Monday, December 14, 2009

#103-Modest Swimming



Growing up Apo there was always one risqué summer recreation which youth groups as a whole participated in: swimming with all their clothes on. A while back an email circulated titled “you know you’re Pentecostal when…” and I was shocked that “you have the ability to swim across a pool with Olympic prowess despite having on a jean skirt” was left off.

There were two types of churches in the district I grew up in:

1) The church that strictly forbade “mixed bathing”
2) The church that condoned supervised “mixed bathing” as long as everyone was modest.

Of course modesty entailed some criteria:

White clothing was strictly forbidden.
Everyone prevented immodest suctioning of clothing by wearing so many layers that you weren’t so much swimming as you were simply trying not to sink.
Jean skirts were worn, preferably ankle length, which made paddling with your feet into a cardio workout that rivals P90X.

Perhaps this article should be added to "the slippery slope argument", due to the fact that modest mixed bathing always led to immodest mixed bathing, which led to Trinitarian baptism.

3 comments:

  1. I am seriously laughing out loud!! Oh my word do I ever remember those days. I remember as a young teen girl in a small/medium size home missions church that was very conservative, we once went "mixed bathing" at a local lake. We hoped and prayed Pastor wouldn't find out. Of course, he did. Oh boy!! The youth group hardly lived to hear the end of it. ha ha ha!

    PS. The picture you posted is still considered immodest swimming! The fully covered lady is wearing pants! *gasp* :-D

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