US VP Vance defends comments on wishing wife would convert to Christianity – CNA

World
World
WASHINGTON: US Vice President JD Vance on Friday (Nov 1) defended his remarks expressing hope that his wife, Usha Vance, who was raised Hindu, might one day convert to Christianity, dismissing criticism of his comments as “anti-Christian bigotry.”
A Catholic convert since 2019, the 41-year-old vice president made the initial remarks during a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi, where he was asked about raising his children in an interfaith marriage.
“Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that,” he said. “But if she doesn’t, then God says everybody has free will, and that doesn’t cause a problem for me.”
Responding to backlash online, Vance said critics were displaying hostility toward his faith. “What a disgusting comment, and it’s hardly been the only one along these lines,” he wrote on X, replying to a user who accused him of “throwing the Second Lady’s religion under the bus.”
“She is not a Christian and has no plans to convert,” Vance added. “But like many people in an interfaith marriage, I hope she may one day see things as I do.”
Born in San Diego to Indian immigrant parents, Usha Vance has said her parents’ Hindu beliefs “helped make them really good people.”
The couple met at Yale Law School and married in 2014. Vance, who rose to prominence with his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, has said his conversion to Catholicism deeply shaped his conservative political worldview and public life.
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