{"id":5624,"date":"2005-10-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2005\/10\/06\/2005-10-06-christian-group-alleges-new-age-beliefs-taught-in-public-school\/"},"modified":"2005-10-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-06T12:00:00","slug":"2005-10-06-christian-group-alleges-new-age-beliefs-taught-in-public-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2005\/10\/06\/2005-10-06-christian-group-alleges-new-age-beliefs-taught-in-public-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Group Alleges New Age Beliefs Taught In Public School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.charlotte.com\/mld\/observer\/news\/local\/127398902.htm\">www.charlotte.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">RALEIGH, N.C., September 25, 2005: A Christian group says stress-reduction classes for students at a Raleigh elementary school promoted &#8220;New Age&#8221; beliefs and were school-sponsored religious activities that violated the First Amendment. Called2Action, a local activist organization, has sent a letter to Wake County Schools Superintendent Bill McNeal and school board members asking them to make sure this kind of &#8220;spiritual and religious program&#8221; doesn&#8217;t happen again. Called2Action said it received complaints from a mother whose children were asked to do breathing exercises, chant and use their &#8220;life forces&#8221; last month at Partnership elementary School. The classes were conducted by Emily Gunter, founder of the Rites of Passage Youth Empowerment foundation in Durham. Her foundation&#8217;s Web site says its mission is &#8220;to bring peace to our world through the personal empowerment and spiritual development of the Youth.&#8221; The Web site also notes that Gunter just returned from a spiritual pilgrimage in the Himalayas of Tibet and Nepal. A Florida legal firm contacted by Called2Action issued a legal memorandum that said Gunter&#8217;s &#8220;conscious breathing&#8221; activity is a New Age religious and spiritual activity associated with Hindu religious faiths. The memo adds that Gunter was engaging in a program of religious meditation that violated the First Amendment by making the school proselytize the children in New Age beliefs. The complaint was being reviewed by the school district&#8217;s attorneys.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.charlotte.com RALEIGH, N.C., September 25, 2005: A Christian group says stress-reduction classes for students at a Raleigh elementary school promoted,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}