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I feel like triggering Dave Armstrong and what better way to do Recently, Chris Pratt suffered a super-bad, awful, no-good, terrible week which he entirely The Kendal Project has captured the imagination of other researchers and research teams interested in exploring how the sacred is faring today.
Currently there are three proposed 'replications' of the Project, the first one below having gained approval and funding from the Church of Sweden Research Council. Enkoping Sweden : invitation from the Church of Sweden Research Department to provide advice concerning a similar research project commencing in Invitation accepted for February Invitation accepted for January Dent: a retired academic, Gordon Neal, has carried out a 'mini-Kendal' in the nearby village of Dent.
Other than those who came to the 'Research Priorities in the Study of Religion' national workshop Lancaster, , an event which included extensive discussion of planning the Kendal Project.
In addition, many other contacts with academics in Britain and overseas have been developed. Societe Internationale de Sociologie des Religions Turin. That incident is in stark contrast to popular attitudes toward yoga today in Dallas and other urban areas.
Despite such developments, many prominent contemporary religious institutions and leaders attempt to incite fear and suspicion of postural yoga. The letter was written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger b. To be clear, the letter does not discourage Catholics from participating in eastern methods entirely.
What this means is that the CDF is concerned about the cultivation of experiences that are incompatible with Catholic doctrine. Catholic Christians should not forget the qualities and deeds through which they can come to know God personally Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith : 2. Yet the letter becomes increasingly fear-inciting when it addresses those eastern methods that deal with body practices, which are deemed incompatible with Catholic doctrine as well as a threat to basic human stability.
Although yoga is not named explicitly, it is implicit that yoga is the object under scrutiny, since it is the preeminent body-centered eastern method with which contemporary Christians experiment. The CDF's letter states that those engaged in body practices for the sake of anything beyond mundane physical exercise or relaxation are involved in self-destructive activity.
In addition to Catholic cases of yogaphobia, some contemporary Protestant evangelicals have issued more vocal and sustained attacks on yoga. Their protests range from identifying yoga as self-destructive activity to associating it with Satan. Holly Vicente Robaina recounts Laurette Willis' cautionary tale of how yoga led her into a life of errant New Age practices, loneliness, alcoholism, and promiscuity : After years of pain, she became a Christian, burned her New Age books, and gave up yoga.
In a follow-up article, Robaina tells her own story of being seduced by yoga, along with other destructive New Age practices, and the years it took for her to give them up for Christianity In addition to the yogaphobic maelstrom in widely distributed evangelical publications, some of evangelical Christianity's most influential pastors and scholars have provided fierce yogaphobic responses to Christians practicing postural yoga.
Their yogaphobia can be located within a broader phenomenon, Hinduphobia. Pat Robertson, the notorious television evangelist and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, expressed Hinduphobia in his book, The End of the Age , an apocalyptic novel in which a devotee of Shiva joins forces with the Antichrist to murder the President of the United States Robertson In , Mark Driscoll, pastor of the Mars Hill megachurch in Seattle, Washington, told the following to a live audience: Yoga is demonic.
It's absolute paganism. Yoga and meditation and Easternism is [ sic ] all opening to demonism. That's what you're doing. And Satan doesn't care if you stretch as long as you go to hell. Driscoll These pastors are not the only evangelical Christian leaders with yogaphobia. In defense of that vision, he quoted Swami Vivekananda — , a nineteenth-century Hindu reformer, missionary to the United States, and Indian nationalist who promoted a modern interpretation of advaita vedanta a Hindu nondualist philosophical school , often termed neo-vedanta.
Groothuis resorts to polemical discourse in further generalizations about postural yogis. Mohler became the dominant contemporary yogaphobic voice when his September 20, , blog post, in which he warned Christians not to choose yoga, made headlines c.
But that was not an isolated incident of Mohler's yogaphobia—he has a long history from which to draw examples. Like the other Christians discussed above, Mohler insists that yoga cannot be separated from Hinduism, a conflation that functions as the main premise for both dimensions of his Christian yogaphobic position: the doctrinal argument, that yoga is at odds with Christian doctrine; and the nationalist argument, that yoga undermines the Christian essence of American culture.
Mohler writes:. When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral.
Mohler is bothered by what he perceives as the yoga doctrine that the body is a means to experience the divine. Such a doctrine conflicts with his idea that Christians should only rely on biblical scripture as a means to understanding God Mohler b , c. In addition to being bothered by Christians adopting what he perceives as yoga's singular approach to the body, Mohler disapproves of yoga's meditative components. Whereas the CDF argues that Christians should meditate on the qualities of God, Mohler insists that Christians should meditate on scripture Mohler Mohler, however, goes beyond an argument for doctrinal incompatibility and turns to explicit suspicion- and fear-inciting discourse.
In other words, yoga is not just incompatible with Christianity, but threatens Christianity. Because it distracts from true religion, which provides better answers to such questions, yoga is dangerous. Mohler compares Christian postural yogis to Gnostic Christians, and, like many early Christians who opposed the Gnostics, he resorts to polemics, arguing: [The American cult of health] is a concentration upon the self that is not spiritually healthy and yoga for many people I think becomes the entry drug recognized or not into more troubling forms of spirituality and spiritual confusion.
In another article, he discusses a study showing that New Age religion is growing in Britain Mohler Mohler's position demonstrates how yogaphobia incites suspicion and fear for the advancement of social and political agendas.
Many of the contemporary players in that movement participate in the Islamophobic smears that Barack Obama is secretly Muslim and even anti-Christian. In Mohler's words: The story of yoga [in America] is a twisted tale of how something that is so essentially rooted in Hinduism could become part of American popular culture and increasingly a part of the lives of many who would identify themselves as Christians—it's a large number of persons.
But the popularization of yoga, according to Mohler, is just one symptom of how Hinduism threatens American culture. Enter Hinduphobia once again. Part of the problem with yoga is that it comes from India. He thus conflates Church agenda with national agenda in response to social trends, and the perceived incursion of Hinduism—including yoga—is a trend of ultimate concern. Because an argument for the Hindu origins of yoga is foundational to the HAF's position, I call it the Hindu origins position.
It is not surprising that Mohler perceived a vindication in the Hindu origins position. After all, it shares key qualities with Mohler's Christian yogaphobic position. Both reify homogenous definitions of yoga as Hindu and protest against the popularization of postural yoga, which is perceived to dramatically ignore or dilute yoga's Hindu essence. The two positions also differ in important ways.
On the one hand, Christian protesters cast doubt on postural yoga's potential merits and attack what is perceived as a homogenous yoga system. On the other hand, advocates of the Hindu origins position valorize what they perceive as a homogenous yoga system by reifying its associations with what they deem authentic Hinduism and denouncing those forms—those of postural yoga—that deviate.
Rather than being concerned with discouraging non-Hindus from practicing yoga, Hindu protesters have two different concerns. First, they are concerned that postural yoga is a corruption of what they consider authentic yoga.
Second, they are concerned that Hinduism does not get due credit when postural yogis co-opt yoga. In the same way that the history of modern yoga features earlier cases of Christian yogaphobia, it also features earlier cases of the Hindu origins position.
Certain nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Hindu reformers and nationalists targeted yogis for what they thought was yoga done wrong. They prescribed an alternative that they valorized as a rational, philosophical system.
These Hindus expressed contempt for certain types of yoga based on a bifurcation between yoga's philosophical and meditative techniques, often equated with raja yoga , and its physical techniques, often equated with hatha yoga Singleton : 44—49, 70— They dismissed hatha yoga as inauthentic for what were considered extreme, ascetic body-centered practices Singleton Most significantly for the history of modern yoga, Vivekananda constructed and disseminated a system of modern yoga, which he called raja yoga , in response to dominant Euro-American and Christian modes of thought.
He participated in Hindu reform efforts to familiarize Indian, American, and European elites with an image of yoga distinct from hatha yoga.
Although he did appropriate some physical components, he did so only with regard to belief in the existence of a subtle body de Michelis : — In this way, he argued, the yogic manipulation of subtle energy could function as a healing agent de Michelis : — Physical benefits, however, were inferior to what he considered the true aim of yoga: spiritual development Vivekananda : Vivekananda at times even used the Christian Bible as a tool for demonizing body-centered yoga practices Singleton : 74— In one instance, he cited the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus tells his audience to set their mind on God's kingdom and not on the future Matt.
Vivekananda's interpretation of advaita vedanta functioned as the so-called rational foundation of yoga. He maintained that any version of yoga other than the rationalist one he prescribed was a corruption of its true form, arguing: From the time it was discovered, more than four thousand years ago, Yoga was perfectly delineated, formulated, and preached in India. It is a striking fact that the more modern the commentator, the greater the mistakes he makes, while the more ancient the writer, the more rational he is.
Vivekananda : Vivekananda's revisionist historical narrative about yoga thrived until the second half of the twentieth century when body-centered, postural yoga became increasingly popular. The body-centered practices equated with hatha yoga were now reconstructed and medicalized in ways that made them modern fitness techniques deemed original to Hinduism Alter ; Singleton Hindu nationalists assimilated Euro-American physical culture and associated it with yoga Singleton In this way, they valorized postural yoga by prescribing it as an indigenous form of physical fitness.
Today, the Hindu origins position is largely based on sound objections to popular stereotypes. Protestors are concerned that stereotypes prevent postural yogis from acknowledging yoga's Hindu origins, which in turn serve to disenfranchise Hindus from their tradition Aseem Shukla c. Although such stereotypes are unquestionably problematic, advocates of the Hindu origins position offer just one more inaccurate, homogenizing vision of Hinduism.
Advocates of the Hindu origins position are concerned with the general lack of references to Hinduism in popular yoga contexts, but their campaign especially targets specific popular brands, styles, and teachers, such as Transcendental Meditation, Yoga Journal , Deepak Chopra, and Bikram Yoga, that they believe are paragons of this marketing strategy Aseem Shukla c ; Aseem Shukla and Shah Consider Deepak Chopra's triumph in the market for South Asian cultural wares.
Consequently, he is a common target of advocates of the Hindu origins position, who contrast figures like Chopra with Vivekananda, whose agenda they perceive as compatible with their own for Chopra's response, see Chopra a ; b. Aseem Shukla adds: [Yoga is] a victim of overt intellectual property theft, absence of trademark protections and the facile complicity of generations of Hindu yogis, gurus, swamis and others that offered up a religion's spiritual wealth at the altar of crass commercialism.
Even the Indian government joined the ownership debate. The government-run Traditional Knowledge Digital Library TKDL recently created a database of one thousand three hundred yoga postures believed to be documented in ancient Indian texts Sinha The TKDL's hope is that the database will function as a reference point for patent offices all over the world to check each time someone applies for a patent on a particular yoga posture or sequence. The aim is to prevent yoga marketers from claiming ownership and consequently profiting off of something that is believed to have ancient Indian origins.
He and his school have attempted to enforce copyrights on Bikram Yoga's sequence of twenty-six postures against yoga studios claiming to teach Bikram Yoga but not conforming to BYCI's standards see Fish ; Srinivas Gupta, all of Bikram Yoga's sequences were mentioned in ancient Indian texts Sinha Although some voices of the Hindu origins position argue in terms of Hindu ownership , most voices prefer to argue in terms of Hindu origins. Nevertheless, yoga is originally Hindu Shah ; Suhag Shukla d , In short, yoga is Hindu but is beneficial for members of all religions.
And opponents of postural yoga warn that it gets worse: postural yogis corrupt yoga. Postural yoga is considered illegitimate and prescribed by marketers concerned with profit alone Shah The HAF argues: Yoga, as an integral part of Hindu philosophy, is not simply physical exercise in the form of various asanas and pranayama , but is in fact a Hindu way of life. Echoing Vivekananda, representatives of the HAF argue that authentic yoga is raja yoga as found in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras with its eight limbs, of which posture is only one Hindu American Foundation b ; Aseem Shukla c.
They equate postural yoga with hatha yoga , which they, like Vivekananda, argue focuses exclusively on body-centered practices and ignores moral and spiritual dimensions Hindu American Foundation b. The HAF's campaign prescribes yoga not only for health, but also, and more importantly, as a Hindu-experiential practice. In other words, all yogis should practice all eight limbs as prescribed by Patanjali. Like the Christian yogaphobic position, the Hindu origins position goes hand-in-hand with a polemical attack on the New Age movement.
According to protestors, Hinduism and authentic yoga are synonymous. But anyone can practice yoga as long as they do so with caution: But be forewarned. Yogis say that the dedicated practice of yoga will subdue the restless mind, lessen one's cravings for the mundane material world and put one on the path of self-realization—that each individual is a spark of the Divine. Expect conflicts if you are sold on the exclusivist claims of Abrahamic faiths—that their God awaits the arrival of only His chosen few at heaven's gate—since yoga shows its own path to spiritual enlightenment to all seekers regardless of affiliation.
Aseem Shukla c. Given such fear-inciting warnings about the narrowly conceived Hindu essence of yoga and the Hinduization of any yogi, it is no wonder Mohler finds bedfellows in advocates of the Hindu origins position.
As I peruse the many protests against the popularization of yoga, I see a series of streams crossing, and, if one evaluates any one of those streams without considering it in the context of a larger movement, then it may come across as some outlying voice.
Furthermore, Christian and Hindu protesters have a variety of home organizations and leaders that they affiliate with or follow closely, the missions of which are different.
When considered together, therefore, it becomes apparent that these voices share a discourse and strategies toward a common goal: defining postural yoga in terms of a Hindu essence as a protest against its popularization. One way to understand the striking intersections between the Christian yogaphobic position and the Hindu origins position is by evaluating the strategies they share with the nineteenth-century movement responsible for defining Hinduism.
Attempts to define Hinduism began with European Orientalists Inden ; Smith , but the specifics of what that notion looked like resulted from a discourse between Orientalists and elite Hindu reformers Halbfass ; King ; Viswanathan ; Pennington With regard to nineteenth-century Indian intellectuals, Wilhelm Halbfass argues: The Indians reinterpreted key concepts of their traditional self-understanding, adjusting them to Western modes of understanding.
By appealing to the West, by using its conceptual tools, they tried to secure and defend the identity and continuity of their tradition. Attempts at systematic censorship continue among some scholars of Indian religions today, as evidenced by responses to scholarship by American religious studies scholars, such as Hugh Urban and Jeffrey J.
Urban and Kripal convincingly argued that Vivekananda rewrote the life of his guru, Ramakrishna, in order to make Ramakrishna fit into his narrow, homogenous vision of authentic Hinduism. He did this primarily by denying Ramakrishna's involvement in tantra and hatha yoga Kripal ; Urban : — Kripal and Urban, in addition to other contemporary religious studies scholars—including Wendy Doniger, Paul B.
Courtright, and David Gordon White, whose attention to aspects of Hindu traditions that were not conducive to the homogenous vision elite Hindu intellectuals sought to perpetuate—have been subject to repeated incendiary attacks. Dilip K. Geoffrey Samuel provides a constructive response to such pleas: [t]here is a natural tendency for those of us who have been engaged in the literature on postcolonial thought to sympathize with such attempts to repatriate Indian history.
However, ultimately the history of Indic religions is not just the property of the modern Indian state or of the people who currently live there, and it would be to everyone's disadvantage were it to be subsumed into a particular nationalist project.
Just as the notion of a homogenous Hinduism resulted from discourse between Orientalists and elite Hindu reformers, so the contemporary construction of a homogenous yoga tradition results from discourse between the Christian yogaphobic position and the Hindu origins position.
And, in a way similar to how Orientalist and reformist attempts to define Hinduism revealed more about those movements' subjectivities than about any reality underlying representations of Hinduism, the discourse through which the Hindu origins position and the Christian yogaphobic position define yoga reveals more about protesters' subjectivities than about any reality underlying their representations of yoga.
Protesters essentialize yoga's religious identity as Hindu. Though South Asian premodern yoga systems are often soteriologies that aim toward release from suffering existence, and they require the practitioner to manipulate the mind—body complex, the details regarding how the aim and requirements are conceptualized and the methods for attaining them vary dramatically.
The history of postural yoga also problematizes the identification of yoga as Hindu. Postural yoga is a twentieth-century product, the aims of which include modern conceptions of physical fitness, stress-reduction, beauty, and overall well-being Alter ; de Michelis ; Strauss ; Newcombe ; Singleton
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