{"id":4855,"date":"2004-12-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-08T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/12\/08\/2004-12-08-dutch-hindu-cleric-academy-honors-first-graduates\/"},"modified":"2004-12-08T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-08T12:00:00","slug":"2004-12-08-dutch-hindu-cleric-academy-honors-first-graduates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/12\/08\/2004-12-08-dutch-hindu-cleric-academy-honors-first-graduates\/","title":{"rendered":"Dutch Hindu Cleric Academy Honors First Graduates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nohg.nl\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS, December 7, 2004: Recently the first graduates of the Dutch Hindu Cleric Academy received their certificates as &#8220;Hindu Cleric.&#8221; The aim of the DHCA (in Dutch: Nederlandse Opleiding Hindoe Geestelijke, NOHG) is to educate people (both men and women) who will be able to provide spiritual guidance, based on Hindu religious, philosophical and ethical principles. This three-year (independent) course is also meant to train &#8220;spiritual executives&#8221; for the various Hindu organizations in modern society. As the academy is independent, neutral, students from different (Hindu and non-Hindu) backgrounds attend its extensive and thorough training. After the training the graduates become members of the &#8216;Circle Hindu Clerics,&#8217; from which they will engage themselves in giving education on Hindu Dharma, in various ways (as a pundit, priest, cleric or social worker, depending on their specializations). The management of the DHCA thinks that the academy can serve as a model for similar trainings in other countries and is willing to give support in organizing this. In order to get an impression of the content of the education, see &#8220;source&#8221; for the English version. People who would like to contact the academy, the e-mail address is: info@nohg.nl.<BR><br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\nHPI note: We asked the organizers how non-Hindus would participate. They replied, &#8220;I meant that white people who are not Hindu by birth can attend the education, as in Holland by law education is free for everybody. If they qualify themselves as a Hindu cleric they may consider themselves Hindu.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceTHE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS, December 7, 2004: Recently the first graduates of the Dutch Hindu Cleric Academy received their certificates as,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}