I Love You but You Didn’t Do the Reading

Welcome to 2018! You might think the last week of the year would be quiet, but you’d be wrong. Here are a couple of the ILYBYGTH-style stories that jumped out at us over the past week:

Issue in review: Has Trumpism killed evangelicalism?

Conservatives and the higher education “scapegoat,” by Catherine Rampell at WaPo.

The thing white professors won’t talk about, by Robert Cherry at RCEd.

Want to avoid a “death of despair?” Go to college. At CHE, research about the link between higher education and better health.Bart reading bible

Jeffrey Salkin admires LDS (Mormons). But he wants them to stop baptizing dead Jewish people, at RNS.

Why one evangelical leader left Trump’s evangelical council. AR Bernard explains his departure to Samantha Bee: “Better think carefully what you are given in exchange for your life, your reputation.”

What’s wrong with the pseudo-intellectual Right? Paul Gottfried tees off on D’Souza, Prager, and Goldberg at AC. Gottfried’s conclusion:

  • “there is . . . a plague of genuinely ridiculous writings on historical subjects coming from conservative media celebrities that surpass in their arrogant stupidity almost anything I’ve encountered in professional journals. As for people who yap about the ideologically tainted work that originates in our universities, one might hope they’d be somewhat better than those they declaim against. That’s not always the case.”
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Yoga in School? Yes, No, Maybe So

Is yoga a religious practice?  Can it be taught in public schools?

Here at ILYBYGTH, we’ve been following the story in Encinitas, thanks to contributions from Natalia Mehlman Petrzela.  In that case, the judge said yoga was okay, in spite of the powerful argument made by religious studies scholar Candy Gunther Brown.

Today three evangelical writers weigh in at Christianity Today.  Can yoga be part of public education?

Laurette Willis says no way.  Yoga, she warns, turns children’s minds towards the “idols” of Hinduism and Buddhism.  Even if the practice is taught in a secular, physical way, it instills in young children “warm fuzzies” about Hindu imagery and theology.

Matthew Lee Anderson says, “It depends.”  If it is taught as physical exercise only, then it should be fine.  If it is used to proselytize for Hinduism, then no.

Amy Julia Becker says bring it on.  Yoga as physical exercise should be encouraged in public school.  What’s more, yoga as spiritual exercise should also be encouraged in public schools.  It is important for people of all religious faiths, Becker argues, to insist on the rights of children to engage in spiritual practice in public schools, as long as that practice is student-initiated and student-led.  Just as evangelical Christian students insist on their right to form public-school prayer groups, so evangelical Christian groups should insist on the rights of students of other religions to form their own spiritual groups.