Vice President J.D. Vance drew on his Catholic faith during a recent visit to Israel to promote President Trump’s Gaza peace proposal.
JD Vance visits Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Vice President J.D. Vance attended a private Mass and confession at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher during his visit to Israel.
JERUSALEM – JD Vance knelt on a crimson cushion.
He bowed his head, closed his eyes, and placed his right hand on his forehead, chest, and left shoulder before resting his palm on the red-colored limestone slab in front of him.
For those who convert to Catholicism and embrace their faith, there is no place more sacred than this. At the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, on the Anointed Stone, Christians believe that Jesus’ body was prepared for burial after his crucifixion.
Christians have many titles for Jesus. Mr. Vance invoked one of them at the start of a trip to Israel last month to strengthen President Donald Trump’s ceasefire in Gaza.
“I ask people of all faiths, especially my fellow Christians, to pray that the Prince of Peace may continue to work miracles in this part of the world,” Vance said.
The vice president, who put his faith at the forefront of official White House visits to the disputed city that Israelis and Palestinians each claim as their capital and attends weekly Mass, showed a side of himself that many Americans have yet to see.
Mr. Vance is one of the most openly religious officials in an administration supported by Christian conservatives, and his faith is intertwined with his evolution as a political leader. Interest in both parties is growing as Republicans consider who will inherit Trump’s movement.
“I think he’s not only more bold and confident in expressing his faith in public, but I also think he’s more confident in connecting his faith with his leadership and policy aspirations,” said Ralph Reed, a friend of Vance’s and founder and president of the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition.
Although Mr. Vance clashed with the late Pope Francis over immigration and visited the Vatican twice this year, the new vice president’s religiosity and its influence on his views went largely unnoticed until he took on a more prominent role in the administration’s efforts to preserve the delicate Middle East peace.
This high-profile assignment, coupled with President Trump’s admission days later that he would not seek a third term, put Vance and his belief system in the spotlight.
Since his visit to the Middle East, Mr. Vance has drawn praise and criticism for being seen as too close to or too critical of the state of Israel by some in his audience, and for expressing a desire to convert his wife, Usha, to Christianity in the student union at Turning Point USA, where he was pressed to defend his family’s religious practices.
“I believe in the Christian gospel, and I hope that eventually my wife will think the same way. But if she doesn’t, then God says everyone has free will, so that’s not a problem for me,” Vance said at the event.
The exchange led to accusations that Vance disrespected his wife, who is Indian-American and was raised as a Hindu. The incident came two weeks after a widely shared video showed a City Hall student sparring with Republican candidate for Ohio governor Vivek Ramaswamy over Hinduism.
The debate erupted after Vance slapped a commenter who accused him of throwing his wife’s religion under the bus to gain support from white Christian supremacists.
a person who converted to Catholicism
Public pressure from above may have driven a wedge between the 41-year-old vice president and his beliefs. Instead, Vance dove deeper, his friends say.
Concerned Women for America President Penny Nance, who was an early supporter of Vance’s 2021 Senate bid, pointed to her close friendship with Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in September.
“I think the assassination of Charlie Kirk has caused the entire nation, especially young people, to really take the time to reconsider their faith or think about their faith for the first time,” Nance said.
Vance described himself as a “baby Catholic” and said he was learning about the religion, which he converted to in 2019 after Usha encouraged him to return to the faith. He grew up in a Christian household and later became an atheist, part of a personal journey that included serving in the military, attending Yale Law School, and writing a memoir before running for office.
In a wide-ranging discussion with the New York Times while attending Pope Leo’s inaugural Mass in May, Vance said that church teachings have influenced his policy stances, but that he does not treat church teachings as dogma.
This sometimes caused tension with the Catholic Church. Early in his administration, Vance clashed with Pope Francis over immigration enforcement.
At the same time, the Vice President enthused on a recent episode of Pod Force One that visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was “probably the most amazing experience of my life.” During his stay, Vance received confession and prayed at a private Mass led by Franciscan friars.
This church is located within the Christian quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City and is believed to be the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. It was the only landmark Vance wanted reporters to see.
“As a Christian, I think Christians around the world will know that this country, this part of the world, means a lot to me,” Vance said ahead of his visit.
In his visit to the church, Mr. Vance followed the path taken by Mr. Trump and Joe Biden when he was Barack Obama’s vice president.
Biden was the nation’s first Catholic vice president and second Catholic president. Mr. Trump considers himself a nondenominational Christian. He became the first sitting US president to visit Old City during his first term.
Jacob Thomas, an Israeli-born American who was visiting family near Jerusalem, said having a devout Christian like Vance visit the Old City “just seems to give the world the feeling that America has a strong leader in the White House.”
Vance came to the fore on a trip to Israel
Vance’s last-minute trip to the Middle East comes on the heels of allegations of ceasefire violations by Israel and Hamas that threaten to tear apart President Trump’s hard-won agreement.
He was part of a series of U.S. delegations to visit Israel a week after President Trump declared an end to the war in Gaza.
Paul Weintraub, 71, an accountant and his wife Robin, 58, an internist, of Woodmere, New York, said they knew little about Vance other than his best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Paul Weintraub said of Vance’s trip: “This is an opportunity to put him at the forefront and see what he can do and how we can evaluate him, by giving him important things to try to accomplish.” “I don’t think he really has a true forward role in a lot of things – yet.”
It was difficult to read whether Mr. Vance had made any real progress toward the second phase of President Trump’s peace plan, which calls for the disarmament of Hamas. The administration has been working behind the scenes ever since to get countries on board.
As he left Tel Aviv, Mr. Vance was cautiously optimistic about the prospects for international security forces policing Gaza.
A potential stumbling block is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s distaste for keeping Turkish troops in Gaza. Vance said he has encouraged Prime Minister Netanyahu to help carry out the president’s plan.
“My message was just, please do whatever you can to work with us to actually make this peace deal stick, because it’s not going to be easy,” Vance told reporters. “There is a lot of hatred between these two countries and they have fought a very brutal war over the last few years.”
Vance strengthens stance on Israel
The quick trip to Israel offered a glimpse of how Vance, one of the youngest vice presidents in American history, would approach the world stage if he succeeded President Trump.
The Israeli leader, who stood alongside Vance the day before, said he was impressed by Vance’s “lucidity” and “acuteness.”
Unlike his abusive boss, whose second term was marked by on-camera banter with world leaders and reporters, Vance’s remarks during the trip were made in carefully planned moments.
But in his final moments on the tarmac, he risked a shootout by calling Israel’s parliament’s vote to annex the West Bank a “very stupid political stunt,” personally insulting Vance and calling him out of step with Trump.
Religious conservatives consider the territory part of the Biblical Promised Land. However, the Arab countries that President Trump needs to help enact the Gaza peace agreement consider it to be part of a future Palestinian state.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a top U.S. evangelical leader, reprimanded the administration in a social media post after Trump and Vance’s comments warned Israel against annexing the West Bank. “I am praying for President Trump,” he wrote. “Telling Israel that it cannot exercise its sovereignty within its borders to appease terror-supporting regimes like Turkey and Qatar is deeply worrying.”
A week later, Vance again rejected unconditional American support for Israel after a questioner criticized the American-Israel alliance at the Turning Point USA event in Mississippi.
Vance looked to religion and Christian interests to justify the close relationship. Vance recalled his visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and said giving Christians access to the site is a way the United States can work with its friends in Israel.
“There are some significant theological disagreements between Christians and Jews,” Vance added. “My attitude is, let’s have those conversations, let’s do it when we have disagreements. But if there are areas of common interest, we should be willing to do that too.”
