Bristol Smith, a supervisor at a McDonald’s in Maryville, Tenn., got here throughout Vivek Ramaswamy’s title this spring, shortly after Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, introduced he was working for president. Mr. Smith was intrigued. He favored the way in which Mr. Ramaswamy “stands up against the wokeness” and his plan to ship the army to the southern border to fight drug cartels. He revered Mr. Ramaswamy’s acumen as a businessman worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Then Mr. Smith, 25, looked for Mr. Ramaswamy’s religion. Mr. Smith is an evangelical Christian who not too long ago began a small church that meets at his mother and father’ home.

“I looked up his religion and saw he’s Hindu,” he recalled. “I was going to vote for him until that came up.” What the nation wants is to be “put back under God,” as Mr. Smith sees it, and he doesn’t wish to take an opportunity on somebody who will not be a Christian.

At that time, he mentioned, “I got back on President Trump’s train.”

Mr. Ramaswamy, 37, was raised by Indian immigrants and is a training Hindu. That poses a dilemma for a few of the conservative Christian voters who make up a big share of the Republican major voters and are accustomed to evaluating candidates not simply on their coverage proposals but additionally on their biographies and private beliefs, together with non secular religion.

For many conservative voters, a candidate’s religion is a signifier of his or her values, way of life, loyalties and priorities as a frontrunner. It’s the Sunday-morning model of the traditional query of which candidate you’d most take pleasure in having a beer with: Who would slot in at your church?

“It’s another hurdle people need to cross to go to him,” Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical chief in Iowa, mentioned of Mr. Ramaswamy.

Mr. Vander Plaats not too long ago had Mr. Ramaswamy’s household over for Sunday supper at his home, the place the meal opened with a prayer and the studying of a passage from the Bible. He got here away impressed with Mr. Ramaswamy and mentioned that his message aligned with the priorities of many evangelical voters. He talked about Mr. Ramaswamy’s listing of 10 core “truths,” the primary of which is: “God is real.” (The second: “There are two genders.”)

“I think he’s really connecting with the audiences in Iowa,” mentioned Mr. Vander Plaats, who has not endorsed a candidate. “He welcomes the deeper questions.” Mr. Ramaswamy is polling below 5 % in most up-to-date nationwide polls.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s strategy has been to confront the problem immediately and argue that he has extra in widespread with observant Christians than they may assume.

“I’m not Christian. I was not raised in a Christian household,” he instructed Mr. Vander Plaats in June in entrance of a small viewers on the headquarters of his group, the Family Leader. “But we do share the same Christian values that this nation was founded on.”

In an interview in late June, after leaving a gathering with a couple of dozen pastors in New Hampshire, Mr. Ramaswamy mentioned his religion taught him that Jesus was “a son of God, absolutely.” (That “a” is a pointy distinction from the central Christian perception that Jesus is the son of God. Hinduism is a fluid and expansive custom, and lots of believers embrace scores of deities, with some seeing Jesus as one instructor or god.)

Although he’s not a Christian, Mr. Ramaswamy identified, he speaks brazenly about why perception in God issues and why rising secularism in America is dangerous for the nation, and about values like marital constancy, responsibility, non secular liberty and self-sacrifice.

“I don’t have a quick pitch to say, ‘No, no, that doesn’t matter,’” he mentioned of the theological variations between Hinduism and Christianity. “It’s that I understand exactly why that would matter to you.”

At marketing campaign stops, Mr. Ramaswamy refers to Bible tales, together with the crucifixion of Jesus, and quotes Thomas Aquinas. He continuously mentions his expertise attending a “Christian school” in Cincinnati (St. Xavier High School, a Catholic faculty). And he contrasts “religions like ours,” which have stood the take a look at of time, with the competing worldviews of “wokeism, climatism, transgenderism, gender ideology, Covidism,” as he put it to an viewers in New Hampshire.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s marketing campaign has disseminated clips of an Iowa pastor evaluating him to the biblical determine of King David, and of his prolonged reply to a New Hampshire man who requested about his “spiritual beliefs” at a city corridor. In Iowa, a girl pressed her hand to Mr. Ramaswamy’s chest and blessed him within the title of Jesus Christ.

“Amen,” Mr. Ramaswamy mentioned as she concluded her prayer.

If Mr. Ramaswamy involves have an opportunity with evangelical major voters within the crowded Republican area, it is going to be thanks partially to forces past his marketing campaign. Many conservative voters for whom a shared religion might need as soon as been a litmus take a look at now say they’re trying not for a “pastor-in-chief” however for somebody who shares their political and cultural targets, and who will combat on their behalf.

“Theology matters, but the culture has changed. America has changed,” mentioned David Brody, the chief political analyst for the Christian Broadcasting Network, who has interviewed Mr. Ramaswamy. The largest goal now, Mr. Brody mentioned, is combating “cultural Marxism” and correcting the course of “a country gone haywire.”

He contrasted evangelical priorities in subsequent yr’s Iowa caucuses with these in 2008 and 2012, when Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum gained on the energy of their conservative Christian bona fides.

“The lazy narrative that he’s Hindu so he can’t appeal to evangelicals, I don’t buy it at all,” Mr. Brody mentioned.

In current years, theological strains have blurred as political divides have hardened. Few church buildings break up lately over outdated debates like the precise timing of the tip occasions or the function of free will in salvation. About half of American Protestants now say they like to attend a church with individuals who share their political opinions, in keeping with polling from Lifeway Research.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s emphasis on his perception in a single God has a protracted historical past for Hindus within the United States, particularly these chatting with white Christian audiences, mentioned Michael Altman, a professor of non secular research on the University of Alabama.

Swami Vivekananda, who represented Hinduism on the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893, took pains to depict his religion as monotheistic, in distinction to the stereotypes of its followers as “heathen” polytheists. Although the religion has many deities, they’re usually subordinate to at least one final “reality.” Many Hindus and students say its theology is just too complicated to be described as both wholly monotheistic or wholly polytheistic.

“The polytheism hurdle is the first thing that has to be addressed” for a lot of American Christian audiences, Mr. Altman mentioned. He sees Mr. Ramaswamy’s pitch in opposition to “wokeism” as a solution to counter stereotypes associating Hinduism with hippies, yoga and vegetarianism.

Some evangelical observers say it was former President Donald J. Trump who opened up a brand new lane for Republican candidates who weren’t essentially people who voters would anticipate to take a seat subsequent to in church on Sunday morning. Many evangelical voters embraced the crude, thrice-married on line casino magnate not as a result of he was considered one of them however as a result of they believed he would combat within the public sq. on their behalf.

Most Indian Americans, together with Hindus, are Democrats. But some conservatives see a gap with a inhabitants that prioritizes household life, marriage and training. As president, Mr. Trump hosted Diwali celebrations on the White House, and in April the Republican National Committee introduced a brand new Republican Hindu and Indian American Coalition. Prime minister Narendra Modi of India is a well-liked determine amongst a rising cohort of right-wing Indian Americans, attracting a crowd of fifty,000 when he appeared with Mr. Trump in Houston in 2019. Mr. Ramaswamy spoke final yr at a gala organized by the right-wing U.S. group HinduPACT, which is aligned with Mr. Modi’s fashion of nationalism.

Nikki Haley, one other Indian American contender within the 2024 major, has equally emphasized her background because the daughter of immigrants. But though Ms. Haley was raised Sikh, she transformed to Christianity and now attends a big Methodist church in South Carolina. Bobby Jindal, a Louisiana Republican who ran for president in 2016, was raised Hindu however has described himself as an “evangelical Catholic.”

Mr. Ramaswamy attends the identical temple in Dayton, Ohio, that he did as a baby and that his mother and father nonetheless do.

One of the temple’s clergymen officiated his marriage ceremony in New York City in 2015. He and his spouse and their two younger sons attend temple on holidays and to mark particular events, together with the youthful son’s first birthday in early July, his spouse, Dr. Apoorva Ramaswamy, mentioned.

Dr. Ramaswamy, who has publicly mentioned the household’s religion on the marketing campaign path, mentioned there have been extra similarities amongst dedicated believers throughout traditions than between critical and nominal adherents inside the identical religion.

“The fact that we are believers, that we have that sense of humility, that we raise our children with true respect and fear and love of God — that’s so much more unifying than the name of the God people pray to,” Dr. Ramaswamy mentioned.

The query for her husband’s marketing campaign is whether or not sufficient Christian voters will agree.

Ken Bosse, the pastor of New Life Church in Raymond, N.H., described himself as “an extreme follower of Jesus Christ” who would favor to have a Christian within the White House, all issues thought-about. But he can be open to the suitable candidate who will not be a Christian, noting that “we have had some professing Christians in that position who didn’t follow biblical principles.”

Mr. Bosse invited Mr. Ramaswamy to ship a quick speech at his church on a Sunday morning in April. He favored the candidate’s emphasis on reclaiming a constructive American id, he mentioned, and on his story as a self-made millionaire who’s the kid of immigrants.

At the second, nonetheless, Mr. Bosse is leaning towards supporting Mr. Trump.