Travis Michael Fleming sits down with Dr. Timothy Tennent for a powerful and eye-opening conversation about one of the most influential—and most overlooked—groups in America today: Indian Hindus.

They’re not tucked away on the margins. They’re shaping our culture in boardrooms and in Hollywood, in politics and in tech. From Kash Patel to Vivek Ramaswamy, Mindy Kaling to Kal Penn, Indian Hindus are woven into the fabric of American life. Some practice their faith devoutly; others carry it as part of their cultural story. But their presence—and their influence—is everywhere.

Hinduism isn’t a far-off religion confined to India. It shows up in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and even our rhythms—through yoga studios, meditation trends, and the growing Indian diaspora that now calls America home.

With grace and clarity, Dr. Tennent helps us rethink how we view and love our Hindu neighbors. He invites us to move past stereotypes and recognize the incredible diversity, beauty, and complexity found within Hindu communities.

Together, we explore Hinduism’s deep history, the range of beliefs held by those who identify as Hindu, and the real challenges Western Christians face when trying to share the hope of the gospel across cultural lines. More importantly, we talk about the kind of relationships that open doors—relationships rooted in humility, hospitality, and genuine friendship.

This conversation isn’t just informative—it’s a call to action for the church. God has brought the nations to our doorsteps. Are we ready to meet them with Christlike love?

Takeaways

• Hinduism has become a significant presence in American life, shaping culture in ways many Christians haven’t yet noticed.
• Travis and Dr. Tennent expose common Western misunderstandings about Hinduism and invite listeners into a fuller, more compassionate perspective.
• Listeners are encouraged to slow down, listen well, and build meaningful relationships with their Hindu neighbors.
• Faithful witness means learning to communicate the gospel in ways that connect with Hindu worldviews and cultural experiences.
• Many Hindus in the U.S. have not been exposed to Christianity’s long, rich history in India—something that can reshape conversations about faith.
• Understanding issues like caste can help Christians love and disciple their Hindu friends with deeper wisdom and sensitivity.

Keep up with updates from Apollos Watered: The Center for Discipleship & Cultural Apologetics.

Get Travis's book Blueprint: Kingdom Living in the Modern World.

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Help support the ministry of Apollos Watered and transform your world today!

Today's episode is generously brought to you by the Christensen family. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

I think I finally realized this was an area in your podcast to making this clear. I mean, this is an area so neglected in the way Westerns think about the world.

And because of the diaspora, the global diaspora, there are next door neighbors, and we've totally ignored them, and we associate it with India. And so it's something that we have to really rethink. And so it's something I've been very, very fascinated with all my adult life.

Welcome to Apollo's Watered in the Ministry Deep Dive podcast. We tackle the big questions few are willing to ask about ministry, culture, and the challenges you face every day.

Ministry is hard, and the road ahead isn't always clear. But with God, nothing is impossible.

We come alongside pastors and ministry leaders like you, exploring obstacles, uncovering opportunities, and sharing practical ways to thrive. Our vision is simple to see thriving ministry leaders and churches noticeably transforming their world. So let's dive deep together.

Refresh your soul, renew your vision, and get ready, because it's watering time.

Most Americans think of Hinduism as something over there in India, but it's here, woven into the fabric of American life. From yoga and meditation to cultural festivals and neighborhood friendships, Hinduism is no longer distant. It's next door.

The question is, how do we reach our Hindu neighbors with the hope of Jesus? Today's guest is none other than Dr. Timothy Tennant, and he's one of the church's foremost voices on sharing the gospel in Hindu context.

Former president of Asbury Theological Seminary and now professor at Beeson Divinity School, he has spent decades teaching, writing, and ministering in both the United States and India.

His books, like Building Christianity on Indian Foundations and Christianity at the Religious Roundtable, helps believers understand Hindu thought and build bridges for the gospel. Let's get started. Dr. Tennant, welcome.

Thank you, Travis. Great to be here.

Are you ready for the fast five?

We're ready.

Okay. What is your favorite Indian dish? And what is one dish you stay away from? So we're doing a twofer on that one.

All right. My favorite dish is called Ming curry. It's fish curry from Kerala. My favorite dish.

And the one you stay away from.

Well, I like them all, but I tend to stay a little bit from sambar.

Why?

I don't like eating potatoes in the morning.

Okay, number two, if you had a free afternoon with no meetings, how would you spend it?

I'd probably spend it hiking with my wife.

That's a good one. That's a good one. My wife is going aww right now. That's what she's saying.

Number three, what book outside of theology or missions has influenced you the most?

Well, I'm a big Dan Carlin fan, so I love all the hardcore history stuff. And he now has published a book out on the different ways the church, the world will self destruct. And so I like Dan Carlin. He's great.

Okay. All right. I will have to check that out. Number.

Number five or number four, a lesson from your time in India that changed how you lead or mentor others.

I think my biggest lesson in India was when I. I've been teaching and preaching for years in India, I mean, the US and felt, you know, very comfortable. I got to India and taught and preached in the same way and met with blank faces. And I think I.

It was my early failures in India which actually forced me to go back and do my doctoral work in Hinduism and all the things I did because I realized that the context was so different and they had different questions. And so I think I owe a lot to my early failures in India. To be honest with you, that's an.

Inspiration just because I think many of us, we try and then we quit. It's like you don't get that opportunity. You got to learn from it. To redo.

Exactly. Exactly.

How about number five here? What's one conception about sharing the gospel in cross cultural context? You wish more ministry leaders understood.

I think my biggest advice would be to do a lot more listening and less talking and then we go into it with preset ideas of what to say. And one of the things I really worked hard at in India was to learn what were the questions they have.

I eventually published a book in India on that question, the top 15 questions that Hindus have.

And again, a moment of humility when I did a two year study of the top questions that Hindus actually have when we walk into a village and be largely true for the US as well. I went back and looked at our curriculum and that we had established in north India and I started this, helped start the school there.

And guess how many of the questions we actually answered in three year curriculum? None. So there was a little disconnect there, Travis.

And I think that was also part of my journey, realizing that Philadelphia education was not cut and paste. And there was a lot of things culturally and contextually in India that just challenged me to the core. And it was a revolution for me.

And so I had A lot of those aha moments. But one of those was that to your study on the questions they actually have.

Let's transition then. So you've, you've already started to talk about, I mean, Hinduism and how it shaped you, how you're going there initially.

But I want to know what led to your interest in Hinduism in the first place.

Well, my interest actually began because my wife's aunt had spent 35 years there as a missionary. And so when I went to India the first time, I was, I was kind of like an open slate. I went there and. But I had a great interest in India.

We've been praying for India. We heard a lot of stories about India. So we kind of fell in.

I was actually in Pakistan for one summer and I went over for India just for 10 days and I, it just blew me away. And I knew I could never get it out of my heart. So we kind of had it surprised on us, but we, we embraced it.

And then eventually I met this man that, you know, asked me to come help him start the school and that led to me going there every year.

So it was kind of a slow process, but I think I finally realized this was an area in your podcast and making this clear, I mean, this is an area so neglected in the way Westerns think about the world. And because of the diaspora, the global diaspora, there are next door neighbors and we've totally ignored them and we associate it with India.

And so it's something that we have to really rethink. And so it's something I've been very, very fascinated with all my, all my adult life.

Well, it's something that I think we all need to be aware of now. I mean, like you said, we think of it over there, but every time I go to my son's school, I see Indian families now.

I mean, my mother passed away a few years ago. She was from a small town in east, east central Illinois and her doctor was Indian. My sister's doctor is Indian.

I mean, you can go to the business owners. There's some of the biggest tech giants now running so many different, like Pepsi and Google. I mean, there's, there's just so many.

And while we still think of them as a minority, they do carry a lot of different influence. So my question is, is how then do we help our pastors that are finding themselves in their, these, these Indians in their communities?

They're Hindus now. Not all of them are, of course. I think that Sam George told me that about 20% of Indians in the United States Are Christian.

Does that number sound right to you?

Yeah, Christian and Sikh, yeah.

Okay, so then let's. Let's try to, like, lay it out. I know this is pretty basic for.

For you, but for us that are just kind of stepping into this, how would you describe Hinduism to the pastors that are in. Just like. I've never encountered this before. How do you. How do you help them understand it?

Well, I think when I do my doctoral work, one thing I did was I looked at every definition of Hinduism that was out there and what you'll find.

And this is one of the place where you tell a class, you know, or pastors, if you're looking for a definition of Hinduism, you'll be deeply disappointed because there's no shared definition of Hinduism. So that is actually part of the insight into the whole challenge.

Because what I eventually realized when I looked at a lot of definitions, they kind of fall into four categories. And so there's people who look at Hinduism as essentially a cultural identity with nationalistic India. That's a big part of it.

And so there's a lot of people who just feel like to be an Indian is to be a Hindu. Those things belong together.

There are other people who focus on, you know, like Gandhi did, you know, shared social practices, things like caste and things like, you know, vegetarianism, all that. There are people who do look at particular doctrinal points like karma or whatever, that they believe that's important.

Others just say, well, you know, if you believe in the Vedas, you know, you're a Hindu, you know, so what you find is people in different kind of categories, and you don't really know. You have to talk to them, get to know them, to see what they mean when they say they're a Hindu.

Because, you know, my own dissertation figure, to the day he died, he called himself a Hindu Christian because he didn't see a contradiction. Those terms. Even early 19th century Bengali missionaries would tell people, we're calling you to become Hindu Christians.

They didn't really see it as a separate religion, but as a cultural identity today. And if you go to textbooks, of course, it's been reified into a religion.

So it's something that is really, really complex and difficult to kind of simply define Hinduism in pure religious terms, because for many Indians, it goes way beyond that.

Well, that leads to. I mean, I'm trying to find an equivalent here in The United States.

Would that be someone saying like, hey, I'm an American, I'm a Christian at the same time? Could that be a similar.

Absolutely similar idea.

Now, okay, so when we're talking about.

You know, Christian nationalism is a factor here, but in India, it's not just a factor, it's a roaring engine. I mean, it's a roaring engine. So that's been kind of the mark of modern India to wed Hinduism with Indian nationalism.

And so that has affected the whole country in very, very deep ways.

Would you say that's the same in Thailand with Buddhism? Like there's a Buddhist nationalism?

Yeah, but I think it's less, less virulent there than is in India. Yeah, because, because the political power of the Indian government in that.

Because the current government, the current government in India is there because of the support of the rss. RSS is this big nationalistic wing and they couldn't be in government without it.

In fact, when, when I was watching on TV when Modi was inaugurated and in India, if you want to show someone respect, you'll reach down and touch their feet. It's a, it's a very kind of classic Hindu thing.

So when Modi came into the big arena, here's the gate of India, here's all the dignitaries from all over the world, this is the largest democracy in the world, blah, blah, blah, blah. Modi walks in, before he gets to the dais where he's going to sit down, he goes over to the RSS leaders and reaches down and touches their feet.

Huge moment in terms of what he was signaling, in terms of his understanding of relationship of Hinduism and Indian nationalism.

Okay, so we've got this then description. So there's not like one definition. It's, it's kind of a catch all and it depends on who's defining the term. Is that right?

Right.

So we could be talking about a Hindu as when if someone says I'm Hindu, it means I'm culturally Indian, I'm like for Indian culture. They may not look at it religiously while another person might.

Exactly, exactly.

So it's, it's a moving target.

So there's some Hindus as well as Muslims, by the way, who reaching them is like reaching any secular person, period. You know, but there are a lot of Hindus who are Indians in the diaspora that are deeply committed to Hinduism.

And so it's just, it's all over the map.

So when we're talking about it that you don't need to, there's not one volume or one holy book like we have with the Bible or the Quran, right? There's the, you refer to the Vedas, and I know there's the Upanishads. But that's not just one book.

Right, right. The, the Vedas are the kind of core book. And so most of the other books are attached to that, the Vedas, like appendices.

And so the Upanishads are the appendices to the Vedas.

Okay, so, but there's no one book, but even things like very formative books like the Bhagavad Gita, very, very popular, very important, which have nothing to do with the Vedas. They are part of a larger kind of epic book called the Mahabharata.

So a lot of popular Hinduism is driven by popular stories called Puranas and the epics like the Ramayana or the Mahabharata. So you have actually in India, people who draw from a lot of different books and they're inspired by different books.

So some are like, if you look at Hindu philosophy is clearly comes from the Upanishads.

But if you look to a practical, like Indian, if you just drop somebody down on the street, you know, with a blindfold, and they talk to a Hindu, they may have no knowledge of the Upanishads, but that might be deeply embedded in a particular epics of, you know, Vishnu or Shiva or some of the popular gods or goddesses of India. So, yes, the short answer is there is no single book, kind of like the Quran or the Bible in Hinduism doesn't, doesn't function that way.

So who, who wrote the Upanishads?

The Upanishads were written by Brahminical seers, you know, that meditated over a period, long period of time. So there's no one author of those books. So they, they come together because in those days it was an oral tradition. It wasn't written down at all.

And so it wasn't until much, much later that you go to like the Amazon.com and like, click on and get a copy of the Upanishads. This material was not available until the 18th century to the outside world.

So when it finally began to, it was a very famous missionary went there and learned Sanskrit and basically told the Hindus that he was a Brahmin and therefore he was given access to this knowledge. So the outside world really didn't have access to, like, the textual tradition of Hinduism until the 18th century. Which is stunning. Think about it.

It's absolutely stunning.

Now, how about, how big are the Upanishads?

Oh, it's a book about 600 pages long. It's made up of. I mean, there. It's hard even that. Even the Upanishads, we assume it's like a bounded set.

But you know that what I'm referring to is what's called the 18 principle upanishad. So there's 18 upanishads, which are considered to be, like, all the philosophers said, this is the core Upanishad.

But there are hundreds of Upanishads that are not part of that 18. But that 18 can be put into one volume, a thick volume, and you can buy it on Amazon. But it's in its original history.

It was attached to the Vedas, and orally they went from one of the Vedic traditions right into the Upanishads, which interpreted that Veda. So they were originally not. It was never presented as a separate book. The way we talk books today and things like that. It wasn't in that way.

What about the Vedas? Were they also oral tradition?

All oral tradition. So the Rig Veda, which is the original, was 10, 28 hymns. It was hymns that they sung.

And then the Sum of Ada just took those hymns and turned them into mantras. There's like a 90% overlap between the two books. It's like taking a book of like.

Like the book of Matthew or maybe a better book, like book of Psalms, taking the book of Psalms, which are hymns, and turn them into mantras. And on it goes down through the Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajurveda Veda.

The four Vedas is kind of the core books, but they're basically recensions of the original Rig Veda. That is the oldest and most sacred text of Hindu. If you have to say, like, what is the core book?

It's the Rig Veda, because that's the one everyone's trying to comment on and expand on.

Even though they go way off, way, way away and all kinds of other teaching, they all still claim they're exposing the original Veda, which was meant to be. Actually, they have a thing in Hinduism called the unstruck sound, which means there's this sound resonating through the universe.

Have you ever seen, like, on people that's tattooed endlessly in America. You'll see people with an ohm signal. Have you seen, like, the ohm sound? Arms. Okay, that is. That is that unstruct sound. It's.

It's often spelled om in the west, but it should be a, um. It's ohm. It's a diphthong. And that ohm sound is that Unstruct sound.

And they believe that by hearing that, they were able to hear all the Vedic material came out of that sound.

That's fascinating because it's got these different loose oral traditions that have been written down. People have studied them, but there's not one book to be able to draw from. I think of Islam calling Christians the people of the book.

But with Hinduism, is it a high literacy religion?

Well, India does value literacy, but the, the tradition, because so much of the Hinduism is based on mantras and on speaking and particularly Sanskrit speaking, that it's based on the sounds. And so they actually don't have an Alphabet. They have what's called a syllabary.

So every, a symbol in Sanskrit is actually a sound rather than a letter. And therefore the whole, the whole structure of Sanskrit is based on sounds that you make.

And so once you get into a sound language, it moves from literacy to orality. And so the Brahmans really valued the orality of it.

And so they, they weren't interested in putting it down, writing it down like you find in the Christian, Muslim tradition, where it was all important to put it down on paper. You know, it wasn't that way. It was something that was kept secret among the Brahmans, orally, among themselves.

It's only in the modern world, it all gets put into textual form and saying, because we're textual tradition people, we value text. But in the Hindu tradition, they highly value the or they believe the oral tradition was higher than the written tradition.

That is, it's so different than what many Westerners are used to. I mean, it really is a foreign language.

Even when you were talking about the different names and peoples, I, I know so many different American pastors. We have a hard time with so many syllables pronouncing it. Our brains aren't used to that as much.

So when we're talking about Hinduism and we're talking to the people in our communities, we have no idea where they're at, what they believe. I mean, culturally, it's just so different. And yet many of them are here in the West. They've been here.

I met, I have an Indian friend here in north northeast Florida. And he said to me, was talking about his son, the man came from India. And he goes, my son is the most redneck Indian you'll ever meet.

And I kind of laughed because in some respect, I mean, he's a Christian, but they, the just the generations. Like, I have another friend of mine. He's a South African Indian or an Indian South African. I Can't remember which one becomes.

That goes first and gets, you know, the, the priority there. But you're just seeing there's so many different Indians that have been dispersed around the world.

Have most of them retained the, the Hinduism that they were raised in? Or should we just not assume that the, the Indians, or look like Indians may not even be Indians?

Like, my neighbor is Guineas, and their family had been slaves, so. But they were Indian. And so with my South African friend, his family had been slaves on the sugar plantations.

Oh, yeah. Because they built the railroads in Kenya and all that, so.

Well, first of all, I think it's important to balance that point out about the Hindu diversity by saying, you know, people are also just people. You know, they. They have their struggles with their children and they have struggles with their schooling, and they have struggles with their.

They get depressed. They're worried about the same things we're worried about. So I think there's a common human element to people that it's just important in witnessing.

I would never want this podcast to, like, scare somebody away.

Right.

I do think that it's true that you have to learn to, you know, I'm a big believer in kind of the, the reverse of rabbinic evangelism. You know, rather than asking all the questions, let's hear what questions they have.

And I think it's important to let that be revealed in what they're thinking about, what they understand. I do think there are certain things about the way Hindus think.

This would be true for, like, almost all Hindus and even Indian descent people in general. There's certain things which create barriers to Christian witness that are just like, they're always there.

And so if you don't go into it knowing that, I mean, one obvious example is the Hindu idea that, you know, many, many roads lead up to, you know, the mountain. They all go to the same place. So Hinduism is very different from Islam, for example, which says, you know, there's right and there's wrong.

You teach that, we teach this and we're going to fight you over because you're wrong and we're right. Hinduism does not respond to you by think saying you're wrong. Their answer is to say, you're right, you're right, and so are you. You're right, too.

We're all right. You know, we're all, you know, the five blind men and the elephant story. They love to tell, you know, all of that.

So Hinduism is much more of a, you know, both and than an either or religion. And so therefore, they tend to be More like shockingly embracing whatever we say because Jesus can just be one more God in the pantheon. Right.

So the uniqueness of Christ, it becomes really the crucial point. What does it mean for us to say that Jesus Christ has uniquely done something which they must uniquely respond to?

That's a common dynamic with all conversation with Hindus that comes into every language.

What is the. I'm thinking of these, how Hindus conceived God in the pantheon of gods. How many gods do are within the Hindu pantheon?

Well, yeah, that's a good question. I mean if you actually there's been a study of that question and they basically determined it's kind of a historic answer to that.

There's 330 million gods in the Hindu pantheon because you have gods that go down to family, family level and also connected every occupation in India. But you know that there's a famous story about this Hindu man who said, I'm going to determine how many gods worship India.

And so he goes through every village, what gods do you worship here? And he put them in a little book. This is a famous story in India.

And so he went through his whole life and he commented all the gods and finally he had this massive book and someone said to him, well, at the end of your life, how many gods worshiped in India? You know what his answer was? The answer was one classic in the response. The one and the many is like the classic thing.

Yeah, I worship many gods, but you know, above it all is Brahman. Brahman is the, you know, the force behind it all. And therefore these are manifestations of one or there's actually, I mean, at least two.

At least two of the Hindu philosophies are atheistic or non theistic.

And so you don't even have to believe in God to be a Hindu, you know, whereas others are very much entrapped by what we would call what appears to be idol worship, you know, of so many different gods like Hanuman or Krishna, Rama, Vishnu, all of that. So it's extremely, you know, you can't actually talk about it quite as easily as this to say, well, there's 330 million gods, you know, it's a poly.

The missionaries thought that, oh, this is a polytheistic country, but when they actually got deeper into it, they realized it was a little more complex than that.

So I wanted to talk a bit about Brahmans. You mentioned Brahmans.

But that leads to a greater question on the caste system, something that many Westerners just don't have any idea of what that means. We're very Individualistic. We're very much freedom, we're very much carpe diem, you know, going and doing whatever you want to do.

But the caste system shapes Indian thought, especially Hindu thought, because we've seen they're really intermixed. What do we need to understand about the caste system?

Well, yeah, what we call the caste system originates from the Rig Veda, that early book we talked about. And so in the. The tenth. The tenth book of that big Veda, the 90th chapter, it talks about the creation of the world.

And certain people are created from Brahman's head, some from his chest and arms, some from his legs and from his feet.

So the Brahmins, the high caste, come from his head and the Kshatriyas from his arms, the Vaishyas from his thighs, and then the shudder from the feet.

So the idea behind that was that certain people were actually created for certain roles in society, from being the priests, the thinkers, down to the political leaders, to the farmers, to the servants or slaves. So it's not a class system. This is a creational way. People were made in order to fulfill certain functions in society.

So once that gets started, it's actually called the varna system, the four varnas, which means the four colors. It goes from light skin to dark skin. The Brahmans, the Kshatris, the Vaishyas, the Shudras.

But then within those four categories, there are many castes. That is the term you use where you're locked into a certain kind of occupation or work. And there's about a.

You know, there's probably a thousand different castes. There's probably 900 and some odd different castes cast within that.

But it comes in these four big groupings of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras.

What are the. What's the. The untouchables.

The untouchables are people that. They're.

In India, they developed codified laws called the laws of Manu, which everybody has to abide by their, you know, their caste, their varna kind of strictures. So if you disobey that, you can be outcast, which is where we get the word in English, the term outcast. You're thrown out of the caste system.

So if you're thrown out of the caste system, you become what's called today, the term is Dalit. Gandhi famously called them hadi johns, that is to say, the children of God. But these are people that have been out of the caste.

And basically half of India is in that category. About 48% is in that category. So it's a huge group of people that are. I say half of India. Half of the Hindus in India are in that category.

So the Brahmins only represent 8% of the people. So this is a very tiny group on top, going down to a much larger group, down to the Shudra level and the Dalit level, which is over half of India.

Isn't that amazing?

It is amazing. I mean, India is so big, we don't even think about. Realize I was trying to explain this to someone. I said take. To explain India to an American.

I said take like Maine all the way down to Florida and take Washington all the way down to California and all the people and squish them together into like Kentucky, Ohio or Nebraska, all those people, and then triple that population, and that's India. It's just so big.

Except you have to quadruple it. Yeah, they're now.

They're now quadruple.

They're now at 1.4 billion.

1.4 billion.

Yeah. And so India, when they passed China about five years ago, there was like celebrating in the streets because here's China.

That of course, they've abandoned it now, but they had the one child policy, which has finally come to roost. And so China now is. Is of course paying people to have babies, what you mentioned earlier.

But the point is that India now is the most populated country in the world, not counting the Indian diaspora, which is massive. It's one of the largest. They've now passed Mexico in terms of diaspora into the US So they're major, major diaspora nation.

But Even within India, 1.4 billion people.

So go back for a second. What did you just say about the diaspora with Indians in the US Surpassing Mexico? Yes, yes, explain that. I find that really hard to believe.

So it used to be that Mexico was the leading immigrant population into the US So, and it was. And then like the India, then the Philippines, et cetera. But now India has come up. And now I say I'm talking about Indians of all backgrounds.

This means Indians come from Kenya, Indians come from India, Indians come from all over Southeast Asia. But still the, the larger Indian diaspora is now the largest in the country.

How many people are we talking about?

We're talking millions. I mean, I'm trying to think again. Attachment. What you mean in terms of the Indian dysphora? Because in terms of Hindus versus Indians. But it's a lot.

I think I've written down here somewhere. But right now, like, just in the New Jersey, New York area, It's almost. It's 400,000. Okay. New York, Chicago area, 150,000.

San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, 150,000. There's a lot of people. Dallas, Fort Worth, 150,000. I mean, it's a lot. I go down the list. It's a lot. Even places like Atlanta, 100,000.

So it's about 4, 4 million, 5.2 million in the US that are, that are there in any diaspora. It's a lot. 10 million globally they're doing out on the other parts of the world. So they are now the number one sender of immigrants.

Are we talking just, I, I don't know what the proper term is. Are we talking about people that are here?

Because I'm comparing it to Mexicans and that, that's just a large population coming into the United States. You know, whatever. I'm not talking about border policy. I'm just saying as people were coming in, right. We, we know people are coming in.

Are you talking about legally coming into the country?

Yeah, legally.

Okay, legally.

All right.

Because that might change, that might change the numbers a little bit.

Who knows? I know, I'm sure illegal is probably a lot different, but plus you have to also look at the sectors.

There's a lot of studies done on what sectors people go into when they come into the US and so there's a big difference between what Mexicans are doing when they come into the US versus what Indian immigrants are doing. So if you look at, for example, people in essentially the fields of it, high tech fields, science, healthcare, those are largely Indians.

They're not driving trucks. They're not doing, they're not doing construction work. So they're going into more influential areas of society.

And they typically come from the higher castes of India. So the result is you have much higher educated, I mean, the average.

And right now in the US around 35, 36% of Americans have a college degree, which strikes us as small, but that's the reality. But in Indian immigrants, it's 81%. 81% of Indians in the US have a college degree. That would not be true for Mexican immigrants.

So the difference is not simply number. I mean, numbers can be confusing. It's actually about influence where they're going.

Because back in 65, as you know, Lyndon Johnson changed the immigration policy and it went from, you know, basically favoring Western Europe immigration to an open policy of supposedly like merit based, now connected to the lottery system. But that whole system basically favored Indians especially who came into the US which needed people to do health care.

So that's why you have inordinate number of Indians coming to Florida, coming to Chicago, coming to of course Texas, California, because that's where high tech is, that's where healthcare is. Florida of course probably the largest healthcare network in the country.

So there's certain parts of the country which have a disproportionate number of Hindus because of what they do when they get here. Because it's a merit based system. You get visas, the B12 visa, based on what your skill set is.

That's a very different thing than Mexican immigrants or people coming here based on, you know, from Honduras or wherever, trying to get asylum here. It's a whole nother ball game. And so that's why it's kind of quietly in the system. And plus the Indian population and birth rate is very high.

So these Indians are having children here. So that's part of it. They're also naturalized U. S citizens. But the Indian diaspora in the US Is large, much larger. We realize it.

Well even now as you're talking about it, I'm sitting there going, and I know a lot of this stuff and you're surprising me with statistics because I don't think that many Westerners understand these are highly influential people that have a high regard for education.

That 81% have a college degree was normal, and I hate to say normal, I don't know how you classify it, but just people that are American, no matter what their ethnicity is, is it 36%? Was that, was that number?

36.

But that's not regard to ethnicity, that's just average American.

Average American because you took lower. Yeah, that's right.

And you look at the skills like for example, you look at how many, what do immigrants do when they come to the US so 36% of immigrants are involved in things like business, science, health care, IT. But if you look at just the Indians, it's 78%. So you look at this, the dramatic kind of influence and this is a great thing, they bring great gifts.

And this is why it was called after 65, the so called brain drain. And then the US started the lottery system which doesn't include India.

But for countries that don't have immigration to the US High numbers, they're in a separate list, they get a lottery. So places like Russia or wherever, Kazakhstan, you name it, they're on the lottery system, Serbia.

And so their best minds are able to be brought into the US to the lottery system. So the result is the US benefits from this amazing immigration into our country. It's a huge blessing to us.

But I Think people should recognize that the Indians have a particular role in that. That's been remarkable.

What then is the goal? Like you mentioned, that so many. 81% have college educations or college degree. There's a huge emphasis on education within Indian families.

Anyone who's worked with any family like that, My wife teach voice lessons. I mean, many Indian families, and they are. Most of them are Hindu. But why come here to the United States?

Well, I think Indians still see America as a place of opportunity, and I think that there's a joke in India that they tell. So this is their joke, not mine. But their. Their joke is, what's the American dream?

And so someone's, well, American dream house and have a car and a good job and et cetera, et cetera, go on vacations, et cetera. They say, well, what's the American dream? American dream. Sorry, what's the Indian dream?

Is to get to know an American and come and come and join the American dream. In other words, there's not a sense of. I think it's changing in recent years, but last decade or so, a few decades.

But I do think there's a lot of people who feel like there really isn't a comparable Indian dream because, you know, even though the middle class is rising in India. That's true. It is rising dramatically. But I do think it's still part of the cultural mindset.

If you really want to prosper, you can do it better in America than you can in India. There are certain kind of ceilings to Indian, you know, how you can move your family head.

So, so many of my Indian friends have children that come to America. I mean, another statistic on statistics right now. Guess how much money is flowing from India. I mean, from the U.S. back into India. Okay, every.

From Indians from the U.S. yes, from Indians who work here, who send money back to the U.S. it's now topped $120 billion every year. Okay, so this is now part of the Indian economy, the Indian economy. If. If the Indians lost.

This has happened in the last 15 years. A dramatic growth in the economic power of Indians in America. And they. And to their credit, they're taught from childhood, support your family.

It's a big part. They don't have, like, a health care, no nursing homes, all that you have to send money back.

And so that's, that's one thing I admire about the Indians. They have a deep commitment to take care of their families with their resources, and they send money back to India.

And that doesn't matter if they're Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian. Correct.

That's true.

Which is.

Which is a good thing because I have some friends and I don't want to talk in this way because some people right now are like, oh, my gosh, we're being invaded. That's not what we're trying to convey. It's talking about there's a gospel opportunity.

And there are many Christians that are coming in that are Indian, that have been involved in our churches that are just huge. They're pillars in the church. And I think that needs to be embraced and we need to learn from. But how do we go about taking concrete steps to.

And we're going to be doing a series in this, so this is kind of the first part in it. But how do we take concrete steps so that we can start building relationships and sharing Jesus with our Hindu friends or Hindu Indian friends?

Well, as I said before, first of all, we're all nations of immigrants. We're all immigrants. So I just see that lens, and I thank God for the beautiful diversity of America.

I think when working with Hindus, I think the first thing to do is to build strong relationships with them.

I think that churches have to divide or expend resources to build relationships and to find out how they can love the community that they're in in very practical ways.

I'm a big believer in, you know, what's called sometimes relational evangelism, but entering people's story, you know, what is their story, how do we enter into that story? And I think that a lot of people are walking around what is often what Bob Tully used to call halt. H A L T Halt.

You know, they're, they're, they're, you know, they're, they're what? Hurt. They're angry, they're lonely, and they're tired. And that's true for people all over, and they can't receive something.

We have this idea in evangelicalism that people are just empty vessels, and we go pour the gospel into that. But actually, people are filled with all kinds of other stuff. They're hurt, they're angry, they're lonely, they're tired. And these are no different.

And therefore, you have to be able to engage one's story and receive that hurt. Listen to that hurt. Listen to their anger. They might have been discriminated against. They might not gotten a job, they wanted them.

They might feel lonely in their community because no one accepts them because they're Indians. I confuse them with Sikhs. People always confuse Hindus with Sikhs. They hate that on and on and on.

And therefore the result is they don't feel like anyone really sees them. And so I think the first kind of call to evangelize is always to see people and hear them.

And then when they begin to share with you their concerns, their hurts, their challenges, then we can engage with them.

Once we get into that level, then of course you're going to find them totally surprised that we actually believe that Christ has done something uniquely in the world that they must respond to. So those are, you know, those are things that get into theological kind of the great kind of pluralism of India because they're.

They're the masters of pluralism. They're the. They're the source of all the pluralistic kind of conceptions that have now invaded the Western world.

That they're the ones that invented it. And so that's. That's the world they live in. They grew up in that. And they. They think they associate Christianity with the Western world.

You know, I mentioned to you that I. I spent two years doing this study of, you know, questions that Hindus ask. It's a great. It was so surprising.

Surprising to me, so interesting because when we went on to actually ask them, what were their questions, one of the things they said to us a lot was, well, you know, we have our gods, we have Rama, we have Krishna, we have Vishnu, et cetera. You have your God, you have Jesus and all that. You know, why would we want to change our national God for your national gods?

You know, to them, it's like. It's almost like denying their Indian identity. It's much more of a nationalistic question. It is a religious question.

So in order to get into that world, you have to understand that world. And that Jesus Christ transcends. It really helps to point out to Indians, they're always amazed.

And even Modi acknowledged this at one point early on in his presidency or at prime ministership, where he said, acknowledge that Christianity goes back to 52 AD in India. That means Christianity is older in India than it is in the US and so people say this is not a Western religion that got imported to India.

It was there. I mean, there's this great moment in Indian history. It's called the.

It's down in Kerala where they were trying to impose Eastern Orthodox Christianity, I'm sorry, Roman Catholicism on southwest India. And Kerala, they were Syrian Orthodox. And this called the Kundan cross incident. They took a rope around this cross and they bent the cross.

It means the crooked cross. And you can go and see it this day. And they said, we will never convert to Catholicism because, you know, our. We are Orthodox. We're Syrian Orthodox.

You know, they were like. So that was like, that's our identity.

You know, it's hard for us to imagine, but these Marthoma Christians, they're called Martha means St. Thomas Christians. They go all the way back to St. Thomas. So think about that. How the ancient. The India is one of the ancient churches.

We think about the Coptics and all these other groups of ancient churches in Eastern Europe, but actually one of the oldest churches in the world is found in South India. And so it's actually a part of their own. Their own heritage.

And they have to understand that it's not something that came across, you know, on a boat in the 19th century.

I was talking to Sam George about that because he's. I think he's Assyrian Orthodox.

Yeah, he is. He's part of that heritage.

Well, I remember asking them, because I knew that. And I said, when did your family come to faith in Jesus? And I knew it was way back.

And I really wanted to see what people would see when they would, like, saw that. He goes the 12th century. I'm like, that goes way before most of us. That's when he could point to, which means he could trace it. And I thought, what?

Amazing. Rich. Just heritage. Now, I know we're a little bit on a time constraint today, but one more question. We have people in our churches that.

I mean, there are many Indians coming into our churches who are. Who are Christian, and yet they.

I've talked to several, and they've also felt discriminated against because in many respects, they're walking into oftentimes what is a white majority evangelical cultural environment. And they feel unseen or misunderstood or discriminated against, even in the church. And it shouldn't be that way. How do we help the churches that.

And these pastors that are listening right now, these ministry leaders, wherever they are, to be able to minister to the needs of the people that are there that come from Indian backgrounds.

I know when I was a pastor of a small church in North Georgia, I invited an Indian leader to speak in our church one Sunday. And they were like. And they asked me, like, does he speak English?

You know, they were like, I couldn't imagine, you know, like, no, he has a master's in English. Believe me, he's very articulate, you know, but I think that it's a lot of this just people don't know. This is the power of relationships.

You know, when someone comes into the church and they actually get to know these Indian Christians, they can be very, very devout. I mean, some of the most amazing dedicated Christians I know are Indian Christians.

And there's a, as you said before, about 20% of the immigrants from India are in fact in the Christian category. So there are a lot of very devoted Christians from India that come here and your church needs to just get to know them.

And frankly, what I love about this is that in the process of this, your own churches will hear the gospel themselves afresh. Yeah, because that's the whole challenge of today's Christianity.

We have, we, we've moved slowly and some of not so slowly into a domesticated version of Christianity which is actually not the actual gospel. And we call that, you know, the gospel.

And so part of the project of this generation, I'll tell Gen Z all the time and now, now coming up, the alpha generation, that the great project of that generation is the re articulation of apostolic biblical Christianity, which of course is every tribe, every tongue, every language. Right.

And so these people that are in our walk, in our churches, they are our brothers and sisters in Christ and we're all going to be in the new creation together. And so let's celebrate that. And that's where church pastors have to, you know, basically reintroduce the gospel to their own people.

Totally agree. That's an awesome concluding word. I know you're getting ready to be teaching at the Evangelical Theological Society.

Aren't you doing a lecture on how Hindus see the Nicene Creed?

I am, I'm doing a, I'm doing a larger study.

It'll eventually be a three part series, only doing one at the, at the ets, but I'm looking at every line of the Apostles Creed and how it's heard through Hindu philosophical categories.

Awesome. Well, I can't wait for that to go public. I want to thank you for coming on the show to talk about this.

This is such an important topic that I just think gets woefully underplayed and people aren't examining it. And the future of the Christian is, I mean the future of the church is global.

I mean it's a polycentric missiology, as Alan Ye has talked about, seeing all the world take the gospel to everyone, everywhere. And I think we want to see what God is. I mean, God is doing a work. We talked about the diaspora. 56 million people last I knew.

And maybe in the numbers bigger people being moved off of their homeland. God is doing a work and I think as Blackaby said years ago, if he's doing a work, I want to join him in that work.

And if God's putting this together to show the reality of the new creation, we should be a part of that because it's a testimony to the heavenly powers. It's a testimony to the, the unbelieving world of the reality of the gospel as John 17 talks about.

And also as you said, it blows your gospel categories out of the water.

I think it was Eugene Peterson that talked about in his book, when the angels are surrounding the throne of God, saying to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his glory. And he likened it to the four corners of the earth saying to one another, this is what I see about God.

What do you see? This is what I see about God. It just grows our vision. And that's what I love about your ministry. You've been such a.

Had a huge influence on Apollo's watered influence on me. I just want to thank you for what you've done and what you're doing right now.

And I would encourage anyone out there to just go on to Amazon, put in Timothy Tennant and get his stuff. It is jam packed. See his lectures online. He will blow you out of the water.

I think I'm a fire hose until I hang out with him and he, he really blows us out of the water. So thank you, Dr. Tennant for coming on the show today.

Thank you, Travis. It's been a great joy.

Thanks for spending time with me today. As we wrap up, I want to leave you with a picture that's been on my heart. The harvest is all around us.

There are people ready to be loved, stories waiting to be heard and friendships waiting to be built. Our culture though, isn't conducive to that today. And that's where we have to push back.

It keeps putting us into this or tries to conform us into this speed system where it's just the, the tyranny of the urgent all the time. But there are people out there ready to be loved and ready to come to faith in Jesus.

Seeing the harvest doesn't mean you need to know everything about every culture that's out there, by the way, or every religion. You don't need to have a degree in Hinduism or Islam or whatever background someone comes from. You just need eyes to see the person you can do that.

Ministry like this is about relationships and about caring for people where they are, not just because of their religion, but caring for them, really caring for them. And that takes time. It's about meeting people where they are, listening to them, sharing life with them, and letting those connections grow.

And I want to be honest with you, it's not going to be easy. Our culture pushes against this all the time. It's going to take time. It's slow work. It's patient work. It's slow work.

This is a crock pot kind of ministry. Not an instant pot. And we want instant pot. We learned about this last week, but you can't rush it. When it works, it works deeply.

Lives are changed, hearts are opened, community is built.

And if you want to learn more about the ministry we're doing and how to engage with it with topics like this, I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter. Link is in the show Notes.

And while you're at it, check out ApolloSweater.org for our ever expanding list of resources designed to help you see the harvest, build relationships and serve your community.

And don't forget to join us next.

Week as we talk about money, money, money, money.

And not just money.

We all need resources to do ministry, but the system of mammon can shape or even malform our gospel expression. And we need to talk about this. It's one of the driving forces for every single ministry that is out there.

I'll be talking with special guest David W. Smith about this and it's a conversation you won't want to miss. Thanks for joining us on today's episode of the ministry Deep Dive upon of Apollo is Watered, the center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics.

We hope it helps you thrive in your ministry and in today's culture. Let's keep the conversation going. Check out our ministry@apolloswater.org and be sure to sign up for one of our ministry cohorts.

Connect with others in the battle. We need one another. And remember, keep diving deep and as always, stay watered.

Everybody sa.