By Steve Weatherbe

EARLY in August, some parts of the Victoria performing arts community got together for what is called BodyCeleb . It’s a kind of circus of physical art: juggling, body painting, buffoonish swordplay, acrobatics,  body building  and lots of dancing (flamenco, belly, modern,  burlesque) – with many acts going on simultaneously, and none for very long.

There was also a pervasive feeling of self-congratulation  – because, don’t you know, we were all mature adults who could handle all the prurient flesh and sensuality.

It was ‘all in good fun,’ and no one had a better time than the burlesque dancers – cheerful, boisterous and buxom young women who exposed their charms to no greater degree than allowed in Las Vegas shows.

One charming young woman, a body painter, mischievously planted two horns in her curly hair.

I don’t think she or anyone there really thought they were being evil, or even naughty, and I don’t think they were intending either  of those things.

What they were being was naïve.

It’s a naivete  which expresses itself in many ways, and surprising places – in the church, for example. In Christian bodybuilders, for example, some of whom performed here last year; and in the “devout Christian and naturist “ who promised to tell the fourth annual Canadian Naturist Festival in Quebec that God was fine with nudism.

I do not deny the sincerity of their faith – just its completeness. What these Christians  have forgotten is the Fall.

The secular founders of BodyCeleb , and indeed,  the secular elites  of Western society, have more than forgotten it. They have consciously rejected  the whole Judeo-Christian idea of an inherent predilection to sin.

People certainly do bad things, goes the prevailing theory, but only because social conditions or circumstance  make them do it; and Christian teachings about sin don’t induce good behaviour, but guilt and self-repression – leading to bad behaviour.

It’s as if somewhere around 60 years, humanity grew up. If we ever needed rules governing personal moral behaviour, such as restrictions on pornography, divorce, drinking, drugs or abortion, we certainly didn’t need them any more.

To hold this view requires more than naivete. It depends on willful blindness.

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For example, blindness to the huge problem pornography has become, since the courts enabled it and the Internet unleashed it.

People who like to cite the ineffectiveness of Prohibition  to argue against our current drug laws can do so only  by ignoring two things. The first would be the crime, violence, injury and death caused by drugs and alcohol today; it seems you can’t drive two miles in Victoria without passing a floral shrine to a teenager  killed  driving while drunk.

The second is that Prohibition did work: it hugely reduced the incidence of wife and child assault, and of drunken violence; and vastly improved the living conditions for working people in the U.S. and Canada. It was scrapped because it was unpopular, not because it didn’t work.

Bodily passions are powerful – and if pandered to, can be addictive and destructive.

In my own (Catholic) church, there used to be a rule that  a priest would never drive anywhere with just one nun. But back in the 1970s, the Spirit of the Age dictated that priests and nuns should ‘get in touch with their feelings’ and let it all hang out. After all, they were all adults. One California-based order got so ‘in touch’ that it was destroyed over the course of a single summer of group therapy.

When I first moved to Victoria, I did a story about a new evangelical  Protestant congregation just imported from Seattle – whose male founder was accused of molesting young female members.

It seems the church taught that its members should be looking for their unique spiritual partners. And the way to look was to dance, during the service, with all the other members of the community of the other sex in turn – while gazing intently into their eyes  to find the Holy Spirit.

I interviewed  three disgruntled members – one whose wife had left him for her newfound ‘spiritual partner’; and a couple whose marriage had almost broken up when the husband nearly shacked up with his ‘partner.’

While I doubt the motives of the Seattle founder, I think the Victorian victims of this strange doctrine were guilty only of being naïve – and of forgetting the fallen nature of humankind.  St. Paul rightly urges us to run , not walk,  from temptation.

As for BodyCeleb, there was no doubt the cheery burlesque girls were popular. But the biggest audiences were drawn by the flamenco  dancers – who not only showed the most artistry, but, oddly enough,  the least amount of bare flesh.

September 2007