20AR25-18

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AR 25:18 - Exposing yoga, mindfulness, and "stealth Buddhism"

In this issue:

HEALTH - science explores the health benefits of "worldview security"

MORALITY - developing empathy is "tricky" in an age "suffused with narcissism"

YOGA - an "extremely useful" resource for plaintiffs and attorneys

Apologia Report 25:18 (1,475)

May 5, 2020

HEALTH

How does your belief system affect your health? Here's a wide-spectrum study: "Worldview Under Stress: Preliminary Findings on Cardiovascular and Cortisol Stress Responses Predicted by Secularity, Religiosity, Spirituality, and Existential Search" by Tatjana Schnell, Dietmar Fuchs and René Hefti.

The abstract begins: "This study reports preliminary findings on the hypothesis that worldview can predict cardiovascular and cortisol responses to social stress. Based on theory and previous findings, we assumed that worldview security would provide a basis for stress resilience. Accordingly, religious and atheist individuals were expected to show higher stress resilience than spiritual and agnostic participants. ... Worldview comparisons revealed lower cardiovascular stress responses among religious than among atheist and spiritual participants and particularly high baseline SC [salivary cortisol] among spiritual participants. Across the entire sample, existential search showed substantial positive correlations.... The findings suggest that worldview security might partly explain the health benefits often associated with religion. ...

"The terms 'spirituality' and 'religiosity' are often used interchangeably. Nevertheless, most of the above studies operationalized 'R/S' by use of elements of traditional religion, such as belief in god [sic], prayer, and religious service attendance. But spirituality has recently turned into a worldview that can be distinguished from traditional religion. While some people call themselves spiritual as well as religious, others use the term spirituality to express a distance from religion. It thus becomes an alternative worldview - or rather an umbrella term for many different worldviews. ... Here, links have been established between spirituality and a range of indicators of low mental health, such as depression, anxiety, addiction, and neuroticism. These findings underline the necessity to distinguish between religiosity and spirituality when researching correlates of worldview positions. ...

"A more recent study ... also pointed in this direction. They found better mental and physical health outcomes for atheists than for other seculars and some religious traditions. Nonaffiliated theists were the least healthy.

"All these findings should be interpreted with attention to the culture and context in which the studies were carried out. [P]ositive links ... are significantly stronger in countries and regions in which religiosity is more common and socially desirable. The majority of positive relationships ... have been found in the USA, where religion is much more widespread and accepted than in many European countries. Negative links between spirituality, religiosity, and health have been shown" in Great Britain, Germany and Denmark.

The authors conclude: "The present study contributes to the literature on the mind-body connection by lending support to the assumption that facets of worldview may predict ways of handling acute social stress, as measured by physiological markers. In particular, existential search - a concept of (negative) worldview security - showed a number of robust associations with physiological stress parameters, indicating an elevated stress response. It might be a crucial element to understand why some worldviews - as, e.g., religiosity - seem to be beneficial with regard to mental and physical health, while this does not hold for self-ascribed spirituality. Spirituality, in the current study, was characterized by the highest degree of existential search. Following this, the association between religiosity and positive health could be due to the relative clarity and stability of religious worldviews, in contrast to spiritual, agnostic, and - probably - also atheist outlooks. Contrary to our expectation, neither a self-identification as atheist nor a strong commitment to atheism was related to better health outcomes; rather, there was some evidence for the opposite." Journal of Religion and Health, Mar 27 '20 <www.bit.ly/3ezKma3>

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MORALITY

Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels, by Catherine A. Sanderson [1] -- "an examination of moral courage and its disappointing scarcity. Ms Sandersson [Manwell Family Professor in Life Sciences, Amherst College] thinks bullying, political corruption and corporate crime flourish because of 'the failure of good people to stand up and do the right thing' ... analysing, for instance, how witnesses to wrongdoing perform 'subconscious cost-benefit analysis,' which typically reinforces the 'natural human tendency to stay silent.'

"Ms Sanderson maintains that even minor transgressions should be called out, because getting away with them makes the offender more likely to graduate to worse ones. ...

"The book's chief virtue lies in its wealth of instructive examples....

"A new lexicon is required, the author concludes. To this end, she cites <www.bit.ly/2zck1i0> Jeffrey Wigand, a biochemist who in the 1990s revealed that Brown & Williamson, a tobacco firm, was manipulating its products to make them more addictive. Mr Wigand thinks the word 'whistleblower' is laden with pejorative connotations' and should be replaced by 'person of conscience.'

"Ms Sanderson prefers the term 'moral rebels,' and sets out some practical strategies to inspire more of them. ... 'We need to develop our ability to feel empathy,' she writes, while conceding this will be tricky in an age suffused with narcissism." The Economist (UK), Apr 11 '20, p65. [3]

Also check out the review in The Guardian, Apr 5 '20 <www.bit.ly/3b8Bp4t>

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YOGA

Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? by Candy Gunther Brown [2] -- Amanda Porterfield (emeritus Professor of Religion, Florida State University) begins her review: "Professor Candy Gunther Brown [Professor, Religious Studies, Indiana University Bloomington] <www.bit.ly/2L2yXSO> calls for greater transparency regarding yoga and mindfulness in public education. Warning of their underlying religious nature, coercive power, and potentially harmful effects, she argues that requiring public school students to practice yoga and mindfulness violates American law governing the separation of church and state. ... While restraints on Christian activity in public school rest on a well-developed body of law, Brown shows that litigation with respect to yoga and mindfulness is far less robust. ...

"Brown provides a concise history of American law regarding prayer, Bible reading, and Transcendental Meditation in public schools. She also provides a history of yoga in the U.S. focused on the Ashtanga style promoted by the popular but controversial yoga teacher Pattabhi Jois. ... Calling attention to the underlying metaphysical meanings and devotional purposes associated with Sanskrit names for Ashtanga postures, she points to the hypocrisy of advocates who fervently believe in these metaphysical meanings and devotional purposes while scrubbing yoga of religious language for use in public schools.

"In a similar analysis, Brown describes the Buddhist origins and underlying nature of mindfulness. Arguing that Buddhist beliefs about the self and the world cannot simply be subtracted from mindfulness, she argues that public school students remain exposed to the religious meaning of mindfulness as a vehicle of self-transformation. This religious underpinning, she maintains, conflicts with Christian ideas about the innate sinfulness of human selves, the virtue of sacrifice, and the need for salvation through Jesus Christ. Thus efforts to promote mindfulness as a secular practice are best understood as efforts of deception and concealment. To reinforce that point, Brown refers repeatedly to 'stealth Buddhism,' a term used once in a podcast interview by an advocate of mindfulness in hospitals, universities, and public schools.

"This book will be extremely useful for plaintiffs and lawyers who seek stricter regulation of yoga and mindfulness in public settings. ...

"Brown is insistent on the importance of empirical findings and her descriptions of yoga and mindfulness are all evidence-based and factual. They are also antiseptically clinical and narrowly directed toward proving her case. She is not interested in the people who practice yoga and mindfulness or in their positive experiences. She only cites positive claims about yoga and mindfulness in order to expose them as exaggerated, inaccurate, or unfounded.

"Much of the book is concerned with the relationship between religion and secularity, and Brown readily admits that these terms are difficult to define. Her primary concern is to expose the faulty and simplistic idea that religion can simply be subtracted from yoga and mindfulness and thereby rendered secular. Her own idea of secularization is far more demanding - 'rebuilding from foundations uncontrolled by assumptions about the nature of the self and the world.' But many historians of religion take a different and less extreme view of secularity.... Hopefully, Brown will explain in a future book why she sees secularity so differently." Journal of Church and State, 61:4 - 2019, pp736–38. <www.bit.ly/3ajjJ64>

Also worthwhile: Gunther-Brown's corresponding YouTube presentation here: <www.bit.ly/2YDmgWn>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels, by Catherine A. Sanderson (William Collins, 2020, hardcover, 272 pages) <www.amzn.to/2KXadLF>

2 - Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? by Candy Gunther Brown (Univ of NC Prs, 2019, paperback, 455 pages) <www.amzn.to/2VHhW5l>

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