The reincarnation of the Asian Buddhist peril: White Christian nationalism and contestations of mindfulness in K-12 public schools

Abstract

This article explores legal contestations to school based mindfulness programs in the context of an increasingly overt White Christian nationalist agenda in the United States. By illuminating the force and logic of White Christian nationalism in education, I demonstrate that though Christian organizations’ legal opposition to mindfulness is framed around defending First Amendment Establishment Clause protections in schools, their ultimate objective is to safeguard Christian hegemony and structurally reinforce a racial-religious belief of the US as a White Christian nation. Interrogating the discursive invocation of Buddhism as a “danger” helps to reveal this intention, and its exclusionary function. In this light, I trace how the claims of Buddhist treachery recall and reaffirm 19th century White Christian nationalist imaginations of Asian immigrants as embodying dangerously foreign religions and inassimilable behaviors in order to facilitate their legal exclusion from the nation. Understanding this historical context sheds light on the ways these Christian legal contentions of mindfulness attempt to maintain a historical racial-religious subjugation of Asians as a “Yellow Peril” and inculcate anti-Asian phobias of national invasion. Thus, I also argue that the current legal disputes over mindfulness are not new assertions of White Christian nationalism. Rather, they illuminate the ongoing legacy of White Christian nationalism, and represent attempts to maintain the structure’s hegemonic positioning in the 21st century. In highlighting these arguments, this article demonstrates that we cannot understand the debate around mindfulness in schools (and secular mindfulness programs themselves) without understanding the White Christian nationalist history of Asian racial-religious exclusion in the US.

Keywords:

• Race
• Asian Americans
• religion
• Buddhism
• heathen

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1 The relationship between mindfulness and Buddhism is contested amongst those affiliated with school mindfulness based programs, Buddhist studies scholars, and Buddhist practitioners. This is one of several points of contention between those who advocate for secular mindfulness programs and those who critique them. Moreover, the NCLP and other conservative Christian organizations have selectively employed critical Buddhist perspectives on the Buddhist foundations of mindfulness out of context in order to advance their arguments about Buddhist indoctrination.

2 As Sejal Singh (2021) has discussed in her analysis of legal cases against school yoga, including the NCLP’s Sedlock case, a practice’s religious roots is not enough to argue that its instruction then equates to religious indoctrination.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported in the article, or monograph was made possible in part by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (#10037657). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Funie Hsu/Chhî

Funie Hsu/Chhî is Associate Professor of American studies at San José State University.