Gurus, Temples & Charisma

On the morning of March 25, 1972, Lauren Ekroth delivered a talk titled “Gurus, Temples & Charisma” at the Church of the Crossroads, 1212 University Ave., Honolulu. The listing appeared in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s church service notices. The talk was scheduled for 10:30 a.m., following the 9:30 a.m. Crossroads Clearinghouse session.

The title bridges Ekroth’s two professional worlds. As a speech-communication professor, “charisma” was a subject of academic study — the mechanics of how leaders inspire followers and project authority. As a figure connected to the humanistic psychology movement he had helped found in Hawaii in 1968, “gurus and temples” pointed toward Eastern spirituality and the human potential movement that was transforming American intellectual life in the early 1970s.

Church of the Crossroads had been the site of the 1969 Vietnam sanctuary crisis, in which Ekroth played a visible role as a faculty advisor and activist. By 1972 he was speaking from its pulpit — a continuing relationship with one of Honolulu’s most socially engaged congregations.