I think it's a really big distraction," he said.