From the start, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been shaped by converts from other Christian faiths. Their stories fill the pages of family histories and punctuate church meetings, often following the same trajectory: The individuals believed in God and Jesus and were familiar with the Bible, but it wasn’t until they learned about the Latter-day Saint faith that all the pieces fell into place and lingering questions finally resolved.
Rarer are the experiences of those coming to the American-born faith from outside the Christian tradition. “Latter-day Sikh: From a Guru’s Feet to a Prophet’s Call” aims to change that.
The biography, published by church-owned Deseret Book, follows the story of Gurcharan Singh Gill, a native of Punjab, India, who joined the faith after moving to the United States in the 1950s for school.
“This is not just a story of an individual,” explained co-author Nicole Wilkes Goldberg, who teaches Latter-day Saint literature at church-owned Brigham Young University. “It’s a story of two cultures coming together in one person.”
(Tamarra Kemsley) Husband and wife James and Nicole Wilkes Goldberg relied on family interviews and records to piece together the story of the life of James' grandfather.
A search for his siblings’ souls
The concise narrative, which she penned with husband James Goldberg, a writer for the Church History Department and grandson of Gill, describes how, as a young college student, the Indian immigrant began attending various church services.
According to the text, the question driving Gill centered on the fate of a deceased sister and brother. The answers he found in Sikhism — reincarnation and the eventual merging of one’s spirit with God, “just as a drop of water eventually returns to the ocean” — didn’t satisfy him. Neither did the suggestion by some Protestant pastors that his siblings had missed their chance at accepting Jesus and thus eternal life.
His investigation eventually led him to a Latter-day Saint classmate, who invited him to attend church. He did and learned about the faith’s belief that all will experience eternal life, regardless of what a person believed during life.
(Tamarra Kemsley) "Latter-day Sikh: From a Guru's Feet to a Prophet's Call" is available offers a little told story — the conversion of an individual from outside Christianity to the Utah-based faith.
This plan “felt right, almost like something he had known before,” the text reads. “He felt these new truths burning inside himself.”
Although his Sikh roommates tried to dissuade him, and he worried about his family’s response, Gill asked to be baptized in 1955 after meeting with missionaries for a few months.
Local Latter-day Saint leaders hesitated, concerned about the ramifications of conversion for Gill within his Sikh community.
The book describes this brief but critical interview with then-apostle Marion G. Romney:
Romney “looked directly at Gurcharan and asked, ‘Do you believe in Christ?’”
“Yes, I do,” Gucharan answered.
“Do you believe Joseph Smith was a prophet?” the apostle asked.
“I do.”
“Then, go ahead and get baptized. Don’t worry about it.”
In the end, his roommates attended the event.
(Tribune file photo) N. Eldon Tanner, Spencer W. Kimball and Marion G. Romney.
Gurus, prophets and tea
A theme the book explores are the similarities of the two faiths.
Latter-day Saints and Sikhs are taught, for instance, to avoid tobacco and to view themselves as divine. The founders of each, Joseph Smith and Guru Nanak, put great emphasis on the family unit — in their preaching and their own lives. They built cities where their followers could live out their teachings, which were later reinforced by their successors — prophets, in the case of the Latter-day Saint tradition, and 10 gurus in the case of Sikhism.
Reflecting on his conversion, Gill is quoted as saying in the book, “‘I felt that the new doctrine I had learned built upon the truth I had already learned through the Sikh teachings I was raised with.’”
There are meaningful differences, of course, between the two religions as well. The book is equally quick to point out those.
Tea, verboten in the Latter-day Saint tradition, is intrinsic to Sikh hospitality. When Gill’s brother moves from India to his home in Provo, the convert and his wife, Vilo, a lifelong member, must decide whether to stock the drink. They settle on not, fearing doing otherwise would confuse their young children. The resulting conflict between the two Indian brothers is one of the tensest in the book.
Leading the mission in India
Gill and Vilo shift from navigating these two backgrounds for themselves to doing so for others starting in 1992, when they are called to lead the church’s first mission headquartered in independent India.
“Many people reminded Gill of the importance of laying a careful foundation for the church’s future development in the country,” the book explains. Included in that number is former apostle Neal A. Maxwell.
“Maxwell urged Gill to pay especially close attention when setting long-term policies,” it continues. “‘Measure twice and cut once,’ he said.”
(James Goldberg) Gill proudly displays a great-grandchild.
In many ways, the biography represents a continuation of this same work of modeling a path forward for those seeking to blend two worlds. Indeed, James Goldberg said he has already heard from readers trying to do just that.
“It’s hard to make decisions sometimes when you can’t envision what the options might look like,” James said. “So to be able to have a book like this that you can put in somebody’s hand and that gives them a way to think about their future, that’s huge.”
But, he and Nicole argued, you don’t have to be trying to merge a Latter-day Saint and dharmic (any faith hailing from India, including Hinduism and Buddhism) background to benefit from observing all that is revealed by the process.
“We triangulate truth better when we are willing to have multiple conversations and approach the divinity within our tradition from more than one angle,” James said. “The complication leads to insight — irreplaceable insight.”
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