JD Vance Credits Wife Usha With Helping Guide His Return to Christianity

Washington — U.S. Vice President JD Vance has credited his Indian American wife, Usha Vance, with playing an important role in his return to Christianity, saying their relationship reshaped his understanding of love, marriage and commitment.

In an interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, Vance said falling in love with Usha changed both his personal life and his view of faith after years of atheism and spiritual uncertainty.

“I had this epiphany — which is overstating it — but I realised that falling in love with Usha made me realise that there was actually something sacramental to love,” Vance said.

Vance discussed his spiritual journey while promoting his memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” which recounts his turbulent childhood, loss of faith and eventual conversion to Catholicism.

He said his connection to Christianity weakened following the death of his grandmother, whom he described as the anchor of his religious life.

“When my grandma died, that was my anchor to Christianity,” he said. “It’s really no coincidence that my grandma died and, like, two years later, I called myself an atheist.”

Vance said he spent years focused on education, professional ambition and personal achievement but ultimately found those pursuits unfulfilling.

“The thing I realised is that this kind of striving had made me pretty hollow,” he said.

He said relationships, rather than theology, played a central role in bringing him back to religion.

Although Usha does not share his Christian faith, Vance said her support was important as he decided to return to Christianity.

“I felt kind of guilty, actually, about returning to my faith with all the demands that come with me,” he said.

Vance also described the challenges of raising a family while practicing his faith and said his wife accepted responsibilities she had not expected.

“I think about this every single Sunday when I take my 36-week-pregnant wife, who is herself not a Christian, and us and our three kids, and they’re late getting their shoes on, and they’re always misbehaved,” Vance said.

“She did not sign up for this. She signed up to sleep in on Sundays and not have to deal with this.”

Despite those challenges, he said Usha remained patient and supportive.

“But she does it with incredible patience, and her being not just OK with that but supportive of that journey was like almost confirmation or a sign that it was OK for me to go down this pathway.”

Vance said Usha also changed his understanding of marriage and romantic relationships.

“The thing about relationships, and I think all millennials experience this, because we all grew up in the same culture, is there was this sense in which there was nothing sacred about romance,” he said.

That perspective changed after he fell in love with her.

“Usha, even though she’s not a Christian, she really changed how I thought about the union of man and woman together, and she changed how I thought about it. Without even realising it, I thought about it in a very, very Christian way.”

Vance also credited Christian friends and families with helping him return to faith, saying their conduct reflected values he wanted to follow.

“At some basic level, I had some really good friends who were really good people, and they showed me the truth of faith by the way that they conducted themselves in the world,” he said.

Now 41, Vance said becoming a husband and father led him to confront deeper questions about meaning, responsibility and purpose, eventually guiding him back to Christianity.

Usha Vance, a lawyer and the daughter of Indian immigrants, has become one of the most prominent Indian American figures in U.S. public life since her husband’s rise from senator to vice president. (Source: IANS)