The political theology of J.D. Vance

What does Vance’s conversion narrative tell us about his political theology?

Donald Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential nominee and running mate faced a series of predictable responses from his opponents.  Among secular liberals, his conservative Christian stance is an example of everything that goes wrong when religion and politics mix.  For many Christians – and certainly most of those beyond the United States – his style of scapegoating foreigners and denigrating women is appalling, demonstrating the personal ambition of a man who will say anything for his own advancement. 

But these two immediate responses are not the most serious of objections to Vance.  Indeed, many secular Conservatives reject his faith, and many conservative Christians oppose his style, while supporting the Trump-Vance project of “Making America Great Again” (MAGA) via a return to traditional values and gender roles, a retreat from the liberal internationalism abroad, and a renewal of the protectionist state at home.  Vance’s story about himself and America are what he has sold to these voters. His conversion narrative – “How I Joined The Resistance” (2020) – published in the Roman Catholic journal The Lamp, details how following his time in the US marines and while studying at Law school, he grew hostile to secular society and converted to Catholicism.

We may object to Vance’s policies on the grounds of their reactionary values, their impracticality in a secular and globalized world, or the likelihood that they will have unintended consequences.  However, these still should not be our primary concerns as Christians. Rather, our focus should be on the underlying theology of Vance’s putatively Christian politics which some associate with Catholic integralism.  More broadly, this worldview reflects what I call a “neo-Christendom” idea which is shared among many conservatives and cultural Christians in the United States and beyond.

We may identify three features of Vance’s political theology.

First, Vance is a rugged individualist who emphasizes personal responsibility over the collective good.  In his conversion narrative, he cites his fellow Catholic and French academic Rene Girard’s idea of the scapegoat to argue that we must look at ourselves rather than others. "Christ is the scapegoat who reveals our imperfections”, he argues, “and forces us to look at our own flaws rather than blame our society’s chosen victims". 

Taking personal responsibility for our sin is, of course, a Christian virtue.  But politicizing this and making it grounds to demonize others is not. Unfortunately for the coherence of Vance’s argument, Girard is not an individualist but a “structuralist”.  He identifies scapegoating as a feature of all cultures and politics which is overcome only in Christ on the cross whose sacrifice frees those who have been cast to the margins of society.  In his stigmatizing of migrants and women, among others, Vance is just another scapegoater who claims Christianity while disavowing the true gospel.

Second, Vance argues that government must advance the work of the church.  Vance seeks to recreate a form of Christendom because for politically conservative Christians like him, culture and nation must be Christian, not just the church.  This is quite different from a Christian pluralist position, held by many small-c conservatives and Christian liberals, which argues that believers must speak and act Christianly in society but do so alongside non-Christians and without imposing a distinctively Christian order.

It is even more different from a “church-centred” position which argues that the believers should only speak and act politically through the church, its molding of culture, and its speaking to society with truth and justice.  Most of all, Vance’s neo-Christendom is in stark contrast to Christ’s own social action which criticized Rome but did not seek to reform or lead the empire; Jesus made his church the hope for the nations – overcoming the vain hopes of the nations.

Third, Vance favours tradition over liberation.  In his conversion narrative, Vance also quotes St Augustine his searing critique of the debauchery of Rome’s ruling class in City of God, remarking that, “it was the best criticism of our modern age I’d ever read”.  And yet Augustine’s criticism applies to government and society in all ages not just our secular one.  His political theology provides some of the greatest arguments against trying to achieve the heavenly kingdom through earthly kingdoms. 

The idea that there is some traditional age – medieval Christendom, let’s say – where Christian virtues shaped politics and to which we must return indicates a nostalgia that the realist Augustine would disdain.  Often, so-called traditional or “Biblical” gender roles are deployed to practice and conceal abuse.  Christ on the cross liberates us from all such forms of domination and makes all those earthly things pass away.

Vance’s Christian politics is ultimately based on anti-Christian premises: tradition, individualism, and the notion of “Christian government”.  Such notions pollute the work of the church as a prophetic force for emancipation and the common good.  The hopelessness of this worldview is evident in that it seeks to sustain a particular nation, its traditions and values – all of which are ultimately and rightfully passing away in the wake of Christ’s victory on the cross and the formation of a global Christian people. 

Vance’s Christian followers and MAGA supporters may feel briefly more secure with the apparition of American greatness that Trump-Vance offers.  They may feel less vulnerable by imagining a culturally Christian world centred on America.  But their ill-fated vision is one which disavows the true politics of Jesus.  This politics is global (for all) not national (for some).  It is a politics of the universal church not the politics of the American state.