I spent about 5 years living in Berlin, Germany when I was a young man in the military. I had left Evangelical culture just a few short years before I arrived there, and I was also endowed with a good bit of old fashioned Iowa farm boy modesty.

Imagine my shock when I arrived and found out that in public parks and beaches, German people, especially people who to my young eyes were pretty darn old, were accustomed to wearing nothing at all. There’s no such thing as a nude beach in Germany, because pretty much all beaches are clothing optional. (This includes Mediterranean resorts where German and other nature-loving European tourists are common.) People not wearing clothes out in the sun are considered to be virtuous and healthy.

As to indoor spas and saunas? I found out the hard way that if you try to wear a swimsuit in a mixed-sex steam bath, German people will tend to scold you for being dirty. Nudity isn’t optional, it’s socially required.

In the US, Speedos on men are a bit different than in Australia. Here, the only people who wear Speedos are serious athletes like Michael Phelps, gay men, and straight Europeans or Australians who don’t know our customs. (I mean, seriously, how useful is it to be able to go to a beach and know who’s gay and who’s straight? 🤣)

All of that just to observe that nudity standards are cultural, not religious. German Christians would be pretty shocked if somebody tried to tell them not covering up on the beach was somehow sinful. They have completely different cultural attitudes about that.

But then I grew up in Evangelical churches where cultural values were pushed as religious dogma all the time. Not cool.