New Age Nationalism: EVANGELICALS IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY

I returned home from a trip to Whole Foods Market recently and set my paper shopping bags down on the counter. I was checking my phone when I glanced at one of the bags and saw a bit of text printed near the bottom. It read: “Please reuse or recycle this bag. It’s just good karma.”

The word “karma” is so common today, the average evangelical Christian might be tempted to think it’s harmless. To them that sentence probably means something like, “It’s just good luck.”

That Christian would be wrong. As someone who spent years of my life pursuing all kinds of New-Age spirituality, I am well positioned to know. 

The first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry for karma reads: “In Indian religions, [karma] more specifically refers to a principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein individuals' intent and actions (cause) influence their future (effect): Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and happier rebirths, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and bad rebirths.”

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma

As Christians, we know things are what they are. There is no “your truth” and no “my truth,” there is only THE truth, and whether we’re humble enough to submit to it. So whatever we think the word “karma” means is independent from what the word actually means. As Wikipedia instructs us, “karma” as cause-and-effect principle is therefore inseparable from its significance in Indian theology.

Intentionally or otherwise, Whole Foods is communicating that the treatment of their paper bags will influence whether customers earn a “happier rebirth” in their “next lives.” The phrase “It’s just” implies that the worldview behind this statement should be self-evident.

If you think this just is a meaningless link in a supermarket chain, Whole Foods Market operates more than 500 stores in the United States earning nearly $575 BILLION dollars of revenue in 2023 and taking home more than $90 billion in profit.

SOURCE: https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company-info

SOURCE: https://www.exchangeright.com/tenant-profiles/whole-foods-market/​​​​​​​

Bearing these facts in mind, every sincere evangelical Christian should ask the following questions: Why is a multi-billion-dollar company endorsing Eastern theology? And why is that supermarket not endorsing the theology of the One True and Living Godrevealed in Scripture?

For an alternative ecologically minded message, Whole Foods’ shopping bags could read: “Please reuse or recycle this bag. Because the Lord God made man to tend and keep his Garden. (Genesis 2:15)”

Does that seem silly? Does bringing religion into such a small matter feel like overkill?

There’s just one problem: religion already has been brought into it, just not the Christian religion.

Instead, it’s the religion of Hinduism that has occupied the American public square so thoroughly that it’s become invisible to the eyes of most Christians. This has rendered Eastern spirituality acceptable to the masses as the “default” state of humanity, making Christianity the outsider position in a country founded by Christian men.

To illustrate this conflict, ask yourself the following question: if Hindu theology is acceptable for a multi-billion-dollar company to print on its shopping bags, why isn’t Christianity? 

Follow this question by doing a Google Maps search for yoga studios in your local area. See if you can count them. If the arguments on my X posts about this subject are any indication, most evangelical Christians are unaware that “yoga” is a Sanskrit word. The official website of the Indian government’s Ministry of External Affairs defines it this way:

“The word ‘Yoga’ is derived from the Sanskrit root ‘Yuj’, meaning ‘to join’ or ‘to yoke’ or ‘to unite’. As per Yogic scriptures the practice of Yoga leads to the union of individual consciousness with that of the Universal Consciousness, indicating a perfect harmony between the mind and body, Man & Nature.” (emphasis mine)

1 in 6 adults in the United States now practice yoga, including nearly a quarter of U.S. women, up from 1 in 20 American adults two decades ago. Most yoga practitioners take classes weekly, and some more than once per week. By comparison, Gallup reported in June 2024 that just 3 in 10 Americans now attend regular religious services, with 21% attending weekly. So: twenty years ago, 5% of American adults practiced yoga and 42% attended church, whereas today, 16% of Americans practice yoga, and just 21% attend church. So not only is Hindu theology being presented on shopping bags as self-evidently true, but if current trends continue, soon more Americans will attend yoga classes than church services.

So, are we a Christian country, or a Hindu one?

An Indian monk named Swami Vivekananda once visited San Francisco. From an apartment on Turk Street near the famed “Painted Ladies” of tourist photos (and the TV show “Full House”), he’d write essays and deliver lectures to students who’d gather at his feet.One such essay was entitled, “Is Vedanta the Future Religion?” According to the Vedanta Society of St. Louis, “Vedanta is the culmination of the religion and philosophy of the Vedas, which form the most ancient and most authoritative body of the Hindu scriptures, whose composition dates back to 4,000 B.C.”

SOURCE: https://vedantastl.org/about/what-is-vedanta/

In his essay about the future of religion, Vivekananda wrote the following:

“You see, Vedanta proposes no sin nor sinner. No God to be afraid of. [...] No book, no person, no Personal God. All these must go. [...] Christ said, ‘I and my father are one’, and you repeat it. Yet it has not helped mankind. For nineteen hundred years men have not understood that saying. They make Christ the saviour of men. He is God and we are worms! [...] The hour comes when great men shall arise and cast off these kindergartens of religion and shall make vivid and powerful the true religion, the worship of the spirit by the spirit.”

SOURCE: https://advaitaashrama.org/future-religion/

Was this written in 2020, 1990, or even the wild and crazy 1960’s?

No. In fact, Vivekananda wrote these words in the year 1900, over a century ago. From the heart of a great American city, he prophesied that in the days ahead Americans would “cast off” Christianity, which he called a “kindergarten of religion”—i.e.., a religion for children—and take up Hinduism instead.

It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that, since then, generations of evangelical Christian faith leaders, husbands, and fathers have taken their eyes off the ball. They’ve allowed our once-Christian nation to be colonized by the worship of false gods.

Abortion, transgenderism, and feminism are all damnable heresies, for which I believe we are under judgment. But is it possible that the rise of Hindu theology in our cities, businesses, and families is also a causal factor of our national predicament?

At the conclusion of Mark’s Gospel, Christ commanded his eleven disciples to, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” (Mark 16:15 ESV) Does your local yoga studio count as part of “the whole creation”? Does a paper shopping bag, or a supermarket? Are evangelical Christians willing to carry the Great Commission that far into the public square?

Hindu gods are unafraid to preach their false gospel in those places. What possible reason could Christians have to hesitate to bring the true gospel there instead?

The First Commandment reads, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.” (Exodus 20:2-3)

I wonder what the God who spoke these words would say.