By Director of Education and Curriculum Reform, Hindu American Foundation
If Oprah Winfrey can be seen as a faith leader, then it can be said that public figures who embrace their Hindu identity and lead in the civic realm can be looked at in the same light. In other words, to inspire others with your own faith doesn’t necessarily require religious vocational training or connection to religious centers.
Does one have to go to a temple to be considered a devout Hindu? More importantly, can one be a Hindu leader without any formal theological training?
One of the most striking things about religious identities in America is how much notions of faith are tied to both culture and what can best be described as “scales of religiosity.” Across the United States, more people are identifying as unaffiliated with any religion. As a 2012 Pew survey on religion and public life noted, “nones” are growing in number, but it’s not as simple as a binary between believers and non-believers. The idea of being spiritual versus being religious is something that many young people are embracing, in part due to the perceived stigma around what it means to be religious (i.e., socially/culturally conservative and closed-minded).
Much of that definition of religion and spirituality comes from longstanding debates among practitioners of Abrahamic faiths and the concern that leaders within those communities have had about maintaining relevance, especially among young people. Religion in the American landscape is defined often by the quantity of worship (how many times one goes to a house of worship) rather than the quality and depth of one’s spiritual journey.
For Hindu Americans, however, that conversation has gone quite differently, in part because religiosity can be highly individualized, thus providing the space for the direct and personal experience that spirituality is typically believed to offer. Hindus can be religious without being ritualistic, or spiritual with a robust ritual practice. This has created a diversity of who self-identifies as Hindu and how Hinduism is practiced.
Recently, my friend (and fellow HuffPost blogger) Varun Soni spoke with actor Arjun Gupta (How to Get Away With Murder) and comedian Aakash Singh about the need to define a Hindu-American identity proactively rather than simply ape the definitions used by members of other faiths in America.
Equally important is the fact that Hindu leaders can operate as leaders in the secular realm on the same level as those who come from religious centers. It’s about how Hindu Americans articulate their identities in the public sphere and how their actions reflect the universal Hindu ideas of dharma, karma, and seva.
Read the rest @ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/towards-a-new-generation_b_6621526
