Dr. Joe Hobbs visit the Cao Dai temple in Saigon

Updated 2012-05-14 13:40:20

On May 20, 2009, at 10:00am, the dignitaries at the Cao Dai temple in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam), Bishop Thuong Minh Thanh and Priest Thai Tho Thanh had the honor to receive a prominent personality from the University of Missouri at Columbia. It was Dr. Joe Hobbs, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Geography at the University of Missouri in Columbia (also called Mizzou University, or MU), who is also Program Director of Viet Nam Institute of the University.

 

The University of Missouri at Columbia has more than 30 thousand students, scattered among every known faculty and department, which includes the Department of Religious Studies. Starting in 2005, the University has established a Viet Nam Initiatives Group, later changed to Viet Nam Institute, the purpose of which is “to develop a wide range of scientific and cultural interactions with institutions and individuals in Vietnam, thereby creating learning and research opportunities for MU students and faculty as well as Vietnamese citizens, and broadening internationalization of the MU campus.” (For more information, please visit http://vietnam.missouri.edu/). One of the many objectives of the VN Institute is to exchange students, mostly to provide scholarship to Vietnamese students wishing to complete their Master or Ph.D degree in the United States.

 

In 2008, in his first visit to Viet Nam, Dr. Hobbs has visited the Cao Dai Holy See in Tay Ninh, where he was surprised and fascinated about this new religion. Unfortunately, there was no tour guide, nor any brochure, documentation explaining about Cao Dai. Dr. Hobbs wanted to learn more about this religion and a Cao Dai follower has reminded him to search the internet. Thru the Cao Dai Overseas Missionary webpage, Dr. Hobbs met Mr. Canh Tran, President of that organization, who gladly served as his intrepreter at his second visit to Viet Nam today.

 

Bishop Thuong Minh Thanh, who is the representative of the Tay Ninh Sacerdoce in Ho Chi Minh City, and Priest Thai Tho Thanh, who is the leader of the Caodai congregation in District 5 of HCM City, explained and answered many questions from Dr. Hobbs, questions related to the philosophy and doctrine of the Caodai religion, to its organizational structure, and to its worshipping rules and regulations. The two dignitaries leaders then took Dr. Hobbs to a tour of the Saigon Caodai temple and of the Holy Mother temple, which is located just behind it. Dr. Hobbs took a lot of pictures, then signed on the Souvenir Registry Book of the temple. Bishop Thuong Minh Thanh gave Dr. Hobbs a book from Gabriel Gobron (History and Philosophy of Caodaism) as well as a Caodai worship picture, which is a picture that every Caodai follower must use in his/her home to worship Cao Dai or God.

 

The visit ended at 1:00pm after a sumptuous vegeterian lunch. Dr. Hobbs expressed his sincere thanks to the two dignitaries for this wonderful reception and promised to discuss with his friends at the Department of Religious Studies to promote this new spiritist religion of Viet Nam and to introduce it to the Mizzou students. Bishop Thuong Minh Thanh responded that he would gladly like to invite the Chairman of the Department of Religious Studies to visit Viet Nam and the Cao Dai Holy See in Tay Ninh in the near future.

 

(To view the pictures of Dr. Hobbs visit, please click here)