When Vice President JD Vance was a child, he recalls riding with his Mamaw when Bonnie Vance accidentally drove up the opposite way on the on-ramp on Interstate 75 in Ohio.
“She quickly does a little U-turn and goes back the right way, but I’m terrified,” he explained.
Vance said his Mamaw turned to him calmly and said, “JD, don’t you know Jesus rides in the car with me?”
It was the most “Jesus, Take the Wheel” Carrie Underwood moment of his life, but it explains how faith was present in his formative years, in a way that wasn’t always traditional.
By JD Vance;
Harper;
288 pp.; $35
Vance’s faith memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, debuted on June 16. The book soared to the No. 1 spot on the New York Times Best Sellers list for hardcover nonfiction. He spoke to the Washington Examiner about his journey toward faith, the impact it has had on him, and how it has guided him through both the little things in life, as well as the tragedies, such as the death of his longtime friend, Charlie Kirk.
“I was raised in an evangelical household, my grandmother was a very devout Christian, read the Bible, prayed a half dozen times per day, but it was not a particularly institutional religion,” he said of watching Billy Graham revivals on television.
“When we did [go to church], it was sort of a one-off, maybe once a month, maybe not even that frequently,” he said, adding that he eventually came to understand himself as a Christian because of his grandmother’s influence.
“There was nothing particularly personal about it for me,” Vance said. “There was no community that I was attached to outside my grandmother.”
When his grandmother died in 2005, shortly before he deployed to Iraq with the Marine Corps, his faith slowly began to fade. By the time he left the Marines in 2007, he no longer considered himself a Christian.
“I called myself an atheist,” he said. “And that’s how quickly it happened. Now that said, even though I was an atheist, I still had that foundation there, and I think there were all these seeds that had probably been planted that I wasn’t even aware of.”
Vance calls himself a young man in a hurry.
“I was a striver,” he said. “I was worried about where I went to school and how much money I made and how prestigious my job was.”
He continued to succeed in the life he had built for himself, but ultimately found that success unfulfilling. By the time he reached Yale Law School, Vance described himself as an angry, arrogant atheist.
“I’m one of these people who assumed that I knew more than the people who had faith, that I was smart and rational and they were superstitious and I was not going to be like them,” he said.
Then he fell in love with the woman who would one day become the second lady of the United States.
“She doesn’t really care how much money I make,” he said. “She doesn’t care how prestigious my job is. She wants me to be a good husband, wants me to be a good father, wants me to be a good human being.”
That marked the beginning of his return to the faith he had abandoned, though he stresses that his conversion was not a dramatic, road-to-Damascus experience.
“Jesus didn’t speak to me when I was out on a walk one day, but I saw these echoes of the truth of Christianity,” he said, pointing to his uncle, one of the best people he knows, whose life is deeply shaped by his faith.
“I saw the Christians in my life who seemed to have things figured out better than the atheists in my life, and then of course I saw Christianity as something that forced me to focus on the things that actually mattered, whereas the ideas of America’s elites asked me to focus on things that didn’t really matter,” he said.
Vance said his faith has changed him most profoundly during moments of hardship, including the murder of Kirk last year.
Such moments also test that faith. Vance pointed to Kirk’s death as a prime example, acknowledging how difficult he has found it to forgive his friend’s killer.
“I’ll give you a concrete example: I actually just did an interview with a reporter talking about the Charlie Kirk murder trial,” he said. “And if I’m being honest with you, I don’t have any feelings of forgiveness or charity towards the person who killed Charlie Kirk.”
“I’m mad at him,” Vance said bluntly. “I’m pissed off at him. There’s a part of me that feels vengeful toward him. And yet, as I’m answering this question with a reporter, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Well, those things are all true. You feel those things toward Tyler Robinson, but God also wants you to feel what Erika [Kirk] felt, which is forgiveness.’”
God wants him to show mercy, and Vance said that doesn’t always come naturally to him.
“But I think in some ways that’s the point of the Christian faith, is that it forces you to think about things that don’t necessarily come natural to you,” he said.
Vance said he could feel himself growing angry during the interview.
“Then I thought to myself, ‘Well, it’s true. It is true that I’m pissed off at this guy. It is true that I want justice. But it’s also true that I should want, even if I don’t, for this person eventually to feel remorse and reconcile himself with God.’”
“Faith forces me to think about things that I wouldn’t necessarily think about and certainly don’t feel at this moment,” Vance said, adding that perhaps this is how God works on a person: Over time, practicing what is right makes it come more naturally.
There are also quieter, more poignant moments when faith guides him in the small things. That morning, as he was preparing to leave for the White House, his 6-year-old son asked him to come up to the third floor of the Naval Observatory to see a Lego fort he had built.
“I think to myself, ‘Well, I’ve got this phone call I have to take, and I’ve got to call somebody back, and I need to get to the White House,’” Vance said. “But there was this little voice in my head that said, ‘What does God want you to do right now?’”
The answer came easily. Vance went upstairs and spent time with his son.
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“It’s little things like that, where I think you’re constantly being called to be a better person, to be a better example, to be a better father, to be more charitable,” he said.
“Even when you feel vengeful, as I do in the case of this guy who killed Charlie, you have to try to be more charitable, even if that’s not where your heart is. And that, to me, is the miracle of the Christian faith when it works on a person.”