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Gage Skidmore / Flickr
Speaking to more than 10,000 students at the University of Mississippi Oct. 29, Vice President JD Vance offered a defense of Christianity’s role in American public life and urged students to strengthen the nation’s culture through marriage and family — echoing the message of the late Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk.
The evening event kicked off TPUSA’s campus tour, “This Is the Turning Point,” led by Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, in her husband’s honor.
“I could just hear Charlie in my heart,” Erika Kirk said, opening the night. “I could just hear him say, go reclaim that territory, babe. Go to the battles that God’s love conquers. And that’s why I’m here today. I’m here because this moment, it can either be your breaking point or your wake-up call, essentially your turning point.”
Vance joined her on stage for a student Q&A that touched on his faith, family, and Christianity’s role in public life. One student drew attention when she asked how Vance and his wife, Usha, raise their children given Usha’s Hindu background.
“She’s my best friend. We talk to each other about this. We decided to raise our kids Christian,” Vance said, later adding, “The only advice I can give is you’ve just got to talk to the person that God has put you with.”
He said their 8-year-old son received his First Communion last year, drawing loud applause from the crowd.
“Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church?” Vance said of his wife, who often attends Mass with him. “I honestly do wish that because I believe in the Christian Gospel. I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.”
But, he added, “one of the most important Christian principles is that you respect free will,” explaining that “you figure this stuff out as a family and you trust in God to have a plan and you try to follow it as best as you can.”
Turning to faith in the public sphere, the vice president reflected on the Christian roots of America’s founding and said that same foundation guarantees religious liberty.
He called freedom of religion a “Christian concept” rooted in the imago Dei which he said “means that we must respect the free will of every single person.”
The “very idea that human beings have rights” comes from Christianity, he said, emphasizing that “it was Christianity that said we don’t kill children just because they’re somehow inconvenient to people.”
He then turned to modern debates over religion in public life after a student asked about faith in schools, arguing that the founders never intended to ban expressions of faith from civic spaces.
“When our founders talked about freedom of religion, they didn’t mean you weren’t allowed to say a Christian prayer in a public school or that you weren’t allowed to talk about Jesus Christ in a public forum,” Vance noted. “They just meant that nobody could force you to profess the Christian faith. That had to come from your own free will.”
VP Vance – “You do not have to completely kick God out of the public square, which is what we've done in modern America. It's not what the founders wanted…and anybody who tells you it's required by the Constitution is lying to you.” pic.twitter.com/e74QU6sJgc
“You do not have to completely kick God out of the public square, which is what we’ve done in modern America. It’s not what the founders wanted,” he continued. “And anybody who tells you it’s required by the Constitution is lying to you.”
Vance closed that section of his remarks by quoting one of his favorite Bible verses, Matthew 7:16 — “By their fruits you will know them” — and adding that the fruits of Christianity are “the most moral, the most just.”
VANCE: "The fruits of the Christian faith are the most moral, the most just… I make no apologies for believing that Christianity is the pathway to God. I make no apologies for thinking Christian values are an important foundation of this country." pic.twitter.com/Kcon1Rd2je
“I make no apologies for believing that Christianity is the pathway to God. I make no apologies for thinking Christian values are an important foundation of this country,” he said with conviction. “But I’m not going to force you to believe in anything because that’s not what God wants.”
Reflecting on Kirk’s influence in politics, Vance recalled a phone call the two shared months before Kirk’s death.
“He was mad,” Vance said of Kirk. “He called me and he said, J.D., ‘I’m really worried. I’m really worried that what’s going on in the Middle East right now is going to lead the United States into a protracted military conflict.’”
He said both he and the President trusted Kirk deeply and often took his counsel seriously.
“I really believe that one of the reasons why the President of the United States knocked out the Iranian nuclear facilities, but never got the United States into a protracted military conflict and never lost a single American in a middle eastern conflict is because we had the wisdom and the good sense to recognize that the American people are done with American troops dying in unnecessary foreign conflicts,” Vance noted. “But Charlie Kirk reminded me of that.”
At another point, Vance urged students to live out one of Kirk’s central messages: “fall in love, get married, and have a family.”
“If you’re as lucky and blessed as I have been, it hits you like a ton of bricks,” he said of meeting his wife. “I have found my person and my lovely wife, Usha, our second lady, who is here with us today. She’s sitting in the audience somewhere. I don’t know where, but I love you, honey.”
“And have children,” he said, adding, “The one regret that I have is that, frankly, I wish we had started having kids sooner because when you’re a young father, you realize what an incredible blessing they are.”
“Charlie wanted you to get married. He wanted you to fall in love. He wanted you to build a family. He wanted you to find a vocation. That was the advice that he gave on campuses. But that’s not just about you,” Vance continued. “That’s also about our country and about our government. Because while you have the freedom to live life as you so choose, I have got a responsibility as your vice president to make the American dream as accessible as possible.”
>> In podcast interview, JD Vance reflects on his Catholic faith, border policy, pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre <<
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