JD Vance, a 39-year-old Republican senator from Ohio, has been announced as Donald Trump’s running mate.
Once professing himself to be a 'never Trumper’, the Ivy League-educated senator has publicly changed his mind on religion, too.
Formerly an atheist, Vance now defines himself in his X bio as “Christian, husband, dad. US Senator for Ohio." In 2019, he was baptised into the Catholic Church after many years grappling with organised religion.
As a teenager, Vance sporadically attended an evangelical church but declared himself unaffiliated with organised religion. His 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Family and Culture in Crisis, which has since been made into a feature film, recognises the inextricable link between religion and culture in the Appalachian region where he grew up: "Our elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology and community and culture and faith.”
Vance’s upbringing was not the cookie-cutter picket fence childhood one might imagine a future Republican senator to have. His mother battled with addiction, meaning Vance was raised by his grandparents. “I went through an angry atheist phase,” he told The American Conservative.
After meeting Catholics at university, Vance began re-attending church, asserting that the teachings of St Augustine helped him “intellectualise” faith.
Initially, he held back from converting, due to sex abuse scandals: “When I looked at the people who meant the most to me, they were Catholic," he told The American Conservative, "but [abuse scandals] forced me to process the church as a divine and a human institution, and what it would mean for my two-year-old son.”
In 2016, he told Deseret News: “People wrongly believe religion is the province of people who are weak or poor or stupid. To use a political phrase, people who are “clinging to their guns and religion.
“Church is increasingly something that is relatively confined to upper-income, well-educated people. I think that’s something people should recognize about the role of religious faith in this part of the world.”
He went on to say that he considers religious practice to be “on a scale”:
“At the best end of the scale, people read the Bible regularly, pray and think very seriously about their Christian faith and what it requires of them.
The other way religious belief is expressed is not especially good… it’s like something you wear on your breast or that you pin to your identity. But it isn’t actually that significant to you in a lot of ways.”
In 2019, Vance was baptised at St. Gertrude Priory by Father Henry Stephan, a Dominican Priest.
Vance’s political stances remain at odds with some Catholic beliefs. On July 7th, he told NBC he supported the abortion medication mifepristone “being accessible” - a view shared by Donald Trump.
The following day, Vance gave a fundraising message calling for the mass deportation of “every single person who invaded our country illegally”. By contrast, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has spoken in favour of legal pathways for the 11 million immigrations who are in the US without legal documentation, in line with the Christian principle of “welcoming the foreigner”.
Trump announced Vance’s appointment via his app, Truth Social, an hour before he was expected to choose his Vice at the Republican National Convention.
There are clear contrasts between JD Vance – a younger, more subversive Catholic, and Trump's former VP Mike Pence – the stalwart conservative evangelical. As the campaign accelerates beyond the National Convention, his principles will be trialled and tested on the debate stage.
Yet not everyone is convinced. C.J. Doyle is the executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts. He told the National Catholic Register: “Vance has no principles, at least none that aren’t for sale, and the asking price is cheap.”