If Hindus haven’t replaced WASPs as the religious elite of America, they’re doing quite well for a relatively small (about 2 million) community of fairly recent arrivals to the United States. The new movie Eat Pray Love has lovely scenes of India and Hindu practice, and star Julia Roberts says she is now a Hindu.
“I’m definitely a practicing Hindu,” Roberts, 42, tells Elle magazine in the September issue. She and husband Danny Moder and their three children, 5-year-old twins Phinnaeus and Hazel and 3-year-old Henry, all go to temple to “chant and pray and celebrate,” said Roberts, who grew up with a Catholic mother and Baptist father.
Not since George Harrison of the Beatles embraced Indian mysticism in the 1960s has Hinduism had such a high-profile devotee.
And as the Religion News Service calendar notes, there are several important Hindu holidays from September through Diwali in November.
Moreover, yoga continues to be one of the most popular recreational and spiritual activities in America, while belief in reincarnation — a tenet of traditional Hinduism — is spreading.
Yet there are drawbacks to this growing popularity. Some purists say that yoga, for example, has been exploited by the fitness industry and corrupted beyond recognition as a spiritual practice, and others say movies like Eat Pray Love reinforce a kind of Western “spiritual tourism ” in India that is superficial at best.
And of course many Christian leaders in particular are not happy about their flocks adopting aspects of a pluralistic faith like Hinduism. Evangelist Franklin Graham was openly scornful of Hinduism during a debate in May over how to mark the National Day of Prayer. “None of their 9,000 gods is going to lead me to salvation,” he said.
This edition of ReligionLink provides resources to help journalists cover this trend.
Stories on Hinduism’s popularity
- “2.3 Million Hindu Americans + 1 Hindu American Sweetheart” is an essay at the website Patheos about Julia Roberts and the appeal of Hinduism and Eastern religions throughout American history. The article is by Suhag Shukla, co-founder of the Hindu American Foundation.
- In The Daily Beast, Indian author Gita Mehta wrote about Eat Pray Love and the attractions and perils for Westerners of “spiritual tourism” in India.
- Read “Remembrances of Lives Past,” an Aug. 27, 2010, story in The New York Times about the growing belief in reincarnation.
- The reincarnation story is by Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller, who in 2009 wrote an essay called “We Are All Hindus Now,” about the widespread adoption of Hindu customs such as cremation.
- Read an Aug. 23, 2010, story in The Washington Post, ” ‘Yoga wars’ spoil spirit of ancient practice, Indian agency says,” about Indian concerns over “yoga theft” by American practitioners.
- There are currently at least eight Indian-Americans running for Congress or statewide office, which may be a record, according to this Associated Press report in June.
- As Aseem Shukla, a doctor who is also on the board of the Hindu American Foundation, wrote at the On Faith blog for The Washington Post, not all those candidates embrace their Indian religious traditions, however.
ReligionLink resources
- ReligionLink has a comprehensive source guide on Hinduism, with links to experts and organizations.
- Also see our guide to Asian-Americans and religion for a look at the larger spectrum of Asian faiths present in the United States.
- It is also worth noting that the American Religious Identification Survey of 2008 (see the ReligionLink report on it) shows that the number of adherents of Eastern religions, which more than doubled in the 1990s, has declined slightly. The study’s authors also note that “Asian Americans are substantially more likely to indicate no religious identity than other racial or ethnic groups.”
