Jindal's Conversion
Many Americans had their first chance to get acquainted with Bobby Jindal on national television last evening, when he delivered the Republican Party’s response to President Barack Obama’s address to Congress.
But they didn’t have any opportunity to learn about the youthful Louisiana governor’s deep Catholic faith, as he didn’t touch on that in his speech.
Jindal’s conversion to Catholicism from the ancestral Hindu faith of his parents was not a simple journey, nor one without a price. Jindal discussed the motivations for his conversion in this excerpt from an article first printed in America magazine in 1993.
“The motivation behind my conversion, however, was my belief in one, objectively true faith,” Jindal wrote. “If Christianity is merely one of many equally valid religions, then the sacrifices I made, including the loss of my family’s peace, were senseless. I was comfortable in my Hindu faith and enjoyed an active prayer life; I only gradually felt a void and stubbornly resisted God’s call from within the church. It was Truth and Love that finally forced me to accept Christ as Lord. ‘Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life: No one comes to the Father except through me”’ (In. 14:6). Christ’s redemptive sacrifice proved that God loved me and was lifting me up to Him.”
