people had an interest in being physically and ritually clean long before those pesky Amurcans began making filthy people’s lives difficult in the twentieth century.

Heh–undoubtedly. Those Roman baths and their High Medieval counterparts surely washed away some of the grime!

In other words, living in the world it’s “natural” for dirt to adhere to us, and what we otherwise would be (our “pure” selves) is polluted by our interaction with the environment. Spiritual purification, rather than being “unnatural,” restores us to an even more “natural” state–a natural state that preceded our current natural state. Or maybe purity is a state that’s never been actualized in us mortals but exists in us as an ideal, so is nevertheless in some way a “pure” part of us.

(1) You suggest we look to Judaism for our cues as to what was acceptable before the Apostasy interfered (and thus should be now). One problem with this is, as Galdralag pointed out, ritually refraining from washing actually does play a role in Judaism, for example on Yom Kippur (starting at sunset tonight!). Why then is it absent from our own ideas of cultic abstention? Secondly, Judaism in which era? Rabbinic Judaism can hardly serve as our standard, both since (a) it rejected Jesus and (b) is itself bewilderingly multivocal (and texts such as the Mishnah don’t even attempt to arbitrate between different voices). In other words, if we look to Judaism for evidence of true doctrine, how do we avoid the charge that we’re arbitrarily plundering details of Jewish thought willy-nilly in order to engage in circular reasoning? It would be disingenuous to argue that Jews undergo ritual washings, we do only very rarely, but other Christians only do rarely as well and are therefore apostate.

(2) Why did Jesus himself personally reject the Jewish tradition of ritual handwashing in the Lukan account cited above, if in fact cleanliness is a central aspect of “true doctrine”? Although it need not lead ineluctably to ascetic abstention from washing, it certainly doesn’t set a strong hygienic precedent when the purported founder of your tradition dismisses the importance of physical washing with a simple wave of the hand! (Nor does it set a strong precedent for the primacy of cultic ablutions.)

(3) I’m not convinced Mormons have any coherent position on either asceticism in general or cleanliness in particular, so I disagree with you that we even have an emphasis on physical or ritual cleanliness.

If we were taking cues from Judaism, or the Hebrew Bible, why not ask women to undergo purification following menstruation or childbirth? Or men after experiencing nocturnal emissions? (Or scores of other situations?) Although the Pentateuch is replete with commandments enjoining all sorts of physical ritual cleansing, we seem entirely unconcerned with its strictures and instead take refuge in the nebulous NT idea that the law was “fulfilled” and no longer applicable.

In other words, we’ve rejected most ritual washings in our tradition partly because we’ve apparently eliminated cultic purity as a category separate from moral purity. All well and good, but theoretically we could still undergo these physical cleansings for moral transgressions, for example upon confessing to the bishop. The fact is, (a) ritual cleansing plays a very narrow role in our tradition; (b) an emphasis on physical cleanliness is barely at the periphery, and then only by metaphorical association with moral cleanliness; and when it comes to (c) ritually refraining from washing, there’s no obvious doctrinal reason why it’s not practiced, since other forms of self-denial play an important role.

(Ashenburg actually discusses European hygiene separately from North American and suggests that it is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was in recent centuries.)

I don’t disagree with the model you lay out for the natural man. I’m merely making up a definition for what purity commonly refers to in an attempt to better explicate its use as a metaphor for virtue (and, in our discourse, chastity in particular). The point is that, as they’re ordinarily used, “pure” and “natural” converge to some degree around the concept of “indigenous.” But in the model of the natural man we read in Mosiah, the two are at odds with each other.

Ray, in our culture stinking in church is probably a hate crime against yourself!

Great points, Galdralag! I definitely want to read Huxley’s essay–that sounds absolutely fascinating about the eradication of obvious class differences! Thanks for the recommendation. I agree with you completely that cleanliness is just part of North American culture that’s shaping the Church, and in this case we haven’t even really incorporated it centrally into our tradition–if anything it hovers barely at the periphery.

I’m not sure if I have read a funnier sentence in the Bloggernacle.

Although it might be more appropriate to ask this on a different blog, would this type of assault constitute a hate crime against those who wash?