Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance revealed on Saturday that he converted to Catholicism in 2019 and said he feels “sick” that he drags his Hindu wife to Sunday Mass every Sunday.
The Ohio senator said his wife, Usha, “didn't sign up to marry someone who goes to church every week,” but “that's totally fine with me.” During an often controversial interview with the New York Times.
The author of “Hillbilly Elegy” began to have “big questions” about himself between 2017 and 2019, when he became a father and achieved career and financial success. He said that he noticed that
“And when I started thinking about big things like, what do I actually value in my life,” Vance, 40, said.
“I really want to be a good husband. I really want to be a good father. I really want to be a good member of the community. In other words, I wanted to be a person of integrity.”
Vance said she was raised Christian, but after thinking about what kind of faith the good people in her life practiced, she decided in what denomination she wanted to raise her children and decided to become Catholic. He said he had arrived.
He explained that Usha, whom Vance married in 2014 and with whom he now has three children, fully supported his spiritual journey.
“She thought they were good for me in a certain soul-good way,” Vance said. I definitely wouldn't have been able to do that without her support. Because I felt kind of bad, right?
“I feel really bad for my wife because we go to church almost every Sunday when we're not out,” Vance said.
Usha, who grew up in a moderately religious Hindu family, attends Mass with Vance but has not converted, the congressman said.
“Of course I help with the kids, but since I'm the one going to church, she feels more responsible for keeping the kids quiet at church,” Vance said.
“She was very receptive to it, and that was a big part of my confidence that this was the right thing for me,” he added.
In the interview, Vance talked about his attitude toward vice presidential candidate Donald Trump, whom he previously called “America's Hitler” but who eventually became a full-throated supporter of the former president, 78. He was also furious about the sudden turnaround.
“In 2016, I think I believed that the divisiveness of American politics was at least partially due to Donald Trump,” Vance explained.
“And by 2018, 2019, I realized that that division was because of an American political culture and media culture that doesn't even pay attention to its own people.”
He said Trump is “not inciting conflict, he's just reacting to it and giving a voice to some people who have been completely ignored.” And he was doing it in a way that really opened his eyes to that sick media culture. ”
