The article by reporter Yonat Shimron focuses what the religious identify of Vice President Kamala Harris may say about the country's multi-faith makeup.
Vice President Kamala Harris could make history on a number of fronts if she is successful in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, as she would become the first Black woman and first South Asian person to be nominated by a major party for president.
Her unique religious background also stands out, and as Religious News Service reporter Yonat Shimron notes, her multi-religious identity is likely “a map of America’s future.”
Harris was raised Hindu by her mother, often attended a Christian church growing up and as an adult, and celebrates Jewish holidays with her husband, Douglas Emhoff, who grew up attending a Reform synagogue. Shimron spoke with Brian Pennington, professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society at Elon, to learn more about multi-religious identities.
Pennington told Shimron that students in his courses who come from a singular religious tradition are becoming rarer. “These days, they have multiple influences that inform their spiritual ideas and identities,” Pennington said. ”
Pennington said Harris’s background could appeal to younger voters. “It’s not at all hard to imagine that (Harris’) personal religious and spiritual history would speak to younger Americans who demographically have much more experience of this kind of religious diversity in their families and backgrounds than older Americans.”
Read the entire article to learn more.
Pennington is a historian of modern Hinduism and theorist of interreligious relations. His primary research interests are in colonial-era religion in India, the history of religion in South Asia, religion and violence, and contemporary religious change in India. He is the author of “Was Hinduism Invented?: Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion,” editor of “Teaching Religion and Violence” and co-editor with Amy L. Allocco of “Ritual Innovation: Strategic Interventions in South Indian Religion.” His current book in progress, “God’s Fifth Abode: Entrepreneurial Hinduism in the Indian Himalayas,” is based on over a decade of field research in the pilgrimage city of Uttarkashi.