chapter 3 Spiritual Property Rights to Bodily Practices: Pentecostal Views of Yoga and Meditation as Inviting Demonization

Candy Gunther Brown

Scholars have, over the past several decades, paid growing attention to the in- terplay of embodied practices and religious meanings. Research explores the human body as both a biological organism and a socially constructed field of interpretation, and investigates how bodily experiences shape as well as ex- press religious beliefs and practices (Coakley 1997; Fuller 2013). There has also been an explosion of interest in pentecostalism,1 including exploration of the embodied practices of divine healing and deliverance from demons (Goodman 1988; Cuneo 2001; Opp 2005; Curtis 2007; Brown 2011; McCloud 2015). There is, in addition, intriguing sociological evidence that participation in even “secu- larized,” or purely physical, forms of yoga and meditation facilitates religious and spiritual experiences, including adoption of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs (Greeson et al. 2011; Park et al. 2014). This latter data set awaits adequate the- oretical interpretation. Scholars have cautioned against the hazards, amidst the pursuit of theorization, of making pentecostal explanations of experience unrecognizable or simply replacing spiritual with medical and psychological interpretations of the world (Taves 1999, 2009; Glucklich 2001; Csordas 2002). Pentecostal ontologies and epistemologies of body and spirit have, nev- ertheless, remained largely opaque to non-pentecostals. When, for instance, pentecostals warn that the performance of bodily practices such as yoga and meditation are “inherently” religious and make one vulnerable to infesta- tion by demons, most Americans greet such claims as nonsensical: reflecting naïve essentialism and xenophobia. Certain scholars of yoga and meditation have themselves joined in disparaging pentecostal concerns—as, for instance, expressing “yogaphobia” (Jain 2015). It is not simply that non-pentecostals

1 I use the lower-case “pentecostalism” as an umbrella term that encompasses Classical Pen- tecostal denominations that trace their origins to the 1900s, the ecumenical Charismatic movement that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s, and other Christian groups (including moderately Charismatic churches such as Calvary Chapel) that affirm the continuation of gifts of the Holy Spirit (and the activity of demonic spirits) after the Apostolic era.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004344181_005

56 Brown disagree with pentecostal critiques, but that different foundational assump- tions make pentecostal concerns incomprehensible to many non-pentecostals. Pentecostal assessments of yoga and meditation as spiritually dangerous presume that embodied practices can be more than physical exercises; they can invite spiritual occupation. Many pentecostals envision the body as a dwelling place shared with spiritual entities—either the Holy Spirit or de- mons—who can be summoned, intentionally or unintentionally, to take up residence by the performance of physical postures and meditative breathing techniques. The risks are particularly great when performing choreographed sequences co-authored, and thus owned, by demonic spirits, or when empty- ing the mind, thereby creating a vacuum ready to be filled. Pentecostals claim to know that demons exist through their sensible effects on the body. Accounts of deliverance from yoga and meditation spirits often include detailed descrip- tions of bodily sensations and involuntary movements or speech that accom- pany and provide evidence of the dislodging of unwelcome spiritual residents and infilling by the Holy Spirit. This chapter performs a close reading of testimonials written by pentecos- tals who claim to have become infiltrated by demons through their practice of yoga and/or meditation, and subsequently delivered and filled with the Holy Spirit. Such narratives offer a revealing window onto pentecostal understand- ings of body and spirit. This understanding is important for the subsequent project of developing a theory that explains how the performance of embod- ied practices such as yoga and meditation may affect religious perception.

Non-pentecostal Assumptions about Body and Spirit

Non-pentecostals (as well as some pentecostals) by and large cannot fathom pentecostal worries about yoga or meditation. Both scientific naturalists and non-pentecostal evangelical Christians view the physical world as a closed system. Spiritual entities are either non-existent or practically irrelevant to everyday life. Humans, by contrast, have a high degree of agency: to express individualism and socially construct meanings. The Protestant version of Christianity that has predominated in American history is Word, rather than practice, oriented. This model defines religion as constituted by the verbal ex- pression of beliefs: to “declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead” (Rom. 10:9). In cessationist the- ology—invented by John Calvin and dominant in Reformed Protestantism— Jesus performed miraculous healings and cast out demons in biblical times, but such supernatural feats thereafter ceased since they were no longer necessary