Demonic Yoga

Indoctrination on your dime

I saw a video posted yesterday of a woman behind a pulpit speaking on the dangers of yoga. She said yoga was Hindu and Christians shouldn’t practice yoga because they would be calling on Hindu demons with each pose. She stated that Christians can stretch, but they should never practice yoga.

I immediately went to the comments and read so many expressing confusion. I was not confused by the video at all.

I was raised to believe yoga was from the devil.

You know I was raised a Southern Baptist. You may not know that I attended a Christian boarding school my Freshman year of high school.

The Bible Academy was in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Though I learned things there that I had to unlearn later in life, it was a safe space for me at a time in my life when I needed it.

I was shown love there. And that’s the thing about us who have deconstructed from our Evangelical background…we know many of the things we learned are wrong, even hateful, but many of us experienced real love while in the church.

Bittersweet. Hard to separate.

During the first few days at the Bible academy, we were in classes to expose us to boarding school life and Christian life. Many of the kids enrolled in the school were missionary kids. Their parents were in the fields…usually Mexico or Honduras. They had been raised off-grid or in remote places all over the world.

I was not a missionary kid…I was living in rural Oklahoma on a dairy farm and begged to go to the school after having trouble in my home life. Trouble that I wanted to be away from without having to talk about the trouble or get anyone else in trouble. I had stepbrothers and they didn’t treat me well.

I had to get away.

The Bible Academy was set on acreage and had a beautiful lawn and a large dorm with pillars out front. It wasn’t fancy, but it seemed fancy to me. I had two roomies, and all of the girls shared a large bathroom/shower room on the second floor. The first floor was dedicated to nightly devotions and talks from the teachers and staff at the school.

I remember one talk vividly — I could never forget it.

The woman who gave the talk was not a teacher, but she and her husband had been on staff since the beginning of the school. She had to be in her seventies. She spoke to us one dark evening which is important to the story because her narrative was scary.

She spoke of demons.

She told us that our worldly possessions that we carried with us from home could have demons attached to them. That’s why they confiscated our music tapes to check them…to make sure there was no secular music on them. I was immediately frightened because I had recorded Amy Grant at the beginning and end of my tapes, but I had Van Halen and George Strait and The Steve Miller Band recorded in the middle of my tape.

You know…devil music. The stuff of the anti-Christ.

I was 14 and scared. Not only of getting caught with secular music, but because I may have carried demons from home into my dormitory.

The staff member told us that the demons could manifest into creatures that could come to us in the night. They could be in our closets or in the dark corners of our dorm rooms. We could see their red eyes in the dark. That even if we didn’t bring in demons, that someone else may have and that they could torture us…they could attach themselves to us and we may never be able to rid ourselves of the devil’s demons.

She then mentioned yoga.

Yoga pose via Yogapractive.com

Her words mirrored the words of the lady in the video I watched yesterday.

She said that yoga was not Christian and that practicing yoga, or even mindfulness, was dabbling in the dark arts. That we were asking for demons to come into our lives and attach themselves to us through Hinduism. That we were calling on the Hindu gods and not the Christian god or Jesus. That we could lose our very souls with one yoga class.

That was a lot, and it was scary. I did not participate in any yoga class until I was well into my 30s. I don’t know that I was still scared of demons, but it is something that I had to unstick in my brain. Like much of the Christian doctrine I had to unwind over the years. Everything from misogyny to the fear of other religions to the fear of demons took a long time to let go of.

I say all of this so that if you come across it in articles or social media, you know where this dogma is coming from — the Evangelical church. It may sound ridiculous to the non-Evangelical ear, but it is taught in many churches and church schools.

I also mention this to let you know what your tax money could be funding through a school voucher system. The Bible Academy I attended has long since closed, and they didn’t use taxpayer vouchers, but it was in Oklahoma — home to Ryan Walters and his ilk. The State Superintendent who purchased 500 Trump Bibles with taxpayer money and then forced into public schools.

According to Walters, the purchase is just the first Bible purchase explicitly for use in schools as an academic and literary resource in the nation. He says it is the first step toward providing Bibles for every classroom in the state.

I don’t remember doing a lot of rigorous academic work at the Bible Academy, but I still remember John 3:16 in Spanish. We drilled the verse every day so that we could share the gospel with someone even if they didn’t speak English.

Porque de tal manera amó Dios al mundo, que ha dado a su Hijo unigénito, para que todo aquel que en él cree, no se pierda, mas tenga vida eterna.

These are the things taxpayers would be funding if left to the GOP — lessons on demons and memorization of Christian scripture. Girls would be reminded of their place in society and the home and Hinduism and every other religion would be admonished as near Satanism on your dime.

Under the school voucher system, private religious schools indoctrinate children using money meant for public schools — private religious school vouchers violate the fundamental principle of the separation of church and state.

I learned a lot of things at the Bible academy that were incorrect and bigoted toward other religions and people. I also learned that love and hate can be mixed and sometimes they aren’t oil and water — they blend seamlessly.

I am glad that vouchers were not a thing in the 80s and 90s.

I only lasted one year at the Bible Academy before enrolling back in the public school. I was woefully behind at that point. My reading was well above grade level — we read the Bible nonstop — but my math and science abilities had fallen even lower than they were before I entered the school.

It is a common failure in evangelical schools and religious homeschools.

We should separate church and state. We should not be funding church coffers through religious school vouchers. We should fund secular public schools.

No demons required.

~Jess