What is Candy Gunther Brown reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Candy Gunther Brown, author of Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?.

Her entry begins:

I have seven books (so far!) on my summer reading list.

I just finished Seth Perry’s Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States. I was interested in picking up this book because it’s in the field of my first book, The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789–1880. Perry’s book focuses on questions of authority. He offers illuminating examples (for instance creation of the Book of Mormon) of how Americans in the early national period used references to the Bible and myriad print bibles to make authoritative claims for themselves. This process, Perry claims, changed the Bible itself.

I am excited about five recent books about mindfulness, given that my most recent book treats this subject as well. I am...[read on]

About Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools, from the publisher:

Yoga and mindfulness activities, with roots in Asian traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, have been brought into growing numbers of public schools since the 1970s. While they are commonly assumed to be secular educational tools, Candy Gunther Brown asks whether religion is truly left out of the equation in the context of public-school curricula. An expert witness in four legal challenges, Brown scrutinized unpublished trial records, informant interviews, and legal precedents, as well as insider documents, some revealing promoters of “Vedic victory” or “stealth Buddhism” for public-school children. The legal challenges are fruitful cases for Brown’s analysis of the concepts of religious and secular.

While notions of what makes something religious or secular are crucial to those who study religion, they have special significance in the realm of public and legal norms. They affect how people experience their lives, raise their children, and navigate educational systems. The question of religion in public education, Brown shows, is no longer a matter of jurisprudence focused largely on the establishment of a Protestant Bible or nonsectarian prayer. Instead, it now reflects an increasingly diverse American religious landscape. Reconceptualizing secularization as transparency and religious voluntarism, Brown argues for an opt-in model for public-school programs.

Visit Candy Gunther Brown’s Indiana University faculty webpage and Psychology Today blog.

The Page 99 Test: The Healing Gods.

The Page 99 Test: Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools.

Writers Read: Candy Gunther Brown.

--Marshal Zeringue