Friday, January 20, 2023

Making sweat feel spiritual didn’t start with SoulCycle – a religion scholar explains

Fitness and religion make a potent combination, one people have explored for centuries.

A studio set up for a SoulCycle event in New York City. (Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

January 9, 2023

(The Conversation) — Each January, Americans collectively atone for yet another celebratory season of indulgence. Some proclaim sobriety for “Dry January.” Others use the dawn of a new year to focus on other forms of self-improvement, like taking up meditation or a new skin care routine. But adopting a new fitness plan is the most popular vow.

Fitness experts insist that the best kind of exercise is the one you will do regularly – the one you can view as a joy, not a chore. And as more and more bespoke boutique fitness programs pop up, some devotees seem to take this advice even further. The notion that fitness is a religion – a place where people find community, ritual and ecstatic experience – has become a common refrain.

Can fitness really be a religion? Given the difficulty of defining religion, it’s an almost impossible question to answer. Is religion about belonging? Transcendence? Feeling the divine? Is it scripture, traditions or creeds? Religions can have all of these traits, or none of them.

Perhaps the better questions to ask are why fitness and religion make such a potent combination, or why people see fitness as religious – ideas I explore in my research on CrossFit and SoulCycle.

Working out with God

There is ample evidence of fitness trainers, influencers and companies unabashedly incorporating religious language, sentiments and practices into their exercise routines.

Take Peloton’s superstar cycling instructor Ally Love. A former theology student, Love offered sermonlike messages on topics such as accountability and selflessness, and occasionally played music from Christian artists during her weekly “Sundays with Love” rides, prompting some riders to argue that Peloton should label her content as Christian.

Then there are explicitly faith-based programs using fitness to enhance religious practice. The Catholic workout SoulCore integrates prayers of the rosary with core exercises, stretches and functional fitness movements to “draw others closer to Christ.” A “Neshama Body & Soul” class offered by a Conservative Jewish synagogue in Saratoga, California, meanwhile, combines prayers with jumping jacks, planks and lunges.

Religion, remixed

More common than traditionally religious fitness programs, though, are ones that borrow the trappings of religion and more subtly tap into spiritual experience.

SoulCycle, another iconic indoor cycling program, makes regular use of religious aesthetics, ritual and language in its classes. Instructors may talk about the cosmic energy radiating from the class or guide riders through opening their spiritual centers, or chakras. In candlelit rooms, instructors praise strong efforts by presenting selected riders a candle to blow out during the “soulful moment” of class. This soulful moment comes at the end of the 45-minute class arc, designed to deliver a breakthrough moment of spiritual or personal revelation and catharsis by combining the natural high of physical intensity with spiritualized self-help messaging.

Two women walk by a storefront with inspirational messaging on the wall.

An Equinox fitness center in Brooklyn, New York.
Angela Weiss /AFP via Getty Images

Other fitness trends, like CrossFit and the meetup group November Project, are less intentional about incorporating religious messaging. However, they’ve garnered reputations for being religious or cultish because of how intensely they foster community. Special jargon – like “WOD,” which stands for workout of the day – as well as annual activities and special commemorations like “hero workouts,” which honor people killed in the line of duty, solidify the religious comparisons.

CrossFit, in particular, has also attracted overtly Christian exercisers, with some of its most famous athletes publicly professing their faith.

Centuries of connection

To understand the relationship between fitness and religion, it helps to look at their history.

First, fitness itself is a relatively new concept. While there are certainly ancient accounts of sport and military training, the idea that one ought to exercise for health, enjoyment and community is a modern invention, a response to increasingly sedentary jobs and cultures.

But while voluntary exercise is new, intense physical regimens to connect with the divine are not. People have long experimented with ways to generate a sense of transcendence, to stir emotions, or to spur self-reflection through bodily discipline. The Siddhas, mystics in ancient India, developed unique physical practices in an attempt to achieve enlightenment, render the body divine and, ultimately, become immortal beings. Or consider 12th century Taoist ascetics who thought sleep deprivation could bring them closer to the truth. Catholic saints practiced self-mortification, such as wearing itchy sackcloth, to encourage humility and to create greater compassion for the suffering of others.

Religious fixations with the body highlight an abiding paradox: Many faiths view the body as a temple, but also a hazard to the soul. They teach that the body must be disciplined and tamed, yet honored as a conduit to the divine.

Training the body to move the soul along a path toward salvation did not disappear with modernization. Rather, movements like “muscular Christianity” arose at the turn of the 20th century, blending fitness and bodybuilding techniques with Christian piety. The YMCA, for example, opened gyms to train physical and moral strength in young Christian men. As religion scholar Marie Griffith writes, such movements reinforced a message that “fit bodies ostensibly signify fitter souls.”

A black and white drawing of men in uniform exercising in rows in a large room.

Wooden engraving of a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) gymnasium opened in London in 1888.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Evangelical sports ministries took off later in the 1950s, followed by the U.S. yoga boom in the late 20th century. Together, these developments underscored the enduring connection between flesh and spirit, and primed 21st century exercisers to readily accept spirituality as part and parcel of their fitness routines.

Shopping for fulfillment

This history is important, yet it is incomplete. Most journalists and cultural analysts who write about fitness as religion also cite the decline of traditional religious belonging as the reason people are finding spiritual fulfillment in other settings. People’s religious needs have not disappeared, they argue, rather they appear remixed and re-bundled for the modern secular consumer.

Fitness entrepreneurs use this explanation, as well.

“That stuff that happened on Sunday morning at church or in your synagogue is still important to human beings,” John Foley, founder and CEO of Peloton, stated in a 2017 talk. People want “candles on the altar and somebody talking to you from a pulpit for 45 minutes – the parallels are uncanny. In the ’70s or ’80s, you’d have a cross or Star of David around your neck. Now you have a SoulCycle tank top. That’s your identity, that’s your community, that’s your religion.”

As Foley’s quote highlights, the market is not only responding to people’s desire for ritual, guidance, spirituality, reflection – and even a sense of salvation. Rather, companies are also feeding into those desires, and helping to generate them.

Religious objects and experiences have long been available for purchase, but boutique fitness trends show today’s market logic at work: the idea that if you have a personal, spiritual need, there must be a product out there for it. Various seemingly secular companies have attempted to sell spiritual fulfillment, but few have been as successful as for-profit fitness companies that can capitalize on the long history of pairing the status of the body with the status of the soul.

The next time you hear a friend assert that fitness is their new religion, know that it might not be just hyperbole. Rather, it reflects how religious meanings attached to the body have endured, transformed – and are now available for purchase at the nearest fitness studio.

(Cody Musselman, Postdoctoral Research Associate, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

As smudging goes mainstream, concerns rise over appropriation, overharvesting

Along with the popularity of white sage comes concern about cultural appropriation, as well as overharvesting.

Smudge sticks made of bundled white sage. Photo by Ginny Rose Stewart/Unsplash/Creative Commons

January 12, 2023

Emily McFarlan Miller

(RNS) — In their online metaphysical shop Quiiroi, Kitha sells bundles of rosemary, cedar and black sage, as well as mugwort, though they are sold out of that at the moment.

They don’t, however, sell white sage.

That particular herb is a gift from the land meant for Indigenous people, they said.

The 23-year-old witch started Quiiroi in 2020 because they didn’t want to support other metaphysical, New Age and witchy businesses where they felt like their Indigenous culture was being commodified and watered down — in particular, by selling white sage.

“I started my shop because I was always raised with those Indigenous values, and one of those values is that, like, we don’t own Earth. We cannot sell something that we don’t own,” said Kitha, who said their father is Indigenous to Puerto Rico and their mother to the Americas.

“I cannot sell you something, I cannot profit off of something, I cannot financially benefit from something that is meant to be a gift.”

Burning white sage to cleanse a person or space or to attract positive energy has become trendy in recent years, with sage bundles appearing everywhere from starter witch kits to luxury grocery stores. While smudging with sage is often promoted as part of wellness routines, the religious practices around the ritual end up largely removed.

But along with the popularity of white sage comes concern about cultural appropriation, as well as overharvesting.

It’s all “very American,” according to Rosalyn LaPier, an ethnobotanist, environmental historian and professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Americans have a tendency not only to appropriate cultures, but also to “simplify and reduce them down to the point where it’s not identifiable anymore by the people in that group,” said LaPier, who is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis. She is not a witch.

Rosalyn LaPier. Courtesy photo

White sage is considered sacred in many Indigenous cultures, which all have different stories and teachings about and uses for the plant, she said.

For the Blackfeet, burning sage, or “smudging,” is one form of purification that takes place before interacting with the divine, LaPier said. People might smudge themselves or an object they might use as part of their spiritual practice or a place that might be used for ceremony.

Many religions have similar purification rituals, she pointed out. Catholics cross themselves with holy water before entering a church. Muslims wash their faces, hands, arms and feet before praying. Several traditions use incense to purify spaces or objects.

So, she said, she’s not sure what people think smudging is doing when it’s disconnected from Indigenous spirituality.

“The way I grew up understanding this process, and from talking with elders about this process, that it is something that is definitely connected to religion and religious practice, and it’s not something that you would do unless you were going to interact with the supernatural realm, with the divine,” she said.

It’s not meant to be used for “house cleaning,” said LaPier. “It’s something deeper than that.”

That commercialization has caused problems because white sage is mostly wildcrafted, meaning it’s collected in the wild, rather than farmed, she said. LaPier pointed to reports that white sage has been overharvested to meet demand in the southwestern United States, California and northern Mexico.

Some Native Americans believe it is important to share Native spiritual practices with non-Native people, as one Women’s Health article about smudging pointed out.

“We are more than willing to teach people, to show people our ways,” Shilo and Shawna Clifford, who are Oglala Lakota and own Native Botanicals, told the magazine last year.

“We are just not willing to give others the keys and have them drive away with what is ours. They have to respect that.”

Bundled white sage is burned. Photo by Brittany Colette/Unsplash/Creative Commons

Kitha acknowledged, too, that white sage is meant to be shared.

But after centuries of boarding schools that separated Indigenous children from their families and culture, as well as laws that made Indigenous spiritual practices illegal until the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act, Kitha said, “At this point in time, we deserve to be able to heal and reclaim what’s ours.”

The commodification of white sage is making it hard once again for Indigenous people to access their spiritual practices, they said.

“It’s getting harder and harder to find. And it’s getting harder and harder to find at a reasonable price point. And we should not even be buying it in the first place because it’s part of our teachings to not sell it,” they said.

LaPier also laments how the sudden trendiness of smudging has flattened the significance of the practice.

“One of the things I would say about sort of the secularizing of smudging is that it really is kind of a reductionist way of looking at Indigenous culture, and of reducing it down to sort of a very simple understanding and a simple method — using one plant, versus lots of different plants for lots of different reasons,” she said.

Peg Aloi. Courtesy photo

Peg Aloi, who calls herself “an older modern Pagan witch,” remembers conversations about cultural appropriation when white sage became popular in Pagan circles back in the 1980s and 1990s, when she first became involved in the witch community.

At the time, Aloi said, there was a lot of overlap between witchcraft and New Age circles. Many Pagans hosted sweat lodges or smudged with sage — “what we now know was appropriating” Native American practices, she said.

So Aloi was surprised when researching ways to spiritually cleanse a building last month that the top results online were still dominated by white sage.

“It’s unfortunate that this is a trend that we already reckoned with decades ago, and here it is again, and the problem once again is lack of education, lack of awareness and, unfortunately, white entitlement. I hate to say that, but that’s really kind of what’s at the center of it,” she said.

“Even though we do have a lot more ethnic diversity in the modern witch community these days, it’s still primarily a white movement.”

Witchcraft sees renewed interest every decade or so, she said, and its current iteration has been fueled by new social media platforms. First there were Tumblr and Instagram witches. Now, there’s #WitchTok.

But while information is made aesthetically pleasing and easily accessible on social media, Aloi said, it often lacks the depth of engagement or knowledge of, say, the shared library beginner witches pored over decades ago.

For instance, while smudging with white sage is widely discussed online, there are many other ways people can cleanse a space spiritually using plants or other items that may come from their own cultures. Some witches don’t use any physical component for cleansing, she said, but she likes something more hands-on.

She ended up using some of her mainstays for the cleansing: rosemary, which she read was used as incense in ancient Rome — something that connects with her Italian heritage — and salt, which is associated with cleansing and purification in many cultures. She also used rosewater, but, she said, “Honestly, that’s just because I’m a gardener.”

If Kitha needs to cleanse something spiritually, they’ll reach for lavender, rosemary or cedar.

If they need a boost of happiness, it might be orange peel or marigold.

So many people seem to view white sage as a “wonder drug,” Kitha said. “But that’s not really what it is. People don’t understand, and, you know, they don’t have the relationship to the plant to understand.”

Different plants have different uses, they said.

Instead of turning to white sage as a spiritual catchall considering all the concerns about its use, they suggested people take the time to form relationships with other plants, to learn the history and folklore surrounding them, to find something that meets a specific need.

“One of the fun things is when you break from the mold of just using white sage for everything, you get to experience so much more,” they said.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that Rosalyn LaPier is not a witch.

Witchcraft isn’t scary on stereotype-busting ‘Comfy Cozy Witch Podcast’

Jennie Blonde says her message of comfort and coziness appears to be resonating not just with other witches, but with all people ‘who want to find a little bit more magick in their everyday.’

“Comfy Cozy Witch Podcast” logo, left, and founder Jennie Blonde. Courtesy images

January 4, 2023

Emily McFarlan Miller

(RNS) — It’s a good time to be comfy and cozy — especially if you’re the Comfy Cozy Witch herself, Jennie Blonde.

Blonde’s “Comfy Cozy Witch Podcast” won outstanding podcast of the year at the 2022 Witchcraft & Occult Media Awards, or “Witchies,” hosted in November by Modern Witch. Around the same time, it hit No. 1 among Spotify’s religion and spirituality podcasts in the United States and United Kingdom, a category dominated by Christianity, including messages by popular preachers like Joel Osteen and daily Bible reading podcasts.

The past year also saw the release of her book “Hearth & Home Witchcraft: Rituals and Recipes to Nourish Home and Spirit” and the continued popularity of her Comfy Cozy Witch account on Instagram, where she shares soft-hued images with “cozy ways to connect” to the sabbats and seasons, among other things.

The success of the podcast, “an audio version of a grimoire,” which she started near the beginning of the pandemic, came as a surprise to Blonde since, she said, she only releases episodes sporadically, doesn’t really know how to edit audio and hasn’t hosted any guests — except for her dog occasionally barking in the background.

But, she said, her message of nourishment and self-care appears to be resonating not just with other witches, but with all people “who want to find a little bit more magic in their everyday.”

“Until recently, I feel like most people would hear the word ‘witch’ or ‘pagan,’ and they would run the other way, because of what they’ve been taught through their beliefs,” she said.

“And I wanted to create this environment where people felt welcomed. ‘Witchcraft’ is not a scary word.”

Blonde, who identifies as a house and hearth witch on her website, talked to Religion News Service about her podcast, why she believes witchcraft is grounding and what it means to be a comfy, cozy witch. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Where did the idea to be the Comfy Cozy Witch come from?

My type of practice is very much centered on the hearth and home — ways to nourish my family through food and through protection, ways to nourish my home and the animals in my home. My practice is very much focused on everything that makes me feel warm and comforting inside.

Recent posts by Comfy Cozy Witch on Instagram. Screen grab

Recent Instagram posts by Comfy Cozy Witch. Screen grab

I feel like there is this stereotype of paganism and stereotype of witchcraft that you see from, yes, social media and you see from the media in general — this dark aesthetic, conjuring all of these scary things — but my practice has always been very comforting in nature to me.

So that’s how I came up with it. I’m just a comfy, cozy witch. My idea of witchcraft is to sit in the morning with a cozy cup of tea or coffee and meditate and do some journaling and pull some tarot or oracle cards and do some small rituals as the seasons change throughout the year. It’s all about being warm and comforting and cozy in my practice, finding magic in the everyday, little things.

What is hearth and home witchcraft?

It is finding small, tangible ways to connect to my practice on a daily basis. It is a person who finds magic in the everyday, whether that is packing my son’s lunch and saying a blessing over his peanut butter and jelly sandwich or whether that is cleaning my house and asking Hestia or Brigid, who are goddesses of domestic life and hearth and home, to watch my house and protect my home as I’m cleaning and adding corresponding oils and herbs into what I use to clean. It is someone who stirs warmth and comfort into my morning cup of tea through honey and through a little pinch of cinnamon. And it’s someone who honors the natural cycle of the Earth and the natural cycle of life and honors the changing of the seasons.

How are all the mundane things in everyday life magical, or how can people bring magic to those things?

For me, I think a lot of magic is in intention and setting intention around whatever it is that you’re doing — being intentional with choices you make, with what you put in your recipes, with how you decorate your home.

I start my morning with my morning ritual. I have my coffee or tea. Bringing magic into that experience is being very much in the present. When I add my cinnamon, I’m stirring it in three times, stirring it clockwise, which is inviting in warmth and protection and positivity because cinnamon is associated with those things. As I’m stirring that into my coffee, I am just thinking to myself, you know, ‘This is going to be a great day.’ And then I stir in my honey. Same thing: I invite in sweetness and kindness for my day.

Although some people might not see that as magical, per se, to me, that’s magic. That’s magical — ritualizing some of these things, not going through my morning in a habitual manner, but in a more ritualistic manner, inviting these qualities into my day, into my life.

A lot of people think of magic, too, with tarot cards and all of that. I pull my cards, and my journaling is reflecting on how the cards that I’ve pulled apply to my day, and it makes me go be a little introspective. Maybe I have just a very rosy, rainbow-and-butterfly approach to magic, but, to me, that’s magical.

Those little, tiny touches — picking out things to decorate my house. Lanterns represent light and hope, so the first thing you see in my house is a lantern because I want people to come in. I want them to feel welcomed and warm and that this is a hopeful, happy place. All of these little touches, to me, are bits of magic because there’s intention behind them.

Self-care comes up a lot in your book and Instagram posts. Can you explain how self-care is magical and part of what it means to be comfy cozy?

First, if we aren’t caring for ourselves, how can we care for those around us? I always come back to that when I think about self-care and the guilt so many feel over allowing themselves time to relax, take a bath, binge on a favorite cozy (or not cozy) show.

And self-care isn’t just about those ritual baths, and relaxation time; self-care also deals with our mental and physical health as well — letting our bodies move and connect with nature through a walk outside, allowing our minds to slow down in self- or guided meditation, for example. I find grounding myself through meditation or mindful movement or connecting to nature to be essential to my self-care and magical practice because the basis of any magical working is grounding.

Congress’ new class has much higher percentage of Christians than American public

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona, remains the only member of the new Congress who uses the description of religiously unaffiliated.

House members stand with their families as a prayer is read in the House chamber on the opening day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 3, 2023, in Washington.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

January 3, 2023

Adelle M. Banks

(RNS) — The religious makeup of the new Congress bucks the trends seen in American religious life, a new report finds.

The Pew Research Center says the Senate and House members are “largely untouched” by the continuing decrease in the portion of Americans who identify as Christian and the comparable increase in the share of those who say they do not have a religious affiliation.

Christians comprise 88% of the voting members of the 118th Congress who are expected to be sworn in this week (week of Jan. 3), a number that has not changed much since the 1970s, when 91% of members said they were affiliated with that faith.

The American population, on the other hand, has seen a drop in those identifying as Christians, from 78% in 2007 to 63% currently. Close to 3 in 10 Americans (29%) say they are religiously unaffiliated — atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” — a far larger portion than 16% in 2007.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona, remains the only member of the new Congress who uses the description of religiously unaffiliated. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., described himself as humanist. Huffman also said he was “the token humanist in Congress” when he spoke via videotaped remarks to the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s annual convention in October.

“The religious makeup of the 118th Congress” Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

Another 20 members are listed as having no known religious affiliations. Most of them declined to state an affiliation when asked by CQ Roll Call, whose data is the primary source of analysis for the Pew biennial report. The “Faith on the Hill” report noted that Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., was “moved to this category following revelations that he misrepresented parts of his life story and resume during his 2022 midterm campaign.”

The number of Christians — 469 — within the new Congress does mark the lowest number since Pew began its analysis of religious affiliation of the 111th Congress at the beginning of the 2009-10 session. But just by a hair. The number of Christians in Congress was above 470 in the eight most recent sessions and exceeded 500 as of 1970.

“Changes in the religious makeup of Congress (1961-2023)” Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

Overall, the 118th Congress looks similar to the previous body when comparing the two religiously.

Of the 534 total congressional members, 303 Protestants are being sworn in for the 2023-24 session, compared to 297 in the one that just ended. The number of Baptists remained the same — at 67 — while the number of Methodists and Episcopalians dropped by four each; Presbyterians had one fewer member. Catholics saw a drop of 10, with a new total of 148, but still comprise a greater share of Congress (28%) than they do the overall U.S. population (21%).

“118th U.S. Congress is more Protestant than the general population” Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

The members of Congress aligned with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon church, remained unchanged: nine. And the number of Orthodox Christians increased by one to eight. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., is the sole member of the new Congress who identifies herself as Messianic Jewish; she has also described herself as a Christian.

The number of Jews decreased by one to 33 members and all three Muslims and two Hindus were reelected in the House as well as all three members who identify as Unitarian Universalist.

Here are some of the other findings related to Congress’ religious makeup:

Both chambers are dominated by Christians numerically.
Almost all Republicans — 268 out of 271 — and three quarters of Democrats — 201 of 263 — identify themselves as Christians.
All nine members of Congress who are Mormons are Republicans while Orthodox Christians are evenly split, with four from each major political party.
Almost two-thirds (64%) of newcomers to Congress are Protestant; a bit more than half (55%) of incumbents identify with that branch of Christianity.
There are fewer Catholic first-timers than returning members of Congress (22% compared with 29%).

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