New Zealand Listener

NUDE TESTAMENT

My earliest memory goes back to when I was about two and a half.

On a hot day, I was standing in my cot holding on to the top rail. My pants had fallen down, or I had taken them down – I’m not sure which. The main point is that I was naked.

My stepmother entered the room and started shouting at me. She used words like “wicked”, “sinful”, “evil”. Clearly, being naked was something God – her God – was offended and revolted by. It was something he forbade and would punish.

A word about my stepmother. My mother died soon after she gave birth to me. My father, needing to provide care for me and four other children, married in haste and repented at leisure. My stepmother had spent a year at Bible College and one year as a missionary to Australia’s Aboriginal people. She was sent back to the city because she proved “unsuitable” for missionary work.

My dad did not know this until years after he married her. She was a fundamentalist who believed every word in the . She persecuted my brother and sisters and doted on

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