Is Yoga Demonic?

From the Seattle Times:

Is the downward-facing dog somehow ... demonic?

A recent essay by the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., warned Christians that yoga is contradictory to Christianity. And local megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church went even further, saying earlier this year that yoga is "absolute paganism."

"Should Christians stay away from yoga because of its demonic roots? Totally. Yoga is demonic," Driscoll said. "If you just sign up for a little yoga class, you're signing up for a little demon class."

Even as yoga has become a mainstream form of exercise and stress relief in the United States, the question of whether Christians should practice it is making the rounds once again, raising a stir among some Christians and yoga practitioners alike.

"Here we go again with fear-based, black-and-white thinking," said Jennifer Norling, of Seattle, a 42-year-old mainline Protestant who has been practicing yoga for many years. "It's not fair to say yoga is demonic. In fact, I find it insulting. There are many ways to grow spiritually."

Nationwide, an estimated 15.8 million people practice yoga, with Seattle ranking among the country's top yoga cities. Numerous yoga classes are taught daily in gyms and community centers — largely removed from any religious context — while stores such as Walmart stock yoga mats and videos.

It's not that Driscoll and R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, are anti-exercise. Rather, they believe the physical aspects of yoga can't be separated from its historical roots in Hinduism and other Eastern religions.

"Yoga begins and ends with an understanding of the body that is, to say the very least, at odds with the Christian understanding," Mohler wrote in an online essay last month. "Christians are not called to empty the mind or to see the human body as a means of connecting to and coming to know the divine. Believers are called to meditate upon the Word of God."

The Associated Press reported this week that Mohler has received plenty of pushback from yoga enthusiasts, including Christians.

Driscoll, in a Q&A session with church members in February, issued a similar warning, calling yoga a form of pantheism. "There's not creator and creation," he said. "All is collapsed into what we call oneism. The result is that you don't go out to God, you go into self. It's not about connecting to God through the mediatorship of Jesus. It's about connecting to the universe through meditation. It's absolute paganism."

A Mars Hill Church spokesman this week declined to say what sort of feedback Driscoll has received on his stance.

more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...9_yoga09m.html