CultNEWS101 Articles: 7/19/2024 (New Zealand, Legal, Gloriavale, India, Kalia, Kidney Cult, Raelians, Switzerland, Yoga)

New Zealand, Legal, Gloriavale, India, Kalia, Kidney Cult, Raelians, Switzerland, Yoga

The Post: Former Gloriavale members prepare to sue Government

Former Gloriavale "slaves" are preparing to sue the Crown for not protecting them at the closed community.

The case has yet to begin but the intended plaintiff wants details about an inter-departmental committee set up nine years ago to look at the remote community on the West Coast.

After a win in the Employment Court where six women raised at Gloriavale were found to have been employees, and not just working as part of their commitment to the Christian community, their lawyer Brian Henry was seeking information he said was needed to file documents to start the next case.

Associate Judge Andrew Skelton reserved his decision at the High Court in Wellington on Tuesday.

Henry said it was thought there would be about 46 former Gloriavale members to make the claim. They needed to identify public servants who were negligent and then they could sue. The aim was to make the Crown liable for the actions of the public servants.

The Crown had evidence that the first intended plaintiff, Anna Courage, and others who would join her were in slavery and that Gloriavale was a slave camp, Henry said."

India TV: Indian-origin cult guru 'Kalia', who called himself 'God on Earth' raped his devotees, UK court fines £8M

"An Indian-origin "guru", who styles himself as the head priest of a religious society in England, is being sued for millions of pounds in the High Court in London this week over sexual assault allegations

brought by women who were his former "disciples". Rajinder Kalia, 68, is the defendant in an ongoing trial accused of using his sermons and teachings, as well as the purported performance of "miracles", to unduly influence followers' actions. The court has imposed a fine of 8 million pounds.

The claimants in the case, all of Indian origin, had won a previous legal fight two years ago after a judge allowed the case to proceed to trial. "There are triable issues to be determined in this case, with many of the factual issues being intertwined and subject to the claimants' cases as to the coercive control that the defendant (Kalia) exercised over them," Judge Deputy Master Richard Grimshaw concluded in June 2022."

7 News Spotlight: The dark reality of the Kidney Cult

Liam Bartlett investigates Australia's most dangerous doomsday cult and how it is connected to the worst mass suicide since Jonestown. Praying on vulnerable Aussie teenagers, this cult encourages its followers to donate their kidneys for God.

AFP: Top rights court upholds Swiss ban on UFO group's posters

"Raelian movement founder Claude Vorilhon, also known as Rael, answers questions during a press conference in 2004. More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe's top rights court ruled Friday the sect's free speech had not been violated.

More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe's top rights court ruled Friday the sect's free speech had not been violated. Police in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel in 2001 banned the Raelian group, which claims aliens created life on earth, from putting up the posters.

The local ban came after other authorities in Switzerland had allowed the posters. Neuchatel officials said the posters presented a public order threat because Raelians promote human cloning and "geniocracy," a system where leaders are picked according to their intelligence.

Additionally, a Swiss court found the Raelians had "theoretically" advocated paedophilia and incest, the European Court of Human Rights said in a statement Friday. The group had also been the subject of criminal complaints about sexual practices involving children, the court said. Swiss high courts affirmed the ban and Europe's top rights court in January 2011 upheld the decision. The Raelians then appealed the Strasbourg-based court's decision, ultimately winning an appeal for the Grand Chamber to hear the case. The 17-member chamber ruled Friday, nine to eight, that the Raelians' freedom of expression was not violated."

RNS: New York City celebrates the 10th International Day of Yoga

In bustling Times Square, hundreds of yoga practitioners gathered to celebrate International Day of Yoga: an initiative from the UN that marks a decade this year.

" ... 'It felt like we were turning this place of Times Square, which is usually full of a lot of passion, a lot of that rajas energy, into a big yoga playground,' said Hu, the lead yoga teacher at New York's Bhakti Center, a spiritual community affiliated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Her voice booming across three stages in the crowded Times Square plaza, Hu, more commonly known by her initiated name Brinda Kumari Devi Dasi, led nearly 300 city residents to "connect your body, your breath, your mind," sharing stories of Lord Shiva, "the first creative being who practiced all 8,400,000 yoga poses."

Originally from Shanghai, Hu, who grew up atheist and moved to New York in 2012, says that before being introduced to Bhakti Yoga, a devotional form of yoga, she had "always been trying to search for the purpose of my life." Sharing the ancient wisdom of the yogic philosophy, she believes, is the reason she is on this planet. 'It's not just a physical workout class, but rather it's a way of helping us to connect with our souls. It teaches (us) how to conduct ourselves in society, how to interrelate with each other, how to deal with our internal world, but also gives us the compass of how to really live our lives.'"

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Have we reached peak yoga in the U.S.? The CDC wants to know

Pien Huang

NPR

June 12, 2024

In the U.S., about 1 out of 6 adults say they practice yoga, according to new survey data published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 80% are practicing to improve their health, and some 30% are using it to treat and manage pain.

“Yoga is a complementary health approach used to promote health and well-being,” says Nazik Elgaddal, an IT specialist at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics who co-authored a data brief on the topic.” The stretching and strengthening exercise has been shown to reduce stress and help with some types of neck and back pain.

The survey also found that women are twice as likely to do yoga than men – with more than 23% of U.S. women practicing it. Yoga is most popular among people who are Asian or White, though there are plenty of people who are Black, Hispanic or of other races doing yoga too. People with higher incomes were more likely to do yoga.

The survey did not distinguish between yoga done in person or online, notes Elgaddal, who takes yoga classes offered by her workplace on Zoom. It found that more than half of the respondents also meditate as a part of their practice.

The data comes from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey, and is published in a June 2024 data brief. Every five years, the NHIS includes questions on complementary health, including yoga.

A previous analysis showed that complementary approaches in the U.S. have grown in popularity over the past twenty years. Yoga experienced the largest increase in that time, going from being practiced by 5% of the adult population in 2002 to 16% in 2022.

In that time, yoga has become so ubiquitous that it’s hard to parse, says Ophelia Yeung, a senior research fellow at the Global Wellness Institute, which studies the economics of the $5.6 trillion global wellness industry. “There are lots of people doing [yoga] on different online platforms – Peloton, Apple Fitness, Netflix, Youtube” to name a few, Yeung says, “If you ask a consumer which part of their [subscription] spending is for fitness and which part is for entertainment, it’s all bundled,” she says.

It has also become more accessible over time, Yeung says, noting that there's now versions adapted for back injury, for inflexibility, for practicing with goats and dogs. There are also yoga classes designed to be welcoming for larger bodies, for those with disabilities and for populations such as school kids and veterans.

Yoga’s mainstream popularity has spawned yoga-influenced offshoots, such as mobility workouts and mindfulness, which are so evolved from its roots that the people who practice them may not realize they are related, says Rebecca D’Orsogna, a high school social studies teacher in New York who wrote a doctoral dissertation on the history of yoga in the U.S.

“Parts of the yoga practice are taken out of the context of yoga and put somewhere else…to the point where people are almost unwittingly doing it,” she says.

D’Orsogna traces the current yoga wave to the late 1960’s, when The Beatles brought an explosion of interest to the work of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation after a trip to India.

“[Western adopters] considered it to be ‘more authentic’ yoga because it is connected directly to India, as opposed to what had been cobbled together within the United States [before that],” she says, noting a periodic cropping up of interest in yoga in U.S. pop culture that stretches back to the naturalist philosophers of the 1800’s.

That thread of interest waxed with the new age movement in the 1970’s, and waned with the aerobics fitness trend in the 80’s, but it’s since gained a firm foothold in U.S. mainstream culture, D’Orsogna says. She says the practice is linked with women’s empowerment and self-actualization. “The overarching history of yoga in the United States is that people who popularize it use it for whatever the cultural moment calls for,” she says.

Yoga has become big business – the largest contributor to the “mindful movement” market, which also includes practices such as pilates and tai chi, worth $12.7 billion in the U.S. in 2022, according to data from the Global Wellness Institute. Mindful movement soared in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic – spending increased by 17% from 2019 to 2022 on things like classes, equipment and retreats – as people looked to it as a way to maintain fitness and alleviate stress, says Yeung.

Still, the benefits of yoga – stress relief, pain relief and cultivating a connection between the mind and the body – can be obtained for little to no money, Yeung says.

“There are tons of free opportunities online and in communities,” she says, such as videos on Youtube that offer high quality instruction. At its core, practicing yoga postures requires a clear surface and a willingness to stretch.

https://knpr.org/npr/2024-06-12/have-we-reached-peak-yoga-in-the-u-s-the-cdc-wants-to-know

CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/12/2022 (LDS, Covid, Lev Tahor, Guatemala, Legal, Swami Vishnudevananda, Abuse, Yoga Teacher Training)

LDS, Covid, Lev Tahor, Guatemala, Legal, Swami Vishnudevananda, Abuse, Yoga Teacher Training

RNS: COVID outbreak reported at Mormon missionary training center

All 588 missionaries at the Provo, Utah missionary training center were tested and a total of 91 tested positive.

An outbreak of COVID-19 has been reported at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' main training center for missionaries in Provo, Utah, church officials said Thursday.

The Provo Missionary Training Center, which resumed in-person training in June, requires all missionaries to be fully vaccinated and also conducts COVID-19 testing.

Face coverings will now be required in all indoor spaces and missionaries will not travel to their assigned missions unless they have tested negative for COVID-19 or have completed any necessary quarantine periods, said church spokesperson Sam Penrod.

 

Times of Israel: Man who escaped anti-Zionist Jewish cult returned to Guatemala in search of his son

"As Lev Tahor leadership sought to transport group to Iran, Israel Amir and team of ex-Shin Bet agents traveled across globe to search for 2-year-old boy.

A 22-year-old survivor of an ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist cult in Guatemala is in the midst of a years-long struggle to extract his two-year-old son from the hands of the leadership of the extremist group.

Israel Amir managed to escape the Lev Tahor cult while holed up in a Guatemala forest compound two years ago.

The group has been described as a cult and as the "Jewish Taliban," as women and girls older than three are required to dress in long black robes covering their entire body, leaving only their faces exposed. The men spend most of their days in prayer and studying specific portions of the Torah. The group adheres to an extreme, idiosyncratic reading of kosher dietary laws.

Lev Tahor was founded by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans in Jerusalem in the 1980s. The group fled to Canada and then to Guatemala in 2014 after coming under intense scrutiny by Canadian authorities for alleged child abuse and child marriage.

In November, two top leaders of the group, Nachman Helbrans and Mayer Rosner, were convicted by a federal court in New York of child sexual exploitation and kidnapping in a case involving a family that escaped from the cult.

Before leaving the cult, Amir filmed a video during which he described the brutality of the leaders, the lack of food and the extreme conditions at the compound. He sent the video to his cousins in Israel who flew to Guatemala and helped him leave. He has since been re-acclimating to life back in Israel, far away from the cult."

Conspirituality: Bonus Sample: The Inventor of Yoga Teacher Training Was a Rapist Obsessed with UFOs

"In 1969, Swami Vishnudevananda pioneered what has become a life transition ritual for the GenX and Millennial precariat: the Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) Programme. He was a cult leader rapist who thought yoga would help the world stare down a UFO invasion. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.

Not every YTT programme is bad—today's bonus host Matthew has worked in some good ones for over a decade. But on the whole, we're talking about an industry that has graduated up to 500K ppl over 50 years through a pseudo-educational process that has greased the epistemological pipeline towards conspirituality.

YTTs are unregulated by any academic or professional consensus. They are driven by the anxious charisma of urban yoga studio entrepreneurs who need to sell big-ticket products to counter the rising overheads of the gentrification they're helping to drive. Their curricula offers a pastiche of uncited resources. They pad contact hours with sermons and meditation sessions.

The typical YTT training manual is an unironic postmodern meat-grinder in which Iron Age philosophy and high school anatomy are blended with quotes from Carl Jung and Rumi. As an example, Matthew looks at a Jivamukti Yoga School manual from a 2007 training hosted at Omega Institute."

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Yoga in pandemic times: fitness or religion?

Religion Watch

Baylor University Institute for the Study of Religion

Volume 36 No. 4

A legal case in Switzerland is once again raising the question of the religious nature of yoga and similar practices, especially during a public health crisis. A yoga studio in the Swiss canton of Aarau has refused to shut its doors despite federal sanitary regulations temporarily banning sport and fitness activities, including yoga and dance studios. Yoga teacher David Scherwey considers his work a spiritual activity to which the country's rules allowing religious meetings with adequate distance and an upper limit of 50 participants should apply, according to reports in the Swiss media. While yoga and similar practices have been a matter of dispute in a variety of countries and contexts (e.g., in regard to the permissibility of teaching yoga at public schools), the case also touches on wider issues of the boundaries of religion in a time of individualized spiritual practices, writes Simon Hehli in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (February 5). On the welcome page of his yoga studio's website, Scherwey stresses that his teaching has nothing to do with "sports yoga" and asserts the spiritual dimension of yoga to be central.

Moreover, he states that the physical presence of yoga students is necessary to create a sacred space in which individuals can experience themselves as transcendental beings, something that a livestream class cannot replace. Because of this spiritual dimension, Scherwey claims that his yoga studio should enjoy the same measure of freedom granted to religious meetings despite the pandemic. In a legal brief made available on Scherwey's website, lawyer Patrick Villoz agrees that a 2013 decision of the Swiss Federal Court had considered some yoga exercises to be permissible at a kindergarten only to the extent that they were purely physical and not associated with any religious or sacred symbols.

Scherwey has insisted precisely that such practices be explicitly and openly spiritual, however. But such an argument has not convinced the local authorities, who argue that the simple claim that a practice is religious does not constitute sufficient grounds for making it a religion. The police have intervened to close the doors of the studio, but Scherwey has announced that he will not give up, and it looks likely that some judges will once again have to deal with the definition of religion and the nature of yoga.

(Website of Yoga Atelier (in German): http://www.yogaatelier.ch/)

http://www.religionwatch.com/yoga-in-pandemic-times-fitness-or-religion/

Does yoga have a conspiracy theory problem?

Joshua Cheetham

BBC News

February 14, 2021

Throughout her career as a yoga teacher, Seane Corn has been used to hearing students and colleagues rail against mainstream medicine. She even shares some of their concerns.

But when the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, Seane noticed a change.

"I started to get text messages and emails inviting me to speak on panels or listen to leaders talking about anti-vaccination - but within that, there was this rhetoric about Covid being a hoax," she told the BBC.

"They would then start to send me information about Big Pharma, which then led into information related to Bill Gates, then to sex trafficking," says Ms Corn. "I also saw a different language being used amongst my peers: 'The Great Awakening', 'The Storm', 'Where We Go One, We Go All'."

"All of that is total spirit speak - in yoga communities we could easily use a term like ['The Great Awakening] to be talking about liberation, freedom," adds Ms Corn.

But she recognised these phrases from another community as well: QAnon.

QAnon is a wide-ranging constellation of unfounded conspiracy theories, centred on the idea that a cabal of sex-trafficking Satanist paedophiles has infiltrated governments, businesses and media around the world - and that former US President Donald Trump is working to bring them down.

A number of supporters have been linked to violent crimes like the storming of the US Capitol in January.

Its appeal to members of the yoga community may come as a surprise to some. But since the start of the pandemic, a number of western yoga and "wellness" influencers used their their social media platforms to share QAnon conspiracies and discourage the use of face masks and vaccines.

Often content is posted with pictures of natural scenery and spiritual language to lend it more popular appeal - a phenomenon dubbed "pastel QAnon" by Marc-André Argentino, a doctoral student at Concordia University.

Several influencers have also advocated for "Save Our Children", a movement closely entwined with QAnon, which alleges that global elites are involved in child sex trafficking.

While experts in online extremism and disinformation say it's hard to conclude if this trend is on the rise within yoga, its presence is being documented.

Influencers like Stephanie Birch have been criticised for mixing QAnon-related hashtags like #greatawakening with yoga content and inspirational quotes.

"We are experiencing a spiritual warfare against mastery manipulating puppets that go back years," she writes in one Instagram post, featuring a picture of a blue sky.

Krystal Tini has come under the spotlight for spreading conspiracies too. Initially her Instagram account - with more than 150,000 followers - posted extensively on yoga and personal health, but more recently her feed has been filled with video rants about the coronavirus and vaccines.

In one video, which has been deleted, Krystal suggests that Covid vaccines "alter your DNA" and have "bypassed any kind of safety standards and testing".

Claims about alleged DNA alteration have been widely debunked by scientists, and Covid vaccines have gone through rigorous safety approvals, with tests on tens of thousands of people around the world.

Neither influencer has responded to requests for comment by the BBC.

'You've trained yourself in conspiratorial thinking'

Yoga itself is a collection of physical, mental and spiritual practices originating from ancient India.

Cultural historian Matthew Remski argues that yoga has always been driven by charismatic leaders touting alternatives to western medicine, and social media influencers are the natural successors of this tradition.

Yoga's emphasis on self-care and self-discovery chimes with people who feel abandoned by government and healthcare institutions, says Mr Remski, co-host of Conspirituality - a podcast exploring the link between conspiracy theories and New Age beliefs.

He says yoga also shares three core beliefs which are key to any conspiracy theory: everything is connected, nothing happens without a reason, and nothing is as it appears.

"If you have trained yourself in these forms of spirituality, you've actually trained yourself in conspiratorial thinking as well," says Mr Remski, a cult survivor.

With yoga studios being forced to close their doors during the lockdown, there's a strong financial incentive for influencers to make themselves stand out online, says Mr Remski. But it's a deeply personal matter as well.

"When you have trained yourself to believe that you are self-sufficient, that you are the source of your health… when a public health official comes around and says 'Actually, you may be an asymptomatic carrier of a disease that you're not aware of', that's really insulting," says Mr Remski.

Seane Corn and other members of the "wellness community" have issued a joint statement condemning the spread of QAnon conspiracies, saying it doesn't represent their "true values."

But while yoga might arguably encourage a tendency towards conspiracy theories, it's hard to say if conspiracy content is on the rise within yoga communities.

Independent researchers argue that it's a challenge to monitor because lots of false information is shared on private groups and chats, or on social media 'stories' which auto-delete after a brief time period.

Broad, spiritual language used by some influencers also makes it difficult for social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to detect content.

"Believers in conspiracy theories are a minority in the yoga and wellness world, but this active minority can drive its followers to radicalisation," says Cecile Guerin, a researcher at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue.

A study by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that influencers with "anti-vax views" - including those within the yoga community - have gained nearly eight million followers since 2019.

In all, 31 million people follow anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, and another 17 million subscribe to similar accounts on YouTube. The CCDH estimates that the movement is worth $1bn in advertising revenue for social media firms.

Despite the potential rise in follows, like and shares, measuring the real-world impact of this online spread is tricky.

"People aren't lemmings for every tweet they happen to see," says Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami. "Even if somebody happens to see a conspiracy theory by accident, unless they're already in tune with that, they're not just going to buy in."

Prof Uscinksi has conducted monthly polls on support for conspiracy theories in the US since 2012. He says that while conspiracy theories have gained more media attention, belief in them has remained consistently low.

To combat any potential threats in future, Seane Corn believes every yoga teacher must take a stand.

"I think there's a lot of really excellent teachers out there who don't believe in this, but they're like 'Let's just teach downward dog and everyone will figure it out on their own," says Ms Corn. "Hopefully there'll be some truth to that, but there does need to be teachers who are willing to speak to it because there is exploitation happening."

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55957298

 

CultNEWS101 Articles: 12/10/2020

Cult Deprogramming, Hillsong Church, LGBTQ, Religion, Yoga

Boss Hunting: Inside The Cowboy Industry Of 'Cult Deprogramming'

"In the 1970s, America quite literally lost its mind. Doomsday cults, satanic sects, and saffron-robed gurus were exerting undue influence upon thousands of Americans with fatal consequences. Desperate families paid a pretty penny for rogue operators to infiltrate cults and rescue their brainwashed loved ones by any means necessary. It spawned the entirely new, highly lucrative, and dubiously ethical industry of 'cult deprogramming.'

Vigilante 'deprogrammers' continue to operate today via covert means and legal loopholes. And their services are in high demand. Cult expert and former cult member himself, Steven Hassan, estimates that over 5,000 cults operate today in the United States alone."

" ... Over the decades, U.S. judges routinely granted parents and cowboy deprogrammers the authorization to (re)kidnap their children without a hearing.

Ted "Black Lightning" Patrick, was dubbed "The Father of Deprogramming." His skin was in the game after saving his own son from a cult known as The Children Of God. He deprogrammed over two thousand clients via abduction (daylight kidnappings with the assistance of his henchman), snapping (inflicting mental, emotional, and physical abuse to undo the cult's brainwashing), and releasing (a process of freeing an individual from their trancelike state).

US courts backed Patrick's argument that, by "artful and deceiving" means, cults were robbing people of their First Amendment Rights to think and choose.

Cult deprogrammers (used to) make serious bank
Although it didn't crack the highest-earning jobs list – not to mention Patrick had US$60 million in lawsuits pending against him by 1979 – cult deprogramming is highly lucrative. Can families put a price on the freedom of their loved ones?

In the Colombrito vs. Kelly case of 1978, one deprogrammer received a US$25,000 fee (inflating to US$100,000 today and approximately AU$140,000.) It is a niche market, with just a handful of operators carrying out thousands of conversions to date. However, the industry had to go underground following the monumental court case in 1995, Scott vs. Ross.

Deprogrammer Rick Ross was duped by Jason Scott, who faked his deprogramming and pressed charges. Scott's case was picked up by a powerful backer.
The Church of Scientology, growing frustrated with the anti-cult movement, funded Scott's civil suit in 1995. It bankrupted Ross and the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). Scientology bought the CAN assets and logo and runs it as a front for their own organisation. The case ended the lawful use of involuntary cult deprogramming.

How cult deprogramming works today
"Exit counselling" has since replaced coercive cult deprogramming, yet consists of many of the same players. Ross compares his counselling sessions to an intervention. It spans three to four days, in eight-hour lengthy sessions, alongside families and loved ones. However, by law, it must be voluntary.
The subject can leave at any time, and the cults have clocked on to it. Cults and questionable self-help groups train their members to sense it coming. Many parents enlist psychologists in covert operations to assist them in gaining conservatorship powers. Through conservatorship, they can explore more coercive measures."

Daily Mail: Disgraced sex addict Hillsong pastor who assaulted his wife and was barred from the church for using prostitutes reveals how he reinvented himself after year from hell left him suicidal

A disgraced former Hillsong church pastor claims he is 'stronger and happier' than ever after launching a new church.

Pat 'Pasquale' Mesiti created Reborn Ministries for churchgoers who have lost their way amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The church on Queensland's Sunshine Coast and features online Sunday sermons hosted by the 60-year-old, whose life fell apart in 2016. 

The self-confessed sex addict was caught sleeping with prostitutes in Darlinghurst and was stripped of his authority to preach in the Hillsong church.

He also pleaded guilty to assaulting his ex-wife Andrea, which he said left him considering taking his own life.

'In 2016 I lost everything — my marriage, my business, important relationships, my home, my family, my life, my reputation,' Mr Mesitis said in a video on the Reborn Ministries website.

'I thought suicide was the only option. I thought I had nothing to look forward to. God doesn't break us, he builds us.

'I've come back. I'm stronger, I'm in a happier place.'

NBC: Nearly half of LGBTQ adults are religious, U.S. study finds

This is considerably lower than the general U.S. population, where more than two-thirds say they are religious.

"Almost half of LGBTQ adults in the United States are religious, according to a recent report from the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute.

Of nearly 16,000 respondents polled in the Gallup Daily Tracking Survey, 47 percent were either moderately or highly religious. Those who were older, Black or lived in the South were the most likely to be religious, researchers found.

To determine religiosity, respondents were asked about service attendance and the importance of religion in their daily lives.

Respondents who said religion was not an important part of their daily life and they never or seldom attended services were categorized as "not religious." Those who indicated religion was important — even if they attended services less than once a month — were classified as "moderately religious," as were those who attended services weekly, even if they said religion was not important in their lives.

Respondents who said religion was an important facet of their daily life and they attended regular services were categorized as "highly religious."

By that metric, 27 percent were classified as moderately religious, 20 percent as highly religious and just over half (53 percent) as not religious."

Conspirituality: BONUS: YOGA TEACHERS ARE NOT DOCTORS, DOCTORS ARE NOT PRIESTS

"Do famous people become famous for staying in their lane? Do some find fame by carving out a lane that never existed before? What is the disruptive promise of charisma in this wellness space, which draws consumers burdened by a double disillusionment? They arrive, disillusioned by conventional medicine and conventional religion. What can the charismatic influencer offer them, and how do they do it?

In this last free bonus episode, Matthew explores the charismatic logic of wellness, in which yoga teachers can become famous by playing at being doctors,  and doctors can become famous by playing at being priests. Starting with the strange tale of BKS Iyengar (and how he stretched his way into all three roles through sheer will), this journey will lay out how the basic schtick of the 20th-century the wellness personality has primed the ground for our current explosion in conspirituality.

Matthew will look at how MDs like Tom Cowan, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, and Zach Bush all run the "Iyengar Arc" in reverse. Where the yoga master was unschooled in medicine, these doctors are unschooled in spirituality. But that doesn't stop them from pretending to be experts in a weird cocktail that fails both. In their aspirations to spiritual leadership, they each screw the pooch. Cowan ends up shilling for Rudolf Steiner, who knew nothing about viruses, and even less about how not to be a racist. Brogan thinks that Kundalini Yoga is "thousands of years old" even though it was invented by a sociopath in the 1970s. Northrup seems to think that angel channelers are qualified to tell people how to live. And Zach Bush recounts a mystical experience to a group of retreatants in Italy, in which he became a sardine, and realized he wasn't afraid to die—partly why he uses Reiki instead of pain medication when he's on the hospice shift.

Ultimately, the "charismatic collapse" between doctor and priest distorts medicine and makes spirituality banal." Perhaps if we see this clearly, we'll look for better leaders."

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

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Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

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Please forward articles that you think we should add to CultNEWS101.com.

CultNEWS101 Articles: 6/10/2020

Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, JonXArmy, Conspiracy Theories, Male Domestic Violence, Research, Yoga, Greek Orthodox

The Guardian: Australia's drug regulator launches court action against church touting bleach as Covid-19 cure

"Group's US arm wrote to Trump peddling 'wonderful detox' to 'rid the body' of coronavirusAustralia's drug regulator has started court proceedings against a "healing church" that promoted a solution containing industrial bleach as a cure for coronavirus, after the church failed to remove advertisements promoting the product from its website.
In May the Therapeutic Goods Administration fined the Australian chapter of the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing more than $150,000 for selling and promoting the solution containing sodium chlorite, a chemical used as a textile bleaching agent and disinfectant. The product is named Miracle Mineral Supplement and Miracle Mineral Solution on the church's MMS Australia website, which claimed it could prevent and treat a range of diseases including Covid-19. The TGA said the company had breached multiple advertising laws.
At the time, the TGA also informed MMS Australia that it must also immediately remove all advertisements in breach of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, and warned that court action might be started if the advertisements were not removed within two days. But MMS Australia did not remove the ads. Instead, it updated the website to say those seeking miracle cures should also 'pray to The Lord for healing and guidance'."

SFIST: Conspiracy Theorists Now Promoting Rumor That George Floyd Didn't Die On YouTube and Twitter

"It's been a week since a Minneapolis police officer was seen on video pressing his knee into the neck of an unarmed black man who subsequently died. And it didn't even take that long, as the nation's cities were plunged into chaos in the last several days amid vociferous protests, for the conspiracy theories to take hold on social media.
Jon Miller of the JonXArmy channel on YouTube posted a 22-minute video on Friday suggesting that George Floyd's death was faked. As the New York Times reports, that video was subsequently shared around 100 times, mostly in QAnon lunatic groups, reaching some 1.3 million people.
Also, the phrase "George Floyd is not dead" was spreading on Twitter over the weekend and reportedly peaked on Monday morning, with 15 separate mentions in a 10-minute span.
Zignal Labs, which tracks online activity and has done so during other times of protest around the globe, finds that the protests stemming from George Floyd's death have already far surpassed the online-mention activity than did the Yellow Vest movement in France or the Hong Kong protests last year, with 8.8 million mentions as of Friday."

University of Central Lancashire: If you are a male victim of partner abuse or domestic violence you are encouraged to respond to this survey.

The Office of National Statistics shows that one in three victims of domestic abuse is male.  There is also a growing body of evidence that shows that women perpetrate partner violence at similar rates to men.  Despite this, there are relatively few studies examining the experiences of male victims.  This survey aims to evaluate the experiences of partner violence for male victims.

What will I be asked to do?

Your participation is important as you have been in a relationship where there has been the presence of partner abuse/coercive control. If you wish to proceed, you will be asked to complete an online survey that will take approximately 30 - 45 mins.  The survey includes questions regarding you and your experience within the abusive relationship.  It also includes psychological scales to measure; the behaviour within the abusive relationship, post-traumatic stress symptoms, types of coping and post-traumatic growth.

BBC: Greek Orthodox Church rules yoga is 'incompatible' with Christianity

"Downward dog, sun salutations and all other yoga practices are "absolutely incompatible" with the Christian faith, the powerful Greek Orthodox Church has said.

Yoga has no place "in the life of Christians," the governing body of the Church has ruled.

It said it intervened after Greek media recommended yoga as a way to combat stress during coronavirus quarantine.

Other religions have also advised against the practice in the past.

The Orthodox Church is an influential organisation in Greece, and 90% of Greeks identify as Orthodox, according to a 2017 Pew Research Centre report.

"[Yoga] is a fundamental chapter in Hindu religion... it is not a 'kind of physical exercise'," the Holy Synod said in its statement on Wednesday.

Although it is not unheard of for religious authorities to criticise yoga, correspondents say it is unusual for the Orthodox Holy Synod to issue a public statement on the matter.

Appearing on a Greek TV network on Thursday, an Orthodox priest defended the Synod's statement.

The church's opposition is based on the "experience of those who practised yoga", Father Michael Konstantinidis said, explaining that "if yoga offered what man wanted, we would be happy".

The ancient spiritual practice has connections to Hinduism and Buddhism. It is referenced in Indian texts from 2,500 years ago and has evolved over time, according to Dr Mark Singleton, who has researched the history of yoga."

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