A pastor at one of the local megachurches, which I assume is generally heavy on the Gospel, lays down a little law and gets lambasted for it:
A pastor of an Assemblies of God megachurch recently took aim at yoga, saying it has “demonic roots” and warning Christians to avoid the popular activity.
Pastor John Lindell told the attendees of James River Church in Ozark — which has a congregation of about 10,500, according to a 2016 report — that the positions in yoga were “created with demonic intent to open you up to demonic power because Hinduism is demonic.”
Members of Springfield’s yoga community are now speaking out.
A Christian yogi says his practice has brought him closer to God and wants others to know that it’s possible to do sun salutations while following Christ. One owner of a yoga studio said she’s worried that small local businesses are being hurt. An instructor, feeling on edge after a Florida yoga studio was shot up last week, can’t shake a fear that someone might take the church’s anti-yoga message too far.
I am pretty sure that there’s a whole commandment about not following other religions somewhere, and I didn’t see any footnotes in it about it being okay to follow other religions’ practices with your fingers crossed or not believing in the actual ontology behind the practices. It doesn’t matter if Asherah poles help with television reception. They’re still the practices of another religion, and a lot of bad things happen in the old testament when Israel does something similar.
To quote Mohatma Gandhi, “B*tch, you do realize this is my actual religion, right?”
Now, you know, gentle reader, I read a lot of books about Eastern religions and philosophy here at MfBJN (such as The Upanishads), so I’m not exactly a firebreathing fundamentalist Christian out to whip believers into a frenzy.
But practicing yoga while undereducated does put yoga practitioners in a bad spot. Either they have to acknowledge the ontology and origins of yoga and its conflict with Christian teachings, or they have to say that they’re just a fitness program with a veneer of Otherness for flavor. Or defend not knowing where this stuff comes from and what it might mean. This is the standard procedure, but defending it or acknowledging one’s cognitive dissonance is not.
Because part of being Christian, unlike part of being Buddhist and many other non-monotheistic religions, means you can’t pick and choose spirituality from a variety of sources and traditions to blend together to make your own special salad. That’s my understanding of it, anyway.
This pastor is just trying to remind members of his congregation about it.
Now, about those essential oils….
I think that pastor needs to look into the origin of using crosses, Christmas, and Sunday worship. I doubt many who do yoga are trying to use it to worship God or any other diety, unlike with those.
Very true. The history of the church, no matter which, is full of appropriation or decisions of councils that put down alternative interpretations that can seem arbitrary.