Friends on the Fringe: A Further Assessment of Nude Prophesying in Early Quakerism

Abstract

In the history of religions, nude prophesying must surely rank as the ultimate manifestation of marginality. At the same time, there is evidence in most of the world’s cultures for the existence of a special relationship between nudity and sanctity. Instances of naked prophesying and holy nudity of the ‘Fools for God’ variety, are thus found in Islam, Hindusim, Jaïnism, Taoism¹ as well as in early Christianity where, in the 4th century AD, they have been referred to as Adamism.² While, apparently, nothing could be further from Christian norms and the respect owed to God than the exhibition of naked flesh, yet the deity, Christ himself, has traditionally been represented naked, as much as clad. And traditional Christian imagery insists on portraying the entrance into, and departure from, this world of a naked Saviour. All this highlights the ambivalence in the significance conveyed by the nude body, vested with profane as well as sacred symbolism. Naked and dressed bodies in religious imagery being paradigmatic transcriptions of sin and innocence. An ambivalence towards human nakedness which stems of course from the Biblical narrative of the Fall. Indeed Christian doctrine has, from the beginning, interpreted the nakedness of Adam and Eve as the prelapsarian ‘oneness with the Godhead’ in mystical parlance, but also, in the post-lapsarian perspective, as a token of man’s fleshly weakness and spiritual deprivation (Ecclesiastes 5:14, Ezekiel 16: 7).³