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Posted on 09/19/2017 5:25:10 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Recently Duke Chapel at Duke University in North Carolina tweeted photos of yoga exercises on the floor of its majestic worship space as part of Healthy Duke Week of Wellness. Built in the 1930s as a Methodist sanctuary in the style of a Gothic cathedral for what was then a Methodist affiliated school, Duke Chapel is now nondenominational.
There are Evangelicals and Catholics who critique yoga as wrong for Christians because its mantras originate in eastern religion. Setting aside that concern, should worship space be open to recreation and "profane" (i.e., secular) activities? Tai-chi? Kickboxing? Karate? Spinning? Ballroom dancing? Salsa? Hip-Hop? Ballet? Volleyball? Badminton? If not, why not?
Catholic and other liturgical traditions generally consecrate their worship spaces and open them to profane activities only after decommissioning. There is an understanding that the place where the Eucharist is served and the Word proclaimed is in some sense sacred, meriting reverence, dignity and protection.
Lower church Protestants and Evangelicals don't always attach the same sense of lofty spirituality to their worship space. Many congregations, especially new ones, don't own property, instead worshiping in rented school gymnasiums or theaters. Other congregations convene in multipurpose rooms with folding chairs, where space shifts from worship to meals to gymnastics or basketball.
Most traditional Protestant churches even if not very liturgical still have formal worship space filled with pews, faced by pulpit and altar, with walls adorned with Christian symbols. This space, while perhaps sometimes used for non-worship meetings, is still usually accorded respect and not host to recreation.
Worship space for many modern non-liturgical churches, while not hosting recreation, often resembles theaters without much if any sacred adornment, often purposefully so, ostensibly to avoid discomfiting unchurched visitors. Worshipers there, and increasingly in more traditional spaces, are often quite casual, wearing shorts, flip flops, baseball hats, carrying lattes or other drinks. These worshipers will often conform to more formality when attending weddings, funerals, graduations or other ceremonies they deem deeply significant.
This casual attitude at church should provoke reflection. Isn't worship deeply significant and meriting respect? Shouldn't Gospel proclamation, reading of God's word, and the Lord's Supper always together inspire awe, reverence and celebratory solemnity, no matter the surrounding architecture? And shouldn't ideally that architecture itself point Godward, conducive to worship? Shouldn't the space itself be deemed special, with expectation that God Himself is present, recalling that when Moses met Him in the wilds he removed his footwear in respect?
Duke Chapel, built as a medieval cathedral with such a sacred sense of God's presence in mind, was intended to inspire appreciation of divine awe and mystery. It's not a multipurpose room or gymnasium. There are plenty of places on the extensive Duke University campus for yoga practitioners and other exercisers to perform their craft.
But exercising and sweating in tights on floormats in a soaring cathedral beneath its stained glass and carvings of saints and martyrs seems to detract from the sacredness of that place. Moses in God's presence did remove his footwear and fall prostrate, but not to stretch and grunt. Today's sanctuaries may not equal Mt. Sinai or King David's Temple, but they should point in spirit to the same God, with consequent respect for His holiness from all who enter. This reverence honors God while also helping us to know Him a bit better.
Church worship spaces should be used for worship.
In emergencies they can be used as temporary shelters for people who have no place else to go. They should be the last space used after all other rooms have been filled.
Call me old fashioned and a stick in the mud. But it is a space for worship. If you want to exercise then most churches have fellowship halls where you can go.
Oh, and none of those tacky advertisements either. It is a worship space, not an emporium.
Appropriate decorations for religious holy days are ok.
There are branches of Yoga. Hatha yoga is largely a physical practice, and the exercises have been used by dancers for a very long time. I was first taught some of the positions by a very elderly ballet teacher many decades ago. I never heard a mantra.
Leaving aside the spiritual considerations, it just looks dang silly.
By that logic a Church should allow its sanctuary and fellowship hall to be used for LGBT events and Planned Parenthood meetings.
So, in so many words, the answer is it’s OK then?
Well, some denominations have sacred places. But Christianity itself does not teach that there are sacred places. It is all part of the world that will be destroyed.
Yoga is a form of moving prayer. IMHO
It is indisputable that yoga is a Hindu religious practice. The word means “union” as in union with God. Not the Judeo-Christian God, but rather the impersonal Brahman, or ultimate force behind the universe, of which we are all part of. Through reincarnation we will one day re-merge with this IMPERSONAL force. Each of the six Hindu yoga practices - including Hatha yoga - have this as their goal. To pretend otherwise is sheer deception. FatherofFive and others are willfully ignorant. The “health benefits” could be easily achieved through exercises, without participating in pagan rituals. Oh - note to “very conservative Catholic” FatherofFive - Ph.D. in Religion here, from a Jesuit university.
The thing is, the yoga fad that we’ve seen in the West in recent years contains very little if any ‘spiritual’ practice. People are taking part in relaxing exercise.
(You could just as well call it ‘Pilates’, which is more ‘kinetic’, but not terribly different from what you encounter in most modern Western “yoga” classes.)
For some people, yes. For others, a church is not just a building WHERE we worship, it is a building WITH WHICH we worship.
An analogy: to a good man, his wife is not just a woman.
This casual attitude at church should provoke reflection... Shouldn't the space itself be deemed special, with expectation that God Himself is present, recalling that when Moses met Him in the wilds he removed his footwear in respect?
Why do I think that flip flops are a whole lot closer to Moses' bare feet than the wing-tips I see on a lot of church goers feet?
Yoga is a 100% spiritual practice. One cannot separate the exercises from the esoteric meaning of them. It is no different than meditation or chanting mantras. It is suppose to help one achieve enlightenment, become one with the universe, release hidden energies, and even astral projection and other practices.
LOL! That must have been (hopefully?) the nadir of his career ;-)
Hindu practice. Are you a hindu?
Not Christian at all.
Hindu practice. Are you a hindu?
Read information upline.
I am not, I am warning people of the Kundalini aspects of Yoga. If Yoga is “christian” than horoscopes and seances can be as well. How can a sinful person achieve inner peace and “Nirvana” by looking inward? This is the fatal flaw of Eastern Religions. The solution to a broken person or object is not in the object itself, it must be fixed by an outside source.
‘Outside Source’?
I was taught ‘the kingdom of God is within you’.
What I mean is, that you can look deep inside you for all the answers and find nothing. Only Jesus can fix what is broken in you and you must allow him to work in you. You do nothing for your salvation, Christ did it all. All Eastern faiths require works and good deeds along with an endless cycle of death and rebirth.
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