Vance: A Christian Moral Order Is Key to America’s Future
- JD Vance honored Charlie Kirk and linked faith to public service.
- He argues Christian values are foundational and criticizes removing God from public life.
- Vance ties compassion to justice and warns against a faith-free liberalism that can enable lawlessness.
- He discussed raising his children Christian in an interfaith marriage while respecting free will.
Vice President JD Vance spoke at length during a large Turning Point USA gathering at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in honor of Charlie Kirk, and he used the moment to make faith central to his message.
After the audience heard from Kirk’s widow, Erika, Vance took the stage and answered questions on issues from immigration to National Guard deployments and the Second Amendment.
Many questions circled back to faith, religious liberty and how he manages an interfaith household with a Hindu wife while serving as Vice President.
“I make no apologies for thinking that Christian values are an important foundation of this country,” Vance said when responding to a question about the separation of church and state. “Anybody who’s telling you their view is neutral likely has an agenda to sell you. And I’m at least honest about the fact that I think the Christian foundation of this country is a good thing.”
Vance also took aim at contemporary liberalism, calling parts of it a “perverted version of Christianity” and arguing that some modern progressives strip faith out of civic duty.
“There’s nothing wrong, of course, with focusing on people who are disenfranchised, for example. That’s the focus of liberalism. But if you completely separate it from any religious duty or any civic virtue, then that can actually become, for example, an inducement to lawlessness,” Vance said while responding to a questioner.
“You can’t just have compassion for the criminal. You also have to have justice too. Which is why I think that a properly rooted Christian moral order is such an important part of the future of our country.”
‘Anybody who tells you it’s required by the Constitution is lying to you,’
‘What happened, is, the Supreme Court interpreted ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’ to effectively throw the church out of every public place at the federal, state and local level. I think it was a terrible mistake, and we’re still paying for the consequences of it today.’
Vance was frank about family life, noting that his wife is Hindu and that he was not a Christian when they first met, but they chose to raise their sons in the Christian faith.
Open communication and mutual respect, he said, were central to deciding how to raise their children and balance differing beliefs in the home.
“Most Sundays she will come with me to church. As I’ve told her, and I’ve said publicly, and 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 that I was moved in by 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, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me.”
“This is another way in which Charlie has affected my life – I would say that I grew up again in a generation where even if people had very deep personal faith, they didn’t talk about their faith a whole lot,” Vance said in remembrance of his late friend.
“But the reason why I try to be the best husband I can be, the best father I can be, the reason why I care so much about all the issues that we’re going to talk about, is because I believe I’ve been placed in this position for a brief period of time to do the most amount of good for God and for the country that I love so much. And that’s the most important way that my faith influences me.”
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