Reddit reviews Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity

Man, this entire thread is a textbook example of the clash between a sincerity mindset, which is concerned with making every action completely "true for the individual," and the ritual mindset, which is concerned primarily with traditions because there are legitimate benefits that come from ritual. Check out this book by a couple of academics if you feel like nerding out and understanding why people are drawn/not drawn to ritual and/or personal experience.

The Dallas locality around the Hanuman temple has a lot of commited families where kids learn full Gita (rare even in India), various stotras, yoga and languages. It is mainly Telugu based though there are probably some Tamil people too.

BTW, I think the terms like 'conservative' and 'holding on' are somewhat self-defeating and moreover not true. What is the unusual is the current setup which is inherited from Protestant background where learning happens primarily from texts, and learning from actions ('ritual') has become sidelined(this book covers some of the reasons - its author teaches courses on Harvard on ritual).

But that is a temporary thing and things are changing. A more productive diagnosis is how to transmit the inspiration which lies behind the processes. Like for some reason, a culture develops taboos against math or reading poetry(like post-Protestant societies have against practices across the world) , the response isnt so much about holding on to math or poetry, but figuring out what has broken down in the learning process and repair it.