http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Abhishiktananda He left France for India in the summer of 1948, never to return to France despite his affection for his homeland. He became immersed in the atmosphere of India, in particular the Hindu perspective of Advaita. He founded an ashram and religious community, Shantivanam, in 1950 and became Swami Abhishiktananda. In his latter years though, he found himself very drawn to religious experience within solitude, spending much time in the hermit caves at Arunachala. But at no point did he disavow his Christianity, and he celebrated Mass until virtually the end of his life.

Swamini Anna, I heart you!

That one thing that I really like about Haley and Jindal is that they don’t spend every 5 minute talking about how great it is to be punjabi and that what sets them apart from the punjabi’s politicans in Canada. Most of them who only get elected for that reason and running in area with a high punjabi population.

Im sure a religion which survived a thousand years of Islam will hold out well in America. At most, there will probably be less strict adherence to the traditional beliefs and more of a cultural affiliation with the religion. Furthermore, the fact that the Indian community in the states is still taking in immigrants from the old country will ensure that the religion will not fade away.

As for Sikhs, I dont think they will have a problem with the religion fading out. The Punjabi ethnicity and the religion go hand in hand and its hard for Sikhs to have one without the other. Unless Sikhs stop identifying themselves as Punjabi, Sikhism in the west will keep going strong.

I can vouch for this because event though I am a strong atheist, I still identify myself as being culturally a Punjabi Sikh.

oh, please don’t put spiritualists with unbelievers!

though seriously, the model is plausible, and promoted by “rational choice” theorists. but when i poked around the general social survey i didn’t see that much support for it. the young are becoming more secular, as well as somewhat more theologically liberal (at least not more conservative). IOW, americans are become “more hindu” in their attitude toward universalism and such, even if hindus are becoming more christian in name.

i do think that the american fixation on individual salvation, confession and selection of religious identity is hard for most people in the world to understand, not just hindus. this includes christian europeans whose faith is more cultural. i have friends in finland who are atheist but pay church tax because they want to support the church’s social services and use its facilities for their kids. that’s an attitude americans, believers and unbelievers, would have a hard time understanding.

but if it’s hard, it is what it is, and there’s no point in complaining about it. there are plenty of countries to immigrate to where the pressure to convert is much milder. in fact, why the hell are brown people settling in the south if they think it is important that their children not become christian? from what i’ve heard the pressure there in some areas can be intense. howard dean, raised episcopalian, nominally congregationalist, raised his kids jews in vermont. there wouldn’t have been much benefit for haley to be christian in vermont, and no one would have cared if the kids were being raised sikh.

Historically we’ve had a pseudo-congregational model revolving around the family and kin-networks including caste. I think what makes the adjustment to the West (or more specifically, Anglo-American culture) hard is more the extreme individualism that makes it hard to sustain familial traditions. Religion is viewed as a matter of personal faith rather than tradition or culture. This is a primarily evangelical framing which, when coupled with the way the modern education system undermines the legitimacy of tradition and custom, ends up discourages Dharmic traditions as well as more easy-going flavors of Abrahamic traditions from being able to sustain themselves in the face of proselytization.

Basically you end up with marginally interest atheist/agnostic/woo-woo-spiritualist types on one end and flaming Bible/Koran/Whatever thumpers on the other with very little space between.

I suppose that could be true in some parallel universe where cats and dogs live together and Lady Gaga goes out in T-shirt and shorts. I just didn’t know our two dimensions could communicate with each other.

Fascinating.