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Smith: GOP prez candidate Vivek Ramaswamy leans into his Hindu faith to court Christian voters
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Bristol Smith, a manager at a McDonald’s in Maryville, Tennessee, came across Vivek Ramaswamy’s name this spring, shortly after Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, announced he was running for president. Smith was intrigued. He liked the way Ramaswamy “stands up against the wokeness”. Then Smith, 25, searched for Ramaswamy’s faith. Smith is an evangelical Christian who recently started a small church. “I looked up his religion and saw he’s Hindu,” he recalled. “I was going to vote for him until that came up.”
Ramaswamy, 37, was raised by Indian immigrants and is a practicing Hindu. That poses a dilemma for some conservative Christian voters who make up a significant share of the Republican primary electorate. Ramaswamy is polling under 5% in most recent national polls. Ramaswamy’s approach has been to confront the issue directly and argue that he has more in common with observant Christians than they might think. “I’m not Christian. I was not raised in a Christian household,” he said in June in front of a small audience. “But we do share the same Christian values that this nation was founded on.” Although he is not a Christian, Ramaswamy pointed out, he speaks openly about why belief in God matters and why rising secularism in America is bad for the country, and about values like marital fidelity, duty, religious liberty and self-sacrifice. “I don’t have a quick pitch to say, ‘No, no, that doesn’t matter,'” he said of the theological differences between Hinduism and Christianity. “It’s that I understand exactly why that would matter to you.”
At campaign stops, Ramaswamy refers to Bible stories, including the crucifixion of Jesus. He frequently mentions his experience attending a “Christian school”. And he contrasts “religions like ours”, which have stood the test of time, with the competing worldviews of “wokeism, climatism, transgenderism, gender ideology, Covidism”.
If Ramaswamy comes to have a chance with evangelical primary voters in the crowded Republican field, it will be thanks in part to forces beyond his campaign. “Theology matters, but the culture has changed. America has changed,” said David Brody, chief political analyst for the Christian Broadcasting Network. The biggest objective now, Brody said, is combating “cultural Marxism” and correcting the course of “a country gone haywire.” “The lazy narrative that he’s Hindu so he can’t appeal to evangelicals, I don’t buy it at all,” Brody said.
Ramaswamy, 37, was raised by Indian immigrants and is a practicing Hindu. That poses a dilemma for some conservative Christian voters who make up a significant share of the Republican primary electorate. Ramaswamy is polling under 5% in most recent national polls. Ramaswamy’s approach has been to confront the issue directly and argue that he has more in common with observant Christians than they might think. “I’m not Christian. I was not raised in a Christian household,” he said in June in front of a small audience. “But we do share the same Christian values that this nation was founded on.” Although he is not a Christian, Ramaswamy pointed out, he speaks openly about why belief in God matters and why rising secularism in America is bad for the country, and about values like marital fidelity, duty, religious liberty and self-sacrifice. “I don’t have a quick pitch to say, ‘No, no, that doesn’t matter,'” he said of the theological differences between Hinduism and Christianity. “It’s that I understand exactly why that would matter to you.”
At campaign stops, Ramaswamy refers to Bible stories, including the crucifixion of Jesus. He frequently mentions his experience attending a “Christian school”. And he contrasts “religions like ours”, which have stood the test of time, with the competing worldviews of “wokeism, climatism, transgenderism, gender ideology, Covidism”.
If Ramaswamy comes to have a chance with evangelical primary voters in the crowded Republican field, it will be thanks in part to forces beyond his campaign. “Theology matters, but the culture has changed. America has changed,” said David Brody, chief political analyst for the Christian Broadcasting Network. The biggest objective now, Brody said, is combating “cultural Marxism” and correcting the course of “a country gone haywire.” “The lazy narrative that he’s Hindu so he can’t appeal to evangelicals, I don’t buy it at all,” Brody said.
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