5 things to know about GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley
3. Convert to Christianity
In an early 2020 appearance on the podcast “Journeys of Faith with Paula Faris,” Haley detailed how she converted from Sikhism to Christianity. She explained that even as she practiced Sikhism, her parents “made us go to different churches,” including “Methodist, Baptist [and] Catholic” churches because her mother wanted Haley and her siblings to “respect everyone and how they do their prayers.”
The candidate’s mother believed that “there is one God but everyone has their own pathway and as long as you have your relationship with God, then you will be OK.” While she praised Sikhism for enabling her to “feel God in the room,” she told Faris that she “couldn’t understand it” because she did not know the language in which such services were conducted.
Haley added, “When you grow your faith, you have to be able to talk to God and you have to be able to go to a service and feel it. And if you don’t understand the language, you’re not hearing it and it’s harder and harder to feel it.”
“When I started dating my husband and we started going more and more to his church, and he was Methodist, I immediately could relate,” she recalled. “All of a sudden, there was not just the feeling but it was the words that I could relate to that really meant something to me. And that was really when I knew if I wanted to grow deeper in my faith, if I wanted to have a stronger relationship, I needed to have something that spoke to me.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]