When I was a kid, the only time religion ever disrupted the flow was if one of my classmates happened to be a Jehovah's Witness. And it was a brief disruption: once a month or so, that kid would have to go hang out in the library for half an hour while the rest of us sang "Happy Birthday" and ate cupcakes. Those kids didn't even come to school on the days when we had Halloween, Christmas, or Valentine's Day parties, and they always had to do generic crafts while the rest of us made construction paper jack-o-lanterns or menorahs. No big deal, but then, this was back in the dark ages when we still had fully funded physical education programs that were taken seriously.
And what does P.E. have to do with religion? In Quesnel, British Columbia it would seem that the two are one and the same. Christian parents in Quesnel are furious that their children are being taught yoga as part of a program to encourage physical activity and reduce childhood obesity, claiming that yoga is a religious practice that violates their own belief system. "There's God and there's the devil, and the devil's not a gentleman," says rancher Audrey Cummings. "If you give him any kind of an opening, he will take that." Interesting response when the issue at hand is the Smarties and Aero bars filling the openings of fat Canadian children.
The opinion that yoga practice is unchristian is a common one, although many Christians not only disagree, they practice with fellow Christians at church-sponsored classes. How this BC school decides to proceed is undetermined, but for now, the school board notes that students, like my classmates of yore, can just leave the room.
