(CHRISTIAN POST) — Several Ohio public schools have agreed to keep yoga outside their classrooms after more than 100 local pastors argued to state officials that coercing children to practice a “form of Eastern religion” is a violation of the First Amendment.
The pastors who lead congregations in north-central Ohio made their objections to practicing yoga in public schools known in a March letter to the Ohio State Board of Education, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, Ohio Senate President Larry J. Obhof, as well as the public school superintendents in several counties.
“Yoga is not merely an external physical practice with a purely physiological effect, but rather an internal spiritual practice advertised as being able to provide the power to change an individual and transform the world,” the pastors argued.