What would be our social ideal? I’m not trying to speak for Radix Fidem here; this is just my personal standards, and what I would teach my own local covenant family. Keep in mind that we are all fully aware of the vast distance between the ideal versus where we actually live in the US today. I strive to come as close to this ideal as possible while in the context of today’s American society.
By the way: “public” refers to any setting which is not confined to members of the family or covenant community. Mixing with the wider society is inevitable, but there is room for discussion on how to go about it. How much mixing is necessary for a shalom witness?
Working in the secular society is one thing, but males should have no social contact with females who come from outside of the covenant community, and vice versa. That goes all the way down to school age kids. There would never be mixed schooling, swimming, sports, etc. All romantic contact comes via community arranged marriages. (Obviously a little chaperoned contact is required to ensure the couple don’t hate each other for some unexpected reasons.)
In general, children should not be exposed to the external society until around age 12, and later is better. Public schooling is forbidden, and TV should be highly restricted. Most of what you normally see broadcast is entirely unacceptable. This is not a matter of “old fashioned” because the problem is Anglo-American culture in the first place. It leaks through in ways most of us would never recognize.
People of both genders in public would cover their bodies in relatively loose clothing, more or less in a rectangle from shoulder to shoulder, from the base of the neck to the knees, at a minimum, generally without regard to posture or position. (Have you thought about how hard it is to buy clothing that meets that standard?) Private settings, or gender separated settings, are a different matter.
We should debate whether photos require the same standard, since there is a difference in how humans respond to images versus in-the-flesh, and because it’s virtually impossible to control the use of cameras.
And there could be more, but you get the picture.
The whole idea is that we should avoid accommodating the world as much as possible. We would welcome outsiders as long as they have some idea of the differences. The problem for us is just how far away we are from a world that would permit us even just a little bit of separation. Secular governments instinctively treat every resident as an economic resource, as property of the State. This is anathema to followers of Christ.
But this is where we live, and even if you personally bought into such rules, no two of us would come up with the same answer of trying to find the place of God’s peace in a situation where we have little control.
If we’re talking within America, a enterprising native on a reservation reading this could do this much more easily than on normal land. You would need a lot of money to just get it started in the latter case, just to keep bureaucrats alone off your back.