(RNS) — In the heart of Mormon Utah, a Hare Krishna temple has stood as a beloved cultural landmark for more than three decades. Tens of thousands of locals flock to the ISKCON Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork each spring for its annual Holi color festival, and children from diverse backgrounds enjoy field trips to the 15-acre property — which includes an AM radio station and an animal park with llamas, cows, peacocks and parrots — throughout the year.
“We’re trying to do good and enrich the community pretty much 24 hours a day,” said Caru Das Adhikari, the temple’s founder and head priest, who once distributed copies of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, in the 1970s on the campus of Brigham Young University, the flagship university of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But over the past month, three attacks on the temple’s building have left Utah’s Hare Krishna devotees concerned about the presence of hatred amid their otherwise peaceful coexistence.
On June 18, Adhikari’s wife and temple co-founder, Vaibhavi Warden, heard a loud noise and observed smoke coming from the temple’s radio station roof. The next day, severa …