Writer Jenny Sanders reflects on JD Vance’s wish for his Hindu wife to share his faith, offering gentle, biblical advice for those in mixed-faith marriages.
The Vice President of the United States has been hauled over the proverbial coals for admitting that he would like his wife to share his faith. Married since 2014 to Hindu, Usha, who was raised by Indian immigrant parents, Vance became a Catholic just six years ago, in 2019. The implications for their marriage are interesting, as they raise their three children together.
All of us are on a spiritual journey but to expect two to become one where shared values aren’t present suggests there may be turbulence and heartache ahead. Jesus told us to love our neighbour as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). There’s no closer neighbour than our spouse but these two were already married and since he was not a Hindu we might say their oneness has been compromised since.
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Let’s look at some context.
After high school, Vance joined the Marines, was sent to Iraq in 2005 and, on returning, he said his faith ‘slid from devout to nominal, and then to something very much less.’
Disenchanted with the televangelists of the era, he read books on theology, mysticism and moral philosophy becoming increasingly liberal until, when he started University in Ohio, he called himself an atheist and embraced secularism to fit in with his peers. This move was, he says, ‘more cultural than intellectual.’
At Yale, he met Usha, fell in love and began to feel discontented with the striving required to join the academic elites.
At Yale, he met Usha, fell in love and began to feel discontented with the striving required to join the academic elites. He saw himself as ‘educated, enlightened, and especially wise about the ways of the world’ yet, in spite of all their philosophy and logic, he felt they moved in ‘unsatisfying emotional and intellectual arrogance.’ He discovered, ‘I had traded virtue for achievement and found the latter wanting. But the woman I wanted to marry cared little whether I obtained a Supreme Court clerkship. She just wanted me to be a good person.’
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Vance’s return to faith came through a process initiated by a lecture from Peter Thiel, a Christian entrepreneur and venture capitalist causing him to question his focus on striving for position over character. Reflecting on his world view, he realised that society now emphasised ‘consumption and pleasure, spurning duty and virtue,’ but that morality was a factor that had disappeared from political equations.
‘I slowly began to see Catholicism as the closest expression of [my grandmother’s] kind of Christianity…
In his own words: ‘I slowly began to see Catholicism as the closest expression of [my grandmother’s] kind of Christianity: obsessed with virtue, but cognisant of the fact that virtue is formed in the context of a broader community; sympathetic with the meek and poor of the world without treating them primarily as victims; protective of children and families and with the things necessary to ensure they thrive. And above all: a faith centered around a Christ who demands perfection of us even as he loves unconditionally and forgives easily.’
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A comment on social media suggested he’d thrown his wife’s faith ‘under the bus. Understandably, Vance hit back citing ‘anti-Christian bigotry,’ but anyone who knows the abundant life of Jesus, the assurance of sins forgiven and eternal life wants to share that grace-filled heart-change, be it with their spouse, child, sibling, parent, relative, friend, colleague or stranger.
1 Corinthians 7:12–16 gives clear instructions to couples who don’t share faith. Similarly, 1 Peter 3, although it addresses wives rather than husbands, encourages the one to win the other by example rather than words. This is the biblical advice to thrive rather than merely survive in a relationship where you are out of step with one another.
Husbands are commanded to love their wives in the way Jesus loves the church (Ephesians 5:25), laying down their lives for her. That’s a demanding calling.
In 2020, Vance wrote that the achievement which meant most to him was to have ‘a happy, thriving family.’ I’m praying that they all encounter Jesus, for he is the priority.
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