Episode #52: Preface to the expanded edition by Ruth

Jan,16 2026

<-#51: Preface by Myriam for the 1963 edition#53: Ruth Chapter 1 - Background ->

My mother wrote her preface with the patience of someone who had already outlived most arguments. I write mine while the arguments are still warm.

I am the oldest child of the man who wrote the second book and the granddaughter of the man who wrote the first. I was also the girl who once sat at Christopher's feet without knowing that the world would someday ask what to call me. I did not grow up with words like "identity" or "orientation." I only knew that I loved differently and that the people who raised me treated that difference as calmly as they treated the weather.

When the council asked me to become the first leader of what is now called the Southern Christian Naturism Church, I laughed out loud. Christopher would have laughed harder. He avoided titles the way other men avoid debt, and yet here I am with a title of my own, trying to hold something together that was never meant to be held.

These books have followed me all my life like two older brothers who do not agree with each other. My grandfather's book taught me that faith can be simple and brave. My father's taught me that simplicity must survive history and that history is rarely kind. Between them I learned that love is not an idea to be defended but a practice to be repeated, even when no one is watching.

People expect me to choose sides between the two portraits of Christopher. I refuse. The man I knew would not recognize himself in either book, and yet he is present in both the way a voice is present in different songs. What mattered to him was not that we repeat his words, but that we refuse to be ashamed of being human.

I have been asked many times how a woman who loves another woman can stand at the head of a church that claims Christian roots. I answer that I learned Christianity in a field, not in a church. I learned it from a man who never asked me to become smaller than I was. If there is a contradiction there, it belongs to the world, not to my family.

I have prepared my own book, simply titled Ruth. It will not be another gospel of Christopher, nor a correction to the ones that came before. It will be the account of a daughter: what it was like to grow up in a house where nakedness was ordinary, where disagreement was allowed to breathe, where two women could love each other without being treated as a problem to solve.

But it is my vision of clarity over the books from the elders of my family. I do not claim doctrine; I simply knew Christopher differently than my father or my grandfather did, for I knew Christopher as a child.

Our mentor was a simple man. A complex one too, but primarily a simple man who preferred a simple life. Work the fields, stay humble, help and love one another. I heard someone say that if Jesus was our Fisher King, Christopher was our Farmer King. He would have hated that. He saw himself as a teacher, not as a leader.

But he had a knack for speaking to children. He didn't teach in class, but he taught in the fields. Told us about how generous God was, how blessed Jesus Christ was. He spoke to us more plainly, more directly, without as much nuance and uncertainty.

He wanted the adults to think for themselves, but he wanted us to learn how to think.

None of the two books reveal this facet, for both writers met Christopher as an adult.

For now, I place these three books into your hands. Read them as you would read letters from relatives who loved each other and sometimes misunderstood one another. Do not turn them into weapons. Do not turn them into uniforms. If they make you kinder to your own body and to the bodies of others, they will have done enough.

Christopher used to say that a good field does not demand attention; it simply grows. I hope the same for our small and awkward tradition. May it grow where it is planted, and may those who tend it remember that they are gardeners, not owners.

More of my story will come later, if God doesn't ask me to join my family by his side before I can finish spreading his message.

Ruth

First elected moderator, Southern Christian Naturism Church

1971

<-#51: Preface by Myriam for the 1963 edition#53: Ruth Chapter 1 - Background ->