"Should Christians stay away from yoga because of its demonic roots?" asked megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Washington state. "Totally. Yoga is demonic. If you just sign up for a little yoga class, you're signing up for a little demon class."

The former Vatican chief exorcist agreed. "Practicing yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter," Father Gabriele Amorth said in 2011. His objection: Yoga derives from Hinduism, a heathen religion that says there is reincarnation. Pope John Paul II in 1989 also warned against the dangers of yoga as a seduction of spiritual seekers that "can degenerate into a cult of the body."

Anyone who has experience with what I think of as the American yoga-industrial complex knows that the pope's warning gets at an underlying tension in the way yoga is taught in the West. Either it's presented as an ancient spiritual practice conducted through the body -- and as such one that can conflict with the religious tenets of other faiths, especially their fundamentalist strains -- or it is assimilated into the competitive athletic cult of the body, shorn of its spiritual underpinnings and significance and turned into something like Indian pilates.





The question for Virginia voters is whether they want such philosophical explorations to come from a political leader in Richmond.



Update: I am reliably informed that some conservatives who like to stretch and are looking for an out to their religious conundrum have developed an exercise regimen called

All of which is just to say, sometimes it turns out that statements that look on the surface like crazy talk -- yoga is Satanic? -- actually reveal a lot about tensions faced by the the faithful in a mutlicultural, religiously diverse society as they seek to be modern and also true to their own ancient monotheistic religion. Most people tend to ignore these questions, but it is the job of religious leaders to explore them.The question for Virginia voters is whether they want such philosophical explorations to come from a political leader in Richmond.I am reliably informed that some conservatives who like to stretch and are looking for an out to their religious conundrum have developed an exercise regimen called PraiseMoves , "the Christian alternative to yoga."

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