Mr. Catholic and Mrs. Hindu JD Vance

Will the USA's second family be a model of syncretism or Christianity?

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I first met JD Vance in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, DC, in July 2019. He didn't sport a dignified beard then, but he exuded a sense of the purpose-driven life, just as he does today. 

We were both among several speakers invited to address the National Conservatism Conference — the brainchild of Jewish political philosopher Yoram Hazony, whose book The Virtue of Nationalism was just causing a stir. 

As an Old Testament scholar, I had found Hazony's earlier book, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, hugely compelling and I was looking forward to what the conference had to offer. 

My own topic for the conference was on Christianity, Globalism, & the Nation, and I was looking forward to what the other speakers had to offer on the topic of this heady new cocktail Hazony called "national conservatism."

HILLBILLY ELEGY

Vance's contribution to the conference left a deep impression on me. He spoke passionately about his book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. I felt I was listening to the senior pastor of a mission-driven church who had spent years caring deeply not just for his flock, but for the unreached.

On the plane home I was devouring Vance's book when the flight attendant tapped my arm. "I love that book. I wept reading it," she said. I was a bit shaken. She had put her finger on my feelings. I agreed with her. After that she plied me with an endless supply of whisky until we landed at Heathrow. 

Hillbilly Elegy, in Vance's words, is "a story about family decline, childhood trauma, opioid abuse, community decline, the decline of the manufacturing sector, and the loss of dignity and purpose and meaning that come along with it."

He was speaking about the pain of rustbelt America. As a pastor, I was feeling the pain of rustbelt Britain. Vance told stories — heartbreaking stories — and I'd rather sit and listen to a great storyteller than to bishops and politicians who torture me with a dentist's drill of their therapeutic buzzwords.

So, when I heard that Trump had picked him to be his VP, I was singing like the morning lark. Vance ticks electoral boxes like crazy.

CATHOLIC CONVERT WITH A HINDU WIFE?

Most Catholics will like him. When I first met him, Vance had recently become a Catholic. He tells his conversion story from the rather flaky American pop-evangelicalism, which he describes as "the unchurched religion of my upbringing," to a form more of intellectual Catholicism in a piece titled "How I joined the resistance."

The rustbelt will love him. Heck, he's one of us! And, boy, he knows how to tell a story, and talk about Mamaw — his grandmother. 

And, you'll never guess — the Hindus of America are just going to fawn over him. He's their son-in-law after all! Now, this is where traditionalist Catholics, hardcore evangelicals, and leftists who portray Vance as an ultra-rightwing racist bigot (if they haven't yet, they will) are going to frown.

Because Mr. Catholic Vance is married to Mrs. Hindu Vance. JD found himself a highly intelligent and highly competent bride at Yale Law School, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants from the state of Andhra Pradesh in South India. 

His wife, Usha Chilukuri, is a corporate litigator at a prestigious San Francisco law firm (she just quit). Usha has clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge, and earned degrees from Yale and Cambridge.

The New York Times credits Mrs. Vance with playing "a quiet but significant role in her husband's rise." In this case, I do believe the NY Slimes because behind (or alongside, if "behind" is too sexist for you) every good man is a great woman. 

News reporters in India are already flocking to Usha's ancestral village near the high-tech city of Hyderabad, where people pray to the deity at the Chilkur Balaji temple to improve their odds of getting a US visa. The deity is famous as the "God of visas."

HINDU VOTE

So the Hindu vote, which is not too insignificant in a presidential election, is in the bag for the Trump-Vance team. Hindus have tended to vote Democrat (until the Biden apocalypse), and Usha Chilukuri was a registered Democrat as of 2014. 

Hindus (172,000) outnumber Muslims (123,000) in battleground states like Georgia. "Hindu-Americans can play a key role in President Biden's reelection," says Ramesh Kapur, a Massachusetts-based political fundraiser. "Of course, 72 per cent of the Indian-Americans voted last time for Biden. We want to make sure that the Hindu-Americans are going to be mobilized."

More importantly, if Trump wins, having a Hindu wife of Indian origin might be a bridge to the government of Hindu supremacist prime minister Narendra Modi's that has unleashed a reign of terror against Christians in India. 

SPIRITUAL WARFARE

But, Christians who love Vance and who know something about "spiritual warfare" will be concerned that the senator who was later baptized in a Catholic Church, was blessed by a Hindu pundit and had the names of Hindu deities chanted over him when he married Usha in a Hindu wedding ceremony. 

They will also wonder if the children are being brought up as Christians or as Hindus, and if Usha continues to practice Hindu rituals and worship idols of her deities in the Vance household. When asked in which faith they raised their children, Usha said that there were several things that they agreed on with regard to parenting "and (that) the answer really is, we just talk a lot."

The evidence seems to point to the fact that Usha is a practicing Hindu. In a Fox News interview, Vance gave Usha credit for supporting him in his search for his Christian faith. "I was never baptized. I was raised Christian but never baptized. I was first baptized in 2018. Usha was raised non-Christian. She is actually not Christian. But I remember when I started to re-engage with my faith, Usha was very supportive," he said.

When Usha was asked why she was so supportive, she replied, "I did grow up in a religious household. My parents are Hindu. That is one of the reasons why they made such good parents. That made them very good people. And I think I have seen the power of that in my own life. And I knew that JD was searching for something. This just felt right for him."

God works in strange and wondrous ways. Usha did JD a huge favor by encouraging him to find his faith in Christ. Surely we can pray that JD will return the favor and help Usha discover, and know, with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height of Christ's love for her? 

MEGA HINDU CONVERSIONS

You know why I am hopeful? Because I never ever thought I'd see so many Hindus turn to Christ in my lifetime. The Chilukuris come from a village near Hyderabad, and today Hyderabad has the largest church in India. 

More than 300,000 Christians, most of them converts from Hinduism, worship God in Hyderabad's Calvary Temple — a church that was planted by Pastor Satish Kumar, himself a Hindu convert, in 2005.

"It's a time for India to reach the lost not only within the country but across the globe," says Kumar. "It's my passion, my burden, that before I die, I want to see every Indian hear the gospel and know the Savior."

Three thousand new believers are added to the church each month. Nothing is impossible with God. As St. Paul reminds us: "He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us." Let's pray for Usha, for JD and for their three children! 

Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.

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