JD Vance on blind ambition, Catholicism and President Trump's faith
Francesca ChambersWASHINGTON – Vice President JD Vance has always wrestled with his character.
The siren song of power and prestige. An impulse to "rise above others." A question that lingers: Am I doing this for myself?
There are, of course, good reasons to seek any higher office: a desire to serve the country and steer public policy in the right direction, Vance said in a USA TODAY telephone interview.
And then there are what he calls the bad ones.
"There's the desire to be powerful. There's the desire to have influence or control over other people," says Vance, 41. "And I think that what my Christianity does is counsel me and try to force me to focus on the good."
For Vance, one of the youngest vice presidents in American history and a potential presidential candidate, Catholicism has become an anchor in a sea of responsibilities, from marriage to fatherhood to counseling the commander in chief. He explores those themes in his latest book, "Communion," a memoir centered on his Christian faith.
The hunger is the same as when Vance pursued a law degree at Yale, because it's what he thought society expected of him. In those days, he writes in "Communion," he was blindly chasing ambition.
It's a trait Vance calls a "flaw" he may have been born with in an interview ahead of the memoir’s release June 16.
"That impulse in me, that desire for prestige, that desire to rise above others, is something that's probably always just a part of who I am, and it's something that my faith tells me to fight against, to push back against, to focus on the good," he told USA TODAY.
A Catholic convert
His religion does not always come out on top. Since becoming vice president last year, Vance has tussled with not one but two popes and broken with the Vatican over mass migration and the war in Iran.
Vance won’t go so far as to say his faith has been tested by any of the choices he has made since becoming the nation’s second-in-command. Instead, he says, he tries to “make wise decisions and moral decisions.”
A relatively new Catholic who converted to the religion in 2019 after rediscovering Christianity over the course of several years, Vance is wary of telling anyone else how to apply faith in their own lives.
That includes his wife, Usha, who’s Hindu, and the couple’s soon-to-be four children. The couple are expecting a baby boy in July.
Their children attend a Catholic school in Washington, DC, but the couple are allowing them to pick their own religion. The Vances' oldest, Ewan, 9, chose to be baptized.
The vice president generated a torrent of criticism last October when he said he’d like to see his spouse convert to Christianity. He has since acknowledged it’s unlikely to happen, and he writes in his book that his wife encouraged him to reconnect with his religion.
Usha Vance dismissed gossip about the state of their marriage in an interview with USA TODAY last December in which she spoke openly about her Hindu faith. The second lady said her family celebrated the religious significance of Christmas in her youth, and she exchanged gifts in Southern California with her friends.
Donald Trump and heaven
The Vances attend Mass together with their children most weeks. That stands in contrast to President Donald Trump, a nondenominational Christian who does not go to church.
Trump has shared a belief that he was “saved by God” in an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on the eve of the Republican National Convention in 2024. He announced his choice of Vance, a onetime critic turned supporter, as his running mate less than 48 hours later.
A day after their inauguration Jan. 20, 2025, the two leaders and their wives attended an inaugural prayer service.
Trump, who turns 80 this month, has sometimes talked about the afterlife. He has wondered aloud, more than once in his second term, whether he has done enough to earn a spot in heaven.
“I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” Trump said in an appearance on "Fox & Friends" last August. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well.”
Vance chuckles when asked about Trump’s pontifications and whether the president has ever asked him for spiritual advice.
“No, he hasn't. I mean, I don't know what I would say,” Vance replies, referring to himself as a “very imperfect Christian in my own life.”
The president is joking when he muses that he's not heaven-bound, Vance insists. But he adds that all humor is based on an element of truth.
“I also think that like all of us, he's thinking about his own relationship with God, his own faith,” Vance says. “He is a person of faith. He doesn't talk about it a lot publicly, but he does believe in God.”