Aum
Should Christians stay away from yoga because of its demonic roots? Totally. Yoga is demonic. If you just sign up for a little yoga class, you're signing up for a little demon class.I'm going to leave aside for the time being the atrocities that have been committed due to the idea that any religion other than the one true faith is the product of supernatural evil attempting to lead people astray, and the common idea that any attractive thing that hasn't been pre-approved for your consumption is a trap.
Mark Driscoll, Pastor, Mars Hill Church, Seattle
What caught my attention was the headline: "Yoga 'demonic'? Critics call ministers' warning a stretch." It had made number 1 on the most read and most e-mailed stories lists this afternoon. It was a distant second for most commented, but the top spot for that was held by an open thread on the UW-ASU football game. It was unsurprising that people gravitated towards the story. Here in the Seattle area, Evangelical religion lives, just like it does everywhere else, but a lot of people are somewhere between mildly skeptical and openly scornful. Given this, it's pretty easy to generate pageviews with a sensational enough headline - adding in a pun doesn't hurt, either. And people have started to catch on. As one commenter put it.
How is this news!?!? Whenever some moron of a preacher comes up with something stupid to say just to "spark" a debate, you fools in the media jump right up and give him a platform!Amen.
When Pastor Driscoll calls for the next Crusade against the Flexible Infidel, Mars Hill parishioners start crucifying Yoga instructors or the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary declares that the killing of practitioners isn't a sin, then that's something to write about.
2 comments:
It's been somewhat in fashion to lay some blame on right-wing religion and politics for the rash of gay teen suicides.
But I wonder if the media should share in some of the blame for giving people with incendiary messages a platform, if only to swiftly knock them off it.
Most mainstream religions don't preach hatred of gays, or even that gay people are unacceptable per se. But preachers with those messages get amplified, and the majority of religions and preachers with more nuanced positions get lumped in in the public's mind.
Is it possible this may lead some gay teens to believe that the number of people who hate them is larger than it is?
Well, I hate to say that the media's the culprit here. After all, I'm the guy who says that we have a responsibility to see past the salacious coverage, and understand the truth of the matter.
But you are, of course, correct - the media does amplify those messages that will get the most attention, and I think that does skew the way we see the world. It's easy to take the article from the Seattle Times, and generalize that Evangelicals are a bunch of nitwits who hate and fear anything that doesn't conform to a narrow worldview. And I can understand Evangelicals who have come to see the media as gleefully waiting for its next opportunity to make them look stupid.
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