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AR 26:5 - Challenging the authenticity of today's yoga
In this issue:
MORMONISM - an appreciation of the "New Mormon History"
NATION OF ISLAM - a journey from "bizarre" beliefs to the biblical gospel
QAnon - the making of a notorious "conspiracy cult"
YOGA - "What has spread all over the world is not yoga. It is not even non-yoga; it is un-yoga."
Apologia Report 26:5 (1,510)
February 4, 2021
MORMONISM
"The Birth and Life of the New Mormon History" by Matthew Bowman <matthewbowman.net> (Nova Religio, 24:1 - 2020, pp77-87) -- reports that according to Craig S. Smith, author Juanita Brooks (1898-1989) - along with official LDS Church Historian Leonard Arrington, noted Joseph Smith biographer Fawn M. Brodie, and researcher Dale L. Morgan, "inaugurated what scholars have often called the 'New Mormon History,' a cascade of publications on Mormon history and life that met for the first time the standards of research, documentation, and point of view expected in the modern academy. Crucially, Mormons themselves were its major authors; some, such as Brooks and Arrington, active Latter-day Saints. Others, such as Brodie and Morgan, had ceased involvement in the church by the time they set about writing its history. All, though, understood their work to be relevant to understanding not merely the past but also the present life of the church. This is why for editor Smith, the New Mormon History represents an important corrective to church-produced hagiography. As he puts it, Brooks 'graciously defended herself to those who disagreed with her and allowed them their views, though she always strongly advocated open and unbiased writing of Mormon history.' Brooks' letters, though, illustrate that the dichotomy between the old and the new, the traditional and the professional, is not so clean as the phrase 'open and unbiased' might imply." <www.bit.ly/3swUCqJ> (Is it ever?)
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NATION OF ISLAM
"A Prophet Greater Than Elijah" by Damon Richardson (founder, UrbanLogia Ministries <urbanlogia.org>) -- "The year I was born, my father joined the Nation of Islam. He was in prison at the time ... joining a growing number of African American men for whom the Nation signified community, identity, reform, and dignity.
"After converting, my father placed our family under the authority of the Nation's leader, Elijah [Fard] Muhammad. We belonged to Temple 7B in Corona, Queens, a mosque annexed by the famed Temple 7 in Harlem, where Malcolm X had once served as minister. (Louis Farrakhan was in charge of Temple 7 at the time.)"
Richardson mentions some "bizarre" beliefs that were common within the NOI: "Sometimes we would look up at the night sky, spot the lights of planes flying at high altitudes, and wonder if we had caught a glimpse of the 'Mother Plane.' According to the Nation's leaders, this was a spacecraft equipped by Allah to destroy the world and its white ruling structures in what they called 'the Battle in the Sky,' a reference to Armageddon. ...
"[T]he element of my upbringing that left the deepest impression was the constant indoctrination. ... These doctrines came primarily from [the writings of] Elijah Muhammad. I distinctly remember chanting, 'God is a man, not a spirit or a spook; never has God been a spirit or a spook; God is a man; God is a man!'
"This chant had a clear purpose: to instill certainty that God (Allah) had come to earth in the person of [Wallace] Fard Muhammad....
"Somehow, even at an early age, I was developing a notion of God's omniscience and omnipresence that contradicted the Nation's insistence that he was neither 'spirit' nor 'spook.'
"After Elijah Muhammad's death, our family faced the same dilemma as others within the Nation of Islam. Would we remain faithful to Elijah's teachings, or would we follow his successor, Wallace Deen Muhammad (Elijah's oldest son), into the practice of orthodox Islam?" Or perhaps join "one of several splinter groups, the largest of which was led by Louis Farrakhan. ...
"We still observed Savior's Day , which commemorated Fard Muhammad's birth, every February. We continued abstaining from pork. And we shunned the celebration of 'pagan' holidays, such as Christmas and Easter. ...
"After marital discord caused my parents to separate, my mother moved us from New York City to Florida, where we encountered [Mr. Brown], a Southern Baptist children's evangelist. ...
"Mr. Brown gave us our first copy of the Bible, which we read in secret. He kept inviting us to Sunday school until our mother finally relented - but not without a litany of cautions against being proselytized."
Things really began to change "when the boyfriend of my second oldest sister invited her to church with his family. Soon thereafter, she accepted Christ, and we would often get into debates about salvation, Jesus, the Trinity, and the afterlife. ...
"I realized I couldn't sit through another sermon without declaring that I trusted in Jesus for salvation. At age 16 I was born again, and one year later I was already preaching the gospel." Christianity Today, Sep '20, pp79-80. [1]
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QAnon
"The making of the QAnon conspiracy cult" by Dawn Araujo-Hawkins -- begins: "In 2017, posts by Q Clearance Patriot alleged clues about the pipe bomb that partially detonated in a New York City subway. ... According to new data <www.pewrsr.ch/2NTbUhJ> from the Pew Research Center, in March, only 23 percent of adults in the US had heard anything about QAnon. By September, that number had jumped <www.pewrsr.ch/39LCkL6> to 47 percent. ...
"'In essence, QAnon holds that the world is embroiled in a large-scale, centuries-spanning war between the divinely ordained forces of good and the satanic forces of evil, [a concept] which would be familiar to most evangelicals, ... said [Alex Newhouse <www.bit.ly/3tdYddz> who researches right-wing extremism and religious fundamentalism at Middlebury College's Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counter-terrorism] in an email. ...
"'QAnon can be seen as a more elaborate, more structured version of the 20th-century satanic panics, which also appealed to a cross-section of American evangelicals. ...
"Adherents have a tendency to crop up among other established cultural groups, notably anti-vaxxers and White nationalists. ...
"The number of adherents is stable but small. A pre-election Yahoo! News poll found that 37 percent of Trump supporters believed at least some of QAnon's claims. Uscinski [Joseph Uscinski, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami <joeuscinski.com>] thinks it's about 5 percent of the overall US population.
"'QAnon is one of the least believed conspiracy theories I poll on,' he said.
"The new Pew data seems to bear this out. Of those adults who had heard of QAnon by September, 74 percent said they believed it was either very bad or somewhat bad for the country." Christian Century, Dec 16 '20, <www.bit.ly/3qBA0vr>
The Gospel Coalition has published various articles by staff editor Joe Carter explaining the phenomenon, including "The FAQs: What Christians Should Know About QAnon" <www.bit.ly/2TrEA0S>
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YOGA
Writing for First Things (Jan '21), Clemens Cavallin <clemenscavallin.se> (associate professor of religious studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and associate professor of religion, philosophies of life, and ethics at Nord University, Norway) observes that "postural yoga is first and foremost a ritualization of the modern religion of humanity. ...
It is an essentially, "anaerobic regimen combining stretching and contortion (the postures or Asanas) with breathing techniques and mental exercises. ... [M]ost Western yoga instructors assure their students that yoga need not be a spiritual regimen, and that it can be practiced by everyone, regardless of faith or lack thereof. ...
"Many of the arguments for yogic continuity and venerable tradition veil more than a century of intense experimentation and innovation. What is extracted from Indian religious traditions is often instead a novelty adapted for the stressed-out citizen of a fast-paced society."
Cavallin quotes "influential" yoga writer Mark Singleton, who <www.bit.ly/3aArI0w> states that "the primacy of Asana performance in transnational yoga today ... has no parallel in premodern times. ...
"Citing the Yoga Sutra, in which 'yoga' is defined as 'the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind,' the Hindu American Foundation stresses that the purpose of Asanas is to bring the body and senses under control so that meditation may occur. Prashant Iyengar, son of the twentieth-century guru B. K. S. Iyengar, is quoted to this effect: 'What has spread all over the world is not yoga. It is not even non-yoga; it is un-yoga.'"
Cavallin begins his essay by explaining that "The word 'yoga' has long had many meanings. In the 1899 Monier-Williams Sanskrit dictionary, it is defined as either a yoke, team, vehicle, performance, device, incantation, fraud, work, or union; or it may mean abstract contemplation, meditation, or the union of the individual with the universal soul. The Monier-Williams dictionary does not mention bodily postures (Asanas)...."
Further, "beginning in the 1920s and becoming dominant in the 1950s [for Swami] Vivekananda and his followers, posture was important only in order to eliminate bodily 'disturbances' and allow for mental concentration....
"Under the rubric of yoga, he effected a popular synthesis of Vedantic philosophy and modern Western spiritual trends. The milieu of alternative religions and spiritualities - which included Swedenborgians, transcendentalists, Unitarians, mesmerism, and New Thought - was the primary context for the growth of modern yoga in the early twentieth century. ...
"According to Vivekananda, yoga leads the yogi to a state of supreme power in which he controls the universe: "If he orders the gods to come, they will come at his bidding; if he asks the departed to come, they will come at his bidding.' ...
"The idea of yogic omnipotence was parallel to secular ideas of a religion of humanity that would replace the historic religions. ...
"To claim that yogic exercises can be performed by everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs, is to overlook the fact that yogic poses performed in the local gym ritualize tenets of the religion of humanity eagerly anticipated by prominent scholars and believers more than a century ago. ... Modern yogic poses are part of the worship of the self: the divinity within, its power and endless potential." <www.bit.ly/3sJRqbm>
For more on yoga from our past issues, see <www.bit.ly/39yDhWF>
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