conservative groups fight mindfulness in schools

FireDragon76

Well-Known Member
Supporter
Apr 30, 2013
30,474
18,454
Orlando, Florida
✟1,249,090.00
Country
United States
Faith
United Ch. of Christ
Marital Status
Legal Union (Other)
Politics
US-Democrat
You don't care anyway.
I put up links when I posted to you, but you cling to your opinion instead.

Half-educated opinions from religious ideologues don't count.
 
Upvote 0

dms1972

Well-Known Member
Supporter
Feb 26, 2013
5,084
1,302
✟593,863.00
Faith
Non-Denom
Marital Status
Single
Conservative legal group challenges 'mindfulness' in schools


On the one hand I think its strange how mindfulness has become a fad, what Ron Percer calls "McMindfulness". On the other hand, it does make conservative evangelicals seem picayune to object to something that is devoid of obvious religious content (and I don't think "connecting to the universe" is a religious concept, even if it was removed from the curriculum in response to feedback). It's almost as if their idea of being a human being never includes paying attention to anything except their Bibles and religious dogma.

The issue is not the religiousness or lack of religiousness of the practice, but the spirituality involved, a somewhat different issue.

I think it would be best on a opt in basis.

There may be potential problems of spiritual crisis in some practitioners because western societies have historically placed an accent on the conscious mind and reasoning they therefore have little experience in meditative practices. Its not for no reason as I have mentioned several times on these forums that even Jung cautioned westerners from dabbling in eastern meditative practices.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

Shiloh Raven

Well-Known Member
May 14, 2016
12,509
11,495
Texas
✟228,180.00
Country
United States
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Married
It merely states that the government of America is not founded on the Christian religion it does not mean that the country itself was not founded with the principles and values of Christianity.
The separation of church and state is fundamental in Christianity.

I realize the discussion is going a bit off-topic with the talk about America's founding, but I wanted to ask you about your response. It isn't my intent to put you on the spot, but since you seem to believe that America was founded with the principles and values of Christianity, would you please explain how the following examples of America's own history demonstrates that? I look forward to your response.

(1) The U.S. government violating hundreds of treaties with the tribal nations.

(2) The U.S. government forcibly removing Indians from their lands or killing them for their lands.

(3) The Three-Fifth Compromise, which implied a black person was only 3/5th of a person.

(4) Legalized slavery, which lasted for 89 years until the 13th Amendment in 1865.

(5) Denying minorities equality to white people for 188 years until the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

(6) Denying Indians citizenship for 148 years until the American Indian Citizenship Act in 1924.

(7) Denying Indians religious freedom until the American Indian Freedom of Religion Act in 1978.
 
Upvote 0

Deborah D

Prayer Warrior
Supporter
Aug 25, 2018
1,059
1,101
USA
✟224,544.00
Country
United States
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Widowed
1) The founding fathers made it exceptionally clear that the United States was not founded on the Christian religion, as the language from the Treaty of Tripoli clearly states. And the mention of religion in our founding legal document--the Constitution--is very clear about the non-establishment of religion.

Concerning the Treaty you mentioned, according to Wikipedia, "A superseding treaty, the Treaty of Peace and Amity signed on July 4, 1805, omitted this phrase." This is in reference to the claim in the 1776 Treaty that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

It's so important to understand the huge role Christianity played in the founding of the U.S., esp. in the area of education. The following quote is from the book titled America’s Providential History.

The Biblical principles upon which America was birthed were passed on to succeeding generations through education in the home, church, and school. Christian education assured a foundation of liberty. Our Founders understood that tyranny and bondage would result from ignorance of the truth. This truth was rooted in the Bible.​

As historian Frederick Mayer concluded in A History of Educational Thought, “The present dilemmas in educational theory are represented by the conflict between champions of progressive education and traditionalists” (p. 354). (Many Americans would question Mayer’s opinion that the progressives are “champions;” nevertheless, his conclusion is basically accurate.)

The widely used American history textbook History of a Free People by Bragdon McCutchen (1967 edition) explains the purpose for some of the first “public” schools in America:

The New England Puritans believed that citizens should learn enough English to read the Bible and understand the laws of the country. The famous Massachusetts General School Act of 1647 [also called the Ole’ Deluder Satan Act] stated:​

It being one chiefe project of the oulde deluder Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the scripture [Bible]…it is therefore ordered, that evry township…after the Lord hath increased them in number to 50 households shall appoint one to teache all such children as shall resort to him to write & reade, whose wages shall be paid by the parents or mastrs of such children or by the inhabitants in genrall. (p.23)​

McCutchen also explains that America’s first colleges were formed to offer training for the ministry.

Religion was the principal force behind the founding of most institutions of higher learning in the English colonies. Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Rhode Island College (later Brown), the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), and Rutgers were founded principally to train young men for the ministry (p. 24).​

Following the Christian orientation of the first schools, The New England Primer, published in 1690, became the first American textbook. This text contained Bible verses and was used to teach reading and Bible.

In 1783 Noah Webster’s “Blue-backed Speller” was published. Like the New England Primer, this spelling text included Bible verses. Another spelling text, the National Elementary Speller published by A.S. Barnes and Company in 1871, also contained Bible verses along with references to God and the deity of Jesus Christ.

In 1787 Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. Even though this important document applied only to the Northwest Territory, it contained a bill of rights which served as a model for the national Bill of Rights contained in the U.S. Constitution. Article 3 states:

Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.​

President George Washington delivered his farewell address in 1796. The speech was made before Congress to mark the end of Washington’s presidency and offers the following wise counsel:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens…

…let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in the exclusion of religious principle.​

In 1836 the Bible-based McGuffey Readers, produced by William H. McGuffey, were printed for the first time. These readers, utilizing intensive, explicit phonics, were used so extensively that over one hundred million copies were sold during the next seventy-five years.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision Vidal v. Girard’s Executors in 1844. The case centered on the will of John F. Girard. This will granted the city of Philadelphia millions of dollars to start a school with a prohibition that clergy could not hold any position or duty in the school and a requirement that the school “instill...the purest principles of morality.”

Some were interpreting the language of the will to mean that the school could not be Christian, but Justice Story, speaking on behalf of the Court, disagreed. He had this to say:

The testator does not say that Christianity shall not be taught in the college. But only that no ecclesiastic of any sect shall hold or exercise any station or duty in the college....

Why may not laymen instruct in the general principles of Christianity as well as ecclesiastics… Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a divine revelation in the college—its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?​

This case makes very interesting reading and proves just how far America has strayed from its Christian roots in education! The Supreme Court assumed that the Bible would be taught in public schools; there was no debate about this. The Justice’s question is a good one. “Why may not the Bible... be read and taught as a divine revelation” in any public school in America? Did the U.S. Supreme Court of 1844 misinterpret the Constitution, or did the Court of the 1960s get it wrong when they outlawed Bible reading by public school staff?
 
Upvote 0

Gregory Thompson

Change is inevitable, feel free to spare some.
Supporter
Dec 20, 2009
28,362
7,742
Canada
✟721,286.00
Country
Canada
Faith
Christian Seeker
Marital Status
Married
Not at all. Mindfulness is about observing your own inner self without attachment not some "sorcery oriented network".
What you described creates the gateway to the sorcery oriented network.
 
Upvote 0

Gregory Thompson

Change is inevitable, feel free to spare some.
Supporter
Dec 20, 2009
28,362
7,742
Canada
✟721,286.00
Country
Canada
Faith
Christian Seeker
Marital Status
Married
The Law of Attraction is not taught as part of mindfulness. Most minduflness teachers would consider it superstition.
That's not the case in my experience.
 
Upvote 0

RDKirk

Alien, Pilgrim, and Sojourner
Supporter
Mar 3, 2013
39,137
20,169
US
✟1,440,830.00
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Married
I've never encountered teacher/administrator lead prayer in public schools, and I'm 43 years old. That has been a settled issue in public schools for a long time, my entire adult life and beyond.

So my guess is some folks are quite a bit older than me.

Yes, I predate Engel v. Vitale (1962). I can just remember Eisenhower.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: FireDragon76
Upvote 0
This site stays free and accessible to all because of donations from people like you.
Consider making a one-time or monthly donation. We appreciate your support!
- Dan Doughty and Team Christian Forums

FireDragon76

Well-Known Member
Supporter
Apr 30, 2013
30,474
18,454
Orlando, Florida
✟1,249,090.00
Country
United States
Faith
United Ch. of Christ
Marital Status
Legal Union (Other)
Politics
US-Democrat
The issue is not the religiousness or lack of religiousness of the practice, but the spirituality involved, a somewhat different issue.

I think it would be best on a opt in basis.

There may be potential problems of spiritual crisis in some practitioners because western societies have historically placed an accent on the conscious mind and reasoning they therefore have little experience in meditative practices. Its not for no reason as I have mentioned several times on these forums that even Jung cautioned westerners from dabbling in eastern meditative practices.

Spending 5-10 minutes a day on mindfulness is not going to provoke a spiritual crisis. People have to go on multi-day retreats for that to happen, and even then, it's relatively rare and usually restricted to people with pre-existing psychological problem, such as repressed traumatic incidents.
 
Upvote 0

FireDragon76

Well-Known Member
Supporter
Apr 30, 2013
30,474
18,454
Orlando, Florida
✟1,249,090.00
Country
United States
Faith
United Ch. of Christ
Marital Status
Legal Union (Other)
Politics
US-Democrat
That's not the case in my experience.

There's a difference between somebody teaching mindfulness from a humanistic perspective, and a New Ager prone to wooly thinking who believes they have magical powers. The trances that New Agers engage in having nothing to do with mindfulness and Zen.
 
Upvote 0

FireDragon76

Well-Known Member
Supporter
Apr 30, 2013
30,474
18,454
Orlando, Florida
✟1,249,090.00
Country
United States
Faith
United Ch. of Christ
Marital Status
Legal Union (Other)
Politics
US-Democrat
What you described creates the gateway to the sorcery oriented network.

If that's the case, then the "gateway" is always open, whatever one engages in. I would submit that trying to achieve a basic sanity and self-knowledge makes one less likely to be deluded, not moreso.

Isn't mindfulness basically the same practice as zenbuddhism?

There are quite a few that were also trained in the Buddhist Thai Forest tradition, which focuses alot on mindfulness. Anybody that calls their practice vipassana for instance. The Thai Forest tradition is relatively accessible because many of them did not focus heavily on the doctrinal aspects of Buddhism; more than a few were Buddhist Modernists (the Buddhist equivalent of liberal Protestants).
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

Pedra

Newbie
Mar 6, 2015
1,134
619
✟36,360.00
Faith
Baptist
Marital Status
Married
Nothing religious here. So what there is meditation in Buddhism or Hinduism. How about Ramadan fasting in Islam? Should we protest certain diets because they somehow resemble this Muslim practice? Absurd. Totally absurd.

It just shows blindness of religious folks today. So many real issues are never addressed, everybody is happy and content. Like government attacking foreign countries to get hold of their natural resources (Iraq, Lybia, etc). Or limiting our freedoms in the name of security.

Schools are easy targets, that's all... So sad, I'm ashamed to be a Christian when I hear about things like that....
You really know nothing about the practice then and your comment is an example why the author Warren Smith who speaks in churches about his experience as a New Age practitioner prior to becoming a Christian was very shocked at the gullibility & total lack of spiritual knowledge or discernment in the average churches.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

FireDragon76

Well-Known Member
Supporter
Apr 30, 2013
30,474
18,454
Orlando, Florida
✟1,249,090.00
Country
United States
Faith
United Ch. of Christ
Marital Status
Legal Union (Other)
Politics
US-Democrat
That must've been very interesting. Are they one of the forms of western monasticism which adhere to a vow of silence? Forgive me, but I can't remember which ones do and which don't. (And monasteries are generally fairly quiet anyway.)



Of course. The point is not to make everyone be Coptic people. I didn't magically become an Egyptian when I joined the Coptic Orthodox Church either, but if they can get something from the teachings anyway, then who really cares? Neither were all of the desert fathers or for that matter even the 'Coptic' popes ethnic Egyptians (consider Abba John the Persian, the great Roman fathers like Abba Arsanios, Abba Maximos, etc.), because that doesn't matter at all. Orthodoxy is Orthodoxy, whether you want to present it that explicitly or not. I believe everyone can benefit from a daily prayer rule, and this is the one of my particular Church and tradition.



Again, everyone can benefit from a daily prayer rule, even more so than these children could benefit from contentless meditation. With respect, I think you may be making more than I intended of the form. The Coptic practice of chanting or praying the Agpeya is but one ancient form of Christian prayer which encourages mindfulness. There are certainly others:

Benedictine

Indian Orthodox Syrian

Syriac Orthodox (Mesopotamian -- Iraq, Turkey, Syria, etc.)

Etc.

And all of these are fully adaptable and adapted to the local languages and cultures to the extent that they thus far have been so adapted (e.g., Syriac prayers in Malayalam in the Indian case, or Coptic prayers in Spanish for the Bolivian Coptic Church, etc.), as Christianity has always striven to be. So again, the matter is not the form (all of these just come in particular forms precisely because of their adaptation by people in particular places and times; if Westerners don't have their own forms then it's just because they've forgotten them -- it's not like St. John Cassian or Benedict of Nursia cease having ever existed because modern day Westerners would rather watch Netflix than pray or something), so much as presenting deeply rooted and meaningful Christian alternatives to contentless, generically "Eastern" or "New Age" meditation, so that conservative Christians don't have to freak out about it, since they'd know that Christianity has both mindfulness and content, in every place it has ever gone and among every people.

I tend to see this sort of thing as a defensive reaction among people who do not necessarily have or know that they have such roots in their own religion, and are afraid of losing their children to more "hip" and trendy things, like generic new age-y "Spiritual but not Religious" piffle. That's a real fear, for sure, but the answer is not to rage about the piffle! The answer is to present the alternative which will resonate in your society or your community or your family (probably not at a public school, unless you want to make a big scene; though there is nothing that would stop your child from bringing a Psalm book to school and praying from it privately during the meditation time, I wouldn't imagine), whether it comes from here, there or anywhere. So long as it is orthodox, who can fear anything? Either God is with us or He isn't, and I believe He is.

Psalm 57 (56) in English, according to the Agpeya. How sweet it is. +

"O Sing Unto Him" -- Midnight Praise in English, another worthy, God-honoring alternative to the emptiness of the New Age

Indeed, monastic spirituality is not inaccesible for modern people, even from very different religious traditions. I watched a BBC video series several months ago, Extreme Pilgrim, about Peter Owen Jones, a British vicar in the Church of England (and relatively liberal), and on one episode he travels to Egypt to be with Fr. Lazarus el-Anthony in the desert. He spends 30 days as a hermit with Fr. Lazarus. Though it was probably his most "foreign" religious experience as a minister in a Protestant church, he was able to appreciate the experience in the end.

I think some people aim very low in their spirituality and they let fear hem them in too much. The only way to grow spiritually is to be engaged with our dark side, not to run away from it out of fear that we can't deal with it.
 
Upvote 0
This site stays free and accessible to all because of donations from people like you.
Consider making a one-time or monthly donation. We appreciate your support!
- Dan Doughty and Team Christian Forums

FireDragon76

Well-Known Member
Supporter
Apr 30, 2013
30,474
18,454
Orlando, Florida
✟1,249,090.00
Country
United States
Faith
United Ch. of Christ
Marital Status
Legal Union (Other)
Politics
US-Democrat
Your comment reminds me of the sorry state of most of the worldly liberal churches, they never got past milk.

Your comment is ignorant and based off preconceived notions of what you think makes one a liberal. I have actually delved into Christian spirituality in many forms, at one time I attended a conservative church about a decade ago but I realized that at some point, the answers it was giving didn't seem to match up with my experience of the world, so I moved on. I have drunk that milk, and I decided it was not particularly good milk.
 
Upvote 0
This site stays free and accessible to all because of donations from people like you.
Consider making a one-time or monthly donation. We appreciate your support!
- Dan Doughty and Team Christian Forums

FireDragon76

Well-Known Member
Supporter
Apr 30, 2013
30,474
18,454
Orlando, Florida
✟1,249,090.00
Country
United States
Faith
United Ch. of Christ
Marital Status
Legal Union (Other)
Politics
US-Democrat
Not at all. Mindfulness is about observing your own inner self without attachment not some "sorcery oriented network".

Some Christians are engaged in what they call in Zen makkyo. The whole spiritual warfare thing that people are drawing from in their critique of mindfulness, for instance, is nothing but playing around with the cobwebs and phantasms of the mind and thinking one is engaged in some profound experience, when in reality it is quite mundane and explained in terms of simple existential fears that are articulated within ones cultural context.


A typical ignorant polemical screed from the damaged mind of an authoritarian.
 
Upvote 0