A senior Church of England bishop has lamented the growing fashion for stripping off in front of the camera.

Bishop of Leeds Nick Baines says it is almost impossible to turn on the television without finding someone taking all their clothes off. 

He singles out the recent Spencer Tunick work of art, when 3,000 people took their clothes off, painted themselves blue and were photographed on and around the streets of Hull for the "Sea of Hull" project.

Baines says he found the Tunick project quite funny.

"I saw it on my phone while enjoying two days at the General Synod talking about sex. So it seemed both timely and amusing," he writes in this week's Radio Times. 

But he goes on to wonder what is going on with "nakedness" at the moment.

"You can hardly turn on the telly without finding someone wanting to take their clothes off. I thought Big Brother was embarrassing, but clearly that was just the appetiser for Love Island, Life Stripped Bare and new series Naked Attraction.

"At least the new paradise-building Eden (Channel 4) has the islanders keeping their clothes on – probably wise, given the climate."

Baines refers to Bible story of Genesis, where Adam and Eve do what he calls a "naughty" then realise they are naked so run away and hide.

"But the point of this is not that they are naked – that is, clothes-free; it is that they realise they are transparent, or, as we might put it, they know they can be seen through. And this transparency is felt to be threatening rather than promising.

"So they hide. And funnily enough it is God who comes looking for them (not the other way around) to make sure they are OK for the future despite the mess they have got themselves into."

So he finds it "odd" that in the modern age, so many people want to strip naked, especially if there is a camera nearby.

"What is it that drives people to want to have not only their body, but also their character, habits and personality laid bare for an audience of voyeurs to criticise? What curious motivation lies deep within them that makes exhibitionism seem an attractive option?"

Contemporary society has binned conventional mores around nakedness and invited the beautiful people "to bare more than their souls in the name of the great god Entertainment," he says.

"The telly is full of programmes about all sorts of people trying to cover up dodgy tattoos, operations that went wrong, weird people trying to make themselves attractive. And all in full public gaze. Why?"

He suggests social media might be to blame.

"The barriers are down, everything is open, nothing is hidden. Politicians and others in public life have their lives shredded by a prurient and ruthless media monster, insatiable in its appetite for flesh."

He worries that young people are getting a message of an impossible ideal to live up to from some of the programmes.

"At least the Hull nudists were just ordinary people with ordinary bodies in ordinary shapes and sizes.

"Still, there must be some places where it still is right to shout, 'Get yer kit on!"