The fringe Hindu faith is rebranding itself in America — with evangelical techniques.
OnFaith
Rosalie Murphy
June 16, 2014
Howard Resnick lives in a second-floor apartment on a quiet Santa Monica side street. Images of Krishna, the supreme god of the Hare Krishna movement, adorn the walls, and an electric keyboard waits in a corner to play Kirtan chants. He helped lead Hare Krishna in its heyday in the United States. Forty years after his conversion, he still wants to share his faith with Americans.
But today’s Hare Krishna temples host mostly Indian congregations and sing mostly Indian music. Resnick thinks that drives Americans from other cultures away before they even start thinking about philosophy. He hopes to reverse that trend.
“We were trying to do something which could not be done, and that is trying to Indianize the world in the name of Krishna,” Resnick said. “When you want to give people not merely the pure, unadulterated spiritual science, but they need to accept all the [ethnic] trappings — it doesn’t work. It simply doesn’t work.”
OnFaith
Rosalie Murphy
June 16, 2014
Howard Resnick lives in a second-floor apartment on a quiet Santa Monica side street. Images of Krishna, the supreme god of the Hare Krishna movement, adorn the walls, and an electric keyboard waits in a corner to play Kirtan chants. He helped lead Hare Krishna in its heyday in the United States. Forty years after his conversion, he still wants to share his faith with Americans.
But today’s Hare Krishna temples host mostly Indian congregations and sing mostly Indian music. Resnick thinks that drives Americans from other cultures away before they even start thinking about philosophy. He hopes to reverse that trend.
“We were trying to do something which could not be done, and that is trying to Indianize the world in the name of Krishna,” Resnick said. “When you want to give people not merely the pure, unadulterated spiritual science, but they need to accept all the [ethnic] trappings — it doesn’t work. It simply doesn’t work.”
