JD Vance Defends Hope That His Wife Will Come to ‘Believe in the Christian Gospel’ – National Catholic Register

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Catholic vice president pushes back against those who are framing his desire as disrespectful.
JD Vance hopes that his wife Usha one day becomes a Christian — and is pushing back against those who are framing his desire as disrespectful.
The vice president, who is a convert to Catholicism, took to social media on Oct. 31 to defend his wish, shared publicly at a speaking event two days earlier, that his Hindu-raised wife would one day come to “believe in the Christian Gospel.”
“My Christian faith tells me the Gospel is true and is good for human beings,” Vance said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “[Usha] is not a Christian and has no plans to convert, but like many people in an interfaith marriage — or any interfaith relationship — I hope she may one day see things as I do.”
“Regardless, I’ll continue to love and support her and talk to her about faith and life and everything else, because she’s my wife,” wrote Vance. The vice president, who met his wife at Yale Law School when they both identified as agnostics, added that Usha is “the most amazing blessing” in his life, adding that she encouraged him to reengage with his own faith “many years ago.”
Vance’s social-media message was a direct reply to a since-deleted post that suggested his original remarks, made at an Oct. 29 event at the University of Mississippi, amounted to throwing his “wife’s religion under the bus, in public,” to gain clout with white nationalists.
Other comments, including several from Hindu Americans, made similar criticisms.
“JD Vance publicly casts his wife Usha’s Hindu faith as a problem to be fixed — a soul to ‘move’ to Christianity,” wrote Ajay Jain Bhutoria, an Indian American and adviser to former president Joe Biden.
Suhag Shukla, the executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, wrote that “the vice president of the United States … just said that the Hindu traditions that his wife and millions of Americans share is just not good enough.”
In his original reply to the tweet accusing him of appeasing white nationalists, Vance called the comment “disgusting” and said it reeks of “anti-Christian bigotry.”
“Yes, Christians have beliefs,” he said. “And yes, those beliefs have many consequences, one of which is that we want to share them with other people. That is a completely normal thing, and anyone who’s telling you otherwise has an agenda.”

Hope and Freedom
Vance added that his comments about his interfaith marriage came in response to a question asked during the Ole Miss event, which was hosted in the university’s basketball arena by the conservative organization Turning Point USA.
“I’m a public figure, and people are curious, and I wasn’t going to avoid the question,” he said in his X post.
At the Ole Miss event, Vance was asked by a female student how he teaches his three kids “not to keep [his] religion ahead of their mother’s religion.”
The vice president responded by saying that couples in interfaith marriages need to come to their own arrangement about how they will practice religion.
“The way that we’ve come to our arrangement is: She’s my best friend and we talk about these things,” he said of his wife, who was present at the event. “So we decided to raise our kids Christian.”
Vance shared that their two older children go to a Christian school and his 8-year-old son made his first Communion last year. He added that, “most Sundays, Usha will come with me to church.” He even said that she “is closer to the priest who baptized me than maybe I am.”
He continued, “Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by [the] Church? Yeah, I honestly I do wish that, because I believe in the Christian Gospel and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.”
“But if she doesn’t,” the vice president quickly added, “then God says everybody has free will and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me. That’s something you work out with your friends, with your family, with the person that you love.”

Vance’s comments about his hope for Usha’s conversion weren’t his only faith-related remarks.
He spoke of the importance of responding to the God-given vocation to start a family and talked about how he sees his role as vice president as doing “the most amount of good for God and for the country that I love so much.”
He also shared of his difficulty in understanding how the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA’s founder, fit into God’s plan.
“Sometimes I get p—– off about that, but what I remind myself is that there is a deeper rhythm,” he said, “that Jesus Christ is the author of the fate of human history. And we are charged to do everything that we can to effectuate that vision to make our country a more virtuous place, a more prosperous place where people can raise a family and not be persecuted for their faith but teach their children their faith.”
He was also asked about his thoughts about prayer in schools, responding that he didn’t believe talking about Jesus in a public forum violated religious liberty.
“I make no apologies for believing that Christianity is the pathway to God. I make no apologies for thinking that Christian values are an important foundation of this country. But I’m not going to force you to believe in anything because that’s not what God wants and that’s what I want either,” he said.
Vance also spoke about the importance of having intrafaith dialogue with Jewish people and protecting Christian sites in the Holy Land.
The vice president also responded to a participant who said he had wavered on being 100% pro-life. Vance has indicated his support for the availability of abortion pills, and the Trump administration recently announced plans to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), which destroys more human embryos than abortion every year.
The vice president did not address his position on IVF or the abortion pill, but instead underscored the need for prudence in pursuing the pro-life cause and reiterated his belief that Trump is “the most pro-life president in the history of the United States of America.”
Jonathan Liedl Jonathan Liedl is senior editor for the Register. His background includes state Catholic conference work, three years of seminary formation, and tutoring at a university Christian study center. Liedl holds a B.A. in Political Science and Arabic Studies (Univ. of Notre Dame), an M.A. in Catholic Studies (Univ. of St. Thomas), and is currently completing an M.A. in Theology at the Saint Paul Seminary. He lives in South Bend, Indiana. Follow him on Twitter at @JLLiedl.
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