MIXED BATHING COULD GET SOME CHRISTIANS INTO HOT WATER

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993                   TAG: 9302260300
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
MIXED BATHING COULD GET SOME CHRISTIANS INTO HOT WATER
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, mixed bathing has again become a source of controversy in the religious community.
Wary of the lust that may be inspired by string bikinis and other swimwear that leaves little to the imagination, a major Pentecostal denomination has ordered its ministers to reaffirm a holiness code that disapproves of unrelated men and women swimming together.
But it is relatively tame stuff compared to the mixed bathing issue faced by some of the earliest Christians, according to new research. From the first until the fourth century, mixed bathing with nothing left to the imagination was practiced in the Roman baths, according to an article in the recent issue of the Harvard Theological Review.
Just from the warnings of Christian leaders against mixed bathing, there is evidence that pagans were not the only ones engaging in public nudity at the baths, a powerful social institution somewhat equivalent to today's shopping malls, says Roy Bowen Ward, a religion professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
"Saying `Don't do it' is evidence itself that they were doing it," Ward said in an interview.
And the same is true today in the controversy in the United Pentecostal Church, he said.
"They wouldn't have sent that letter out if Pentecostals weren't engaging in mixed bathing today at the YMCA pool," he said.
Risking a revolt from ministers who believe some of the standards are outdated and a matter of individual conscience, the United Pentecostal Church is sending letters to its approximately 7,500 ministers requiring them to recommit to the denomination's articles of faith, including a holiness code that looks down on mixed bathing and other activities it considers not conducive to good Christian living.
The Rev. L.E. Westberg, Kansas District superintendent, said the ban on mixed bathing has biblical roots in such passages as I Timothy 2:9, which says in part that "women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing."
One can also go all the way back to the beginning of Scripture, Westberg said. "The first thing that happened when Adam and Eve sinned: God clothed them."
But public nudity in the Roman baths was practiced until the latter part of the fourth century, Ward said.
For some early Christians, it presented a special problem. The baths were an important public gathering place where social, business and political contacts were made.
Some evidence exists that some Christians were nonjudgmental about the baths. Tertullian of Carthage said in 197 that Christians were no different from other people in that they went to the forum and the baths, Ward said.
And the condemnations from other Christian sources indicated mixed nude bathing was not limited to non-Christians.
In 249, Thascius Ceacilius Cyprianus of Carthage wrote that Christian virgins "disgracefully behold naked men, and are seen naked by men."
One authority on Roman baths said mixed bathing was allowed in some places, but it would be difficult to say whether Christians took part.
Many Christians in second-century Rome were part of the same socio-economic structure as other Romans, and the baths were "a singularly powerful cultural institution, said Ficret Yegul, author of "Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity" and chairman of the art history department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Still, Yegul said, nudity went against the church's teaching and "bathing together would have been quite unacceptable."
By the end of the fourth century, as Christianity became the official religion of Rome, mixed bathing was on its way out. The architecture changed from large public baths sometimes acres in size to more of an emphasis on individual tubs.
Ward said the historical evidence indicating an acceptance by some Christians of public nudity may prompt some religious groups today to take a different perspective on the issue.
"To the extent that people think the first century is normative, maybe it raises some question as to we ought to look at this again," he said.
But Westberg said that some early Christians may have engaged in nude mixed bathing only indicates there were slackers in the faith then as today.
"I am sure the conscientious and sincere did not," he said.

David Briggs has reported on religion for The Associated Press since November 1988. Briggs received his master's degree from Yale Divinity School in 1985.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB