JD Vance repeats comments he wants wife Usha to convert to Christianity – The Guardian

US vice-president announces to 10,000 attenders of Turning Point USA that he prefers wife, who is Hindu, to be Christian
JD Vance is doubling down on comments he made about wanting his wife, Usha Vance, to convert to Christianity – remarks that drew political backlash from some quarters.
At an event with Turning Point USA at the University of Mississippi to honor the conservative group’s slain founder Charlie Kirk, an audience member questioned the US vice-president about how he sees the links between American patriotism and Christianity.
“Why are we making Christianity one of the major things that you have to have in common to be one of you guys? To show that I love America just as much as you do?” the audience member asked, after pointing out that Vance’s wife, Usha, is Hindu and they are raising their children in an interfaith marriage.
Vance said that his wife grew up in a Hindu household “but not a particularly religious family” – and noted that when he met his wife they would have both considered themselves agnostic or atheist.
Vance converted to Catholicism in his 30s after being raised in a loosely evangelical family. He was baptized into the church in 2019 just as he started to become a prominent supporter of Donald Trump, who chose Vance as his running mate when he successfully ran for a second presidency in 2024.
“My views on public policy and what the optimal state should look like are pretty aligned with Catholic social teaching,” Vance, a former US senator for Ohio, said at the time of his baptism. “I saw a real overlap between what I would like to see and what the Catholic church would like to see.”
At the Turning Point USA event, Vance said that he and his wife eventually decided to raise their kids as Christians.
“Our two kids go to Christian school. Our eight-year-old just did his first communion a year ago. That’s how we decided to come to our arrangement,” Vance said, to roaring applause. “As I’ve told her, and as I’ve said publicly, and as I’ll say now in front of 10,000 of my closest friends: do I hope, eventually, that she is somehow moved by the same thing I was moved by in church? Yes. I honestly do wish that, because I believe in the Christian gospel and I hope that eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.
“But if she doesn’t,” Vance went on to say, “God says that everybody has free will, so that doesn’t cause a problem with me. That’s something that you work out with your friends, your family, the person you most love.”
Usha Vance has publicly stated that she doesn’t intend to convert to Christianity. In June, she told conservative blogger Meghan McCain that while the family has made church “a family experience … the kids know that I’m not Catholic”.
“They have plenty of access to the Hindu tradition, from books that we give them to things that we show them to visit recently to India, and some religious elements of that visit,” Usha Vance said.
The executive director of the Hindu American Foundation was critical of Vance’s remarks, telling the New York Times that the vice-president was “basically saying that … this aspect of [Usha] is just not enough”.
“That’s a lot of uncertainty in the community,” Suhag Shukla said to the outlet. “This just added kind of fuel to those fears.”
After his comments Wednesday, Vance replied to a social media post – which has since been taken down – that said “it’s weird to throw your wife’s religion under the bus, in public, for a moment’s acceptance by groypers”, a term for certain far-right extremists.
Vance called the comment “disgusting” and an example of “anti-Christian bigotry”. He said that his Christian faith “tells me the Gospel is true and is good for human beings”.
“[Usha] herself encouraged me to re-engage with my faith many years ago. She 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,” he wrote.
“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.
“Yes, Christians have beliefs. 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.”

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