Christian Yoga: Something New Under the Sun/Son?

Between the 1960s and 2010s, yoga became a familiar feature of American culture, including its Christian subcultures. This article examines Christian yoga and public-school yoga as windows onto the fraught relationship between Christianity and culture. Yoga is a flashpoint for divisions among Christians and between them and others. Some evangelicals and pentecostals view yoga as idolatry or an opening to demonic spirits; others fill gaps in Christian practice by using linguistic substitution to Christianize yoga. In 2013, evangelical parents in California sued the Encinitas Union School District (EUSD) for promoting Hinduism through Ashtanga yoga. Sedlock v. Baird's failure to dislodge yoga exposes tensions in Christian anti-yoga and pro-yoga positions that stem from a belief-centered understanding of religion, the dissatisfaction of many Americans with Protestant dominance in cultural institutions, and a broad-based pursuit of moral cultivation through yoga spirituality. I argue that, although many evangelicals feel like an embattled minority, they are complicit in cultural movements that marginalize them. Naïveté about how practices can change beliefs may undercut Christian doctrines, facilitate mandatory yoga and mindfulness meditation in which public-school children and teachers are required to participate, and impede evangelistic goals by implicating Christians in cultural appropriation and cultural imperialism

Textual Erasures of Religion: The Power of Books to Redefine Yoga and Mindfulness Meditation as Secular Wellness Practices in North American Public Schools

This essay argues that books, broadly defined to include print and internet publications, played a crucial role in the cultural mainstreaming, including adoption by public schools, of non-Christian religious practices such as yoga and meditation. Promotional books, tactically and ironically, played on the textual bias of Christianity, and especially Protestantism, to re-brand practices borrowed from religious traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, as scientific techniques for exercise and stress-reduction, thereby reintegrating religion into public education. The essay begins with a brief history of religion in U.S. and Canadian public education, explains the textual bias of North American assumptions about religion, and analyzes how twentieth-century promoters of practice-centered religions tactically wielded books to increase public acceptance of non-Christian religious practices. The essay focuses on two twenty-first-century examples of religion-based, textually mediated public-school curricula: the Sonima Foundation’s Health and Wellness program of Ashtanga yoga and The Hawn Foundation’s MindUP program of mindfulness meditation.Dans le présent article, nous soutenons que les livres (que nous définirons comme incluant à la fois les publications imprimées et numériques), notamment par leur incorporation au programme d’écoles publiques, ont joué un rôle fondamental dans la normalisation culturelle de pratiques religieuses d’origine non chrétienne comme le yoga et la méditation. De manière stratégique mais non moins ironique, des ouvrages promotionnels ont su profiter du préjugé favorable envers l’écrit observé au sein du christianisme (et plus particulièrement dans le protestantisme) pour conférer une nouvelle image à des pratiques empruntées à d’autres traditions religieuses telles l’hindouisme et le bouddhisme, et désormais présentées comme des techniques scientifiques d’exercice et de réduction du stress. La religion se trouve alors réintégrée au système public d’éducation. Nous brossons d’abord un bref historique de la place de la religion à l'école publique aux États-Unis et au Canada; expliquons en quoi consiste le parti pris textuel qui teinte la réflexion en matière de religion en Amérique du Nord; puis analysons la manière dont les promoteurs de religions axées sur la pratique se sont servis des livres, au xxe siècle, pour favoriser l’acceptation de pratiques religieuses non chrétiennes par le grand public. Nous nous attardons à deux cas, pour le xxie siècle, de programmes scolaires publics où la religion se fait présente par l’entremise des textes : le programme de santé et bien-être par l’entremise du yoga ashtanga de la Sonima Foundation, et le programme MindUP de la Hawn Foundation, qui préconise la méditation de pleine conscience

Tibetan Singing Bowls - Los Cuencos Cantores Tibetanos

Tibetan Singing Bowls exemplify key features of American religion: creativity, commodification, and conflict. Histories published in popular and scholarly outlets portray these objects as ancient Buddhist artifacts, beloved both because they originated in a place imagined as quintessentially spiritual and because their benefits have been confirmed by modern science. Yet, few if any such objects are ancient or Tibetan. Beginning in the 1970s, Asian and American sellers and American buyers created the concept of “Tibetan Singing Bowls” and invested material objects so-denoted with spiritual-scientific meanings that made them into valuable commodities. As newly invented symbols of ancient Tibetan Buddhism, these objects generated interest and controversy— particularly when used to teach mindfulness meditation in public schools. As cultural conflicts played out in the 2010s, the “secularization” of mindfulness featured the removal of “religious” objects that were only recently conceptualized as either spiritual or religious. This cultural history illustrates how modern interest in “spirituality” and “science” overlap, while exhibiting the malleability of concepts of “religion” and “secularity.

Study of the therapeutic effects of proximal intercessory prayer (STEPP) on auditory and visual impairments in rural Mozambique

Background. Proximal intercessory prayer (PIP) is a common complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapy, but clinical effects are poorly understood partly because studies have focused on distant intercessory prayer (DIP). Methods. This prospective study used an audiometer (Earscan 3) and vision charts (40 cm, 6 m “Illiterate E”) to evaluate 24 consecutive Mozambican subjects (19 males/5 females) reporting impaired hearing (14) and/or vision (11) who subsequently received PIP interventions. Results. We measured significant improvements in auditory (p < 0.003) and visual (p < 0.02) function across both tested populations. Conclusions. Rural Mozambican subjects exhibited improved audition and/or visual acuity subsequent to PIP. The magnitude of measured effects exceeds that reported in previous suggestion and hypnosis studies. Future study seems warranted to assess whether PIP may be a useful adjunct to standard medical care for certain patients with auditory and/or visual impairments, especially in contexts where access to conventional treatment is limited