Ad Spotlights a Candidate’s Shifting Spiritual Journey

c. 2007 Religion News Service BATON ROUGE, La. _ Before he began climbing the ranks in the Louisiana Republican Party, gubernatorial front-runner Bobby Jindal, the conservative son of Indian immigrants, endured years of emotional and intellectual struggle as he left behind his family’s Hindu faith and embraced Catholicism. It’s a journey that is detailed in […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

BATON ROUGE, La. _ Before he began climbing the ranks in the Louisiana Republican Party, gubernatorial front-runner Bobby Jindal, the conservative son of Indian immigrants, endured years of emotional and intellectual struggle as he left behind his family’s Hindu faith and embraced Catholicism.

It’s a journey that is detailed in seven articles Jindal wrote between 1994 and 1998, and which are now the focus of intense controversy after the Louisiana Democratic Party launched a TV commercial accusing Jindal of insulting Protestants.


While Jindal and his supporters have denounced the ad as lies and demanded that TV stations take it off the air, state Democratic officials have stuck by the spot and suggested that readers judge for themselves at http://www.jindalonreligion.com.

Four of the articles were published in New Oxford Review, a Catholic journal based in Berkeley, Calif. Citing words culled from one of the articles, the Democrats’ ad says Jindal “insulted thousands of Louisiana Protestants” by describing their beliefs as “scandalous, depraved, selfish and heretical.”

But the picture that emerges from a full reading of the articles is not one of intolerance or bigotry, but rather of an inquisitive young man who went through an intense period of struggle and revelation. After moving from skeptical Hindu to deeply religious Catholic, Jindal now rarely misses a chance to inject spirituality into the campaign dialogue.

The articles describe how Jindal was introduced to Christianity by high school friends and flirted with becoming a Protestant before settling on Catholicism; how he felt compelled to hide his conversion from his Hindu parents; and how he encountered troubles at home when his parents eventually learned of his transformation.

“I was probably the first teenager who ever told his parents he was going to a party so that he could sneak off to church,” wrote Jindal, who is currently a GOP congressman.

At times the stories take on the clinical, intellectual tone of a policy wonk explaining an amendment to a transportation bill; other sections are wrenchingly personal, such as when he describes being prepared for his parents to throw him out of the house because of his rejection of their faith.

“I had decided the freedom to worship Christ was more important than the material comforts provided by my parents, including the privilege to attend Brown that fall. I even made plans to attend a local university and had arranged housing as well as a job to support myself,” he wrote in a July 1994 article, “Choosing Between Church and Family: The Spiritual Journey of Converts.”


His parents never went that far, and Jindal attended Brown University as planned, though it took years for his family to accept the change.

“They realized I had not joined a bizarre cult, and instead they appreciated the new honesty in my life,” he wrote.

In other articles, Jindal provides a detailed description of a close friend’s spiritual crisis, and tries to discredit the intellectual underpinnings of atheism.

Interspersed in these texts are occasional unflattering descriptions of other denominations, such as Jindal’s reflections after attending a Protestant service before his conversion.

“I was disappointed by a mildly interesting sermon delivered by a part-time preacher who reminded me of, and may have been, a used car salesman; the cheap theatrics failed to entertain, much less inspire me,” he would write years later in “From New Delhi to Rome: Reflections of a Seven-Year-Old Catholic.”

In a telephone interview, Jindal said the articles, encompassing more than 10,000 words, do not necessarily reflect his views today.


Some of what he wrote reflects “an immature mind,” Jindal said, while describing as “absolute lies” the claims by his critics that his writings are insulting to other faiths.

“My understanding of faith obviously changes and matures as I grow as a person,” Jindal said.

David E. Crosby, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of New Orleans, said the ideas Jindal presents in the article on which the ad is based, “How Catholicism is Different,” lie squarely in the mainstream of Catholic thought.

“Anybody who reads this whole article and ends up angry just needs to grow up,” Crosby said.

While Crosby said he disagrees with Jindal on some points of theology, he described the article as “responsibly done,” and “passionate without being polemical.”

“I have no problem with Mr. Jindal saying these things and believing them. I know he’s a Catholic. He has stated an orthodox Catholic view, which I would expect. As a Baptist, I appreciate his honesty, his transparency and his vigorous faith,” Crosby said.


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Democratic Party officials have refused to take down the ad, although the party’s two leading candidates offered only tepid endorsements. A Democratic Party spokeswoman, asked to produce a Protestant leader in Louisiana who would go on the record as being offended by Jindal’s writings, failed to do so.

The Interfaith Alliance, a Washington-based grass roots group that was formed as a liberal counterweight to more conservative Christian groups, also denounced the ad in a letter to Louisiana Democratic Party Chairman Chris Whittington, urging him to take it off the air.

“The politicization of religion and religious language undermines the electoral process and disrespects the important role that faith plays in Americans’ lives,” reads the letter by the organization’s president, the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, who is also a pastor at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, La.

“The manipulation of religion has no place in our politics,” Gaddy wrote.

(Jan Moller writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.)

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A photo of Bobby Jindal is available via https://religionnews.com.

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