Time to dig into World Religions 101: Does Vivek Ramaswamy's Hinduism shape his politics?

Vivek Ramaswamy — and his Hindu background — is the hot new flavor in religion reporting this week, with pieces coming out in Rolling Stone and Religion News Service. The New York Times did a piece earlier in July.

Yet, the outlet asking the best questions on this relevant topic may be Globely, a website that tracks international news. We will get to that in a moment. Ramaswamy

For those of you who don’t yet know, Ramaswamy is running for president — the second Hindu to do so since Tulsi Gabbard ran in 2020. In terms of interviewing actual Hindus, RNS came out on top.

Their numbers in this country are about 1% of the populace — 3 million maybe — and they are overwhelmingly first-generation immigrants, educated and majority male. According to this Pew Research data, they aren’t particularly observant religiously and they tend to be well-off.

Let’s dig in.

First, a gripe: As someone who’s studied the false, independent Christian prophets who swore up and down that Donald Trump would be re-elected president in 2020, it’s beyond annoying when publications choose those folks to represent the beliefs of mainstream Christianity.

Not only did RNS do this in Monday’s story, but sadly, Rolling Stone does the same in their recent story.

Quoting Omaha, Neb., pastor Hank Kunneman — one of the prophets who got it wrong — and applying terms like “Christian nationalist” to anyone to the right of President Joe Biden is giving a big megaphone to this extreme wing of Christianity.

Rolling Stone proclaims:

VIVEK RAMASWAMY IS getting a hard look by Republicans willing to entertain alternatives to Donald Trump, especially as Ron DeSantis continues to flounder. The 37-year-old biotech entrepreneur has surged into third place in several national polls, ahead of prominent Republicans like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott.
Ramaswamy is also a practicing Hindu, and though he has been campaigning as an anti-abortion religious conservative, his non-Christian faith is a major stumbling block for many in the GOP’s evangelical base. He’s been on a charm offensive with these evangelical audiences, but the outreach appears to be backfiring, at least among the Christian nationalist set.

When covering the Trump prophets, listen up: 'Heavenly inauguration' is in the wings

Well, today is Jan. 20 and, contrary to the assertions of many Pentecostal prophets, President Donald Trump is on his way out of the White House and did not win the 2020 election.

Last week’s post on the “civil war” between Pentecostals and charismatics over failed prophecies by leaders in their movement created lots of buzz, with good cause. We’re not just talking about the failed “Trump prophecies,” as they are now termed, but also the fact that none of these prophets predicted the historic January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol.

For those of you who’ve been unplugged from the news in recent days, here’s a bit of a review: There are still millions of these folks who believed that God was somehow going to replace Biden with Trump before the inauguration — or sometime in the coming months — simply because a coterie of prophets said so. See Kat Kerr’s Jan. 19 video saying this.

Now that this prophetic Hail Mary pass has failed, the recriminations are going to start. One leader in the movement, Michael Brown of 1990s Brownsville revival fame, has been calling out his fellow prophets to stand down for several weeks now and has established a ministry for disappointed charismatics. More on that in a moment. That’s a news story.

The prophets (and I won’t put that word in quotes like some say I should) range from Kat Kerr of Jacksonville, Fla. — who’s known for her flaming pink hair and tales of multiple trips to heaven –- to oldsters like Texas prosperity preacher Kenneth Copeland.

There’s also the Rev. Paula White, hailed as Trump’s pastor, who was holding out for a last-minute supernatural reprieve during December, but who’s been pretty silent of late. (News flash: See this video of her Jan. 17 Sunday sermon blaming other Christians for attacking her). Others, like Nebraska pastor Hank Kunneman, say that January 20th thing isn’t a factor now; when God wants to replace Biden with Trump, it will happen.

While researching a follow-up feature that ran the next day in ReligionUnplugged, I got to talk with a few scholars who follow this phenomenon –- and there aren’t many. One was Gordon Melton, now 78, who has helped religion reporters for decades with his encyclopedic knowledge of American religious history.

Now at Baylor University, he was telling me of how many –- of the top 40 people in the apostolic/prophetic movement that he’s tracking — are based close by. Not sure why the Lone Star state brings in all these folks, but Texas has always been an outlier, right?