A few years ago, Jehovah's Witnesses published an article about Yoga and stated that it was inappropriate for a Christian to engage Yoga because the poses were designed to get you in touch with God and since it is rooted in a religion that is not Jehovah's Witnesses, presumably, it will get you in touch with the wrong God. I found that odd. I had an elder in a Jehovah's Witness congregation in South Atlanta tell me he had no problem with 12-step groups. He said he worked with Jehovah's Witnesses in prison who attended the groups and had no problem with them.
So, what does that have to do with Yoga? Well, whether they want to admit it or not, 12-step groups are designed to get people in touch with God. I know, I know. They allow atheists and they use the word "Higher Power", not "God", right? Well, no, not entirely right. Steps 3, 5, 6 and 7 use the word "God" in discussing a person's engagement with God through the 12-step process. The 12 steps came from the six steps of the Oxford Group, a well known cult religion of the 30's and 40's whose founder was a renegade Lutheran minister that supported Hitler. It is of further note that seven courts in the US have deemed 12-step groups a religion, thus barring being sentenced to attendance since that would be a violation of Constitutional rights. The date to which Bill Wilson points as the establishment of Alcoholics Anonymous, the most famous of 12-step groups, is actually three years prior to the group actually being called Alcoholics Anonymous. At the claimed inception date, the group was actually an active branch of the Oxford Group.
The point? If a Jehovah's Witnesses cannot engage Yoga because of it's intent to get one in touch with a God not taught by Jehovah's Witnesses, why can they attend and engage the doctrine of a renegade Lutheran minister, said doctrine being nothing Jehovah's Witnesses teach. They also teach interfaith is wrong so, it would at least seem to me that if you get to pick your own God in 12-step groups, at the very least one would be engaging interfaith. But, again, the 12-steps are an outgrowth of bastardized Lutheran doctrine and their goal, regardless of who they tolerate in their rooms, is to get one in touch with God. Read "We Agnostics" in the "Big Book". This would be false religion according to Jehovah's Witnesses. So, why are they allowed to attend 12-step groups but not allowed to engage Yoga? Is this a distinct bias against Eastern thought?
