Monday, November 3, 2025

Part I

Vice President Vance Steps on a Theological Nerve: The U.S. VP Says He Hopes His Hindu Wife One Day Converts to Christianity, and Secularists are Losing Their Minds

Vice President J.D. Vance is big time in the headlines in recent days and it’s over a theological issue. Now one of the things many in the media have noted is that the current Vice President of the United States is the most theologically specific and theologically outspoken person perhaps ever to have held that office, and right now, given the secularity of American society, when an American Vice President leans in on a theological issue it gets a lot of attention, especially when a Vice President leans into the theological issue of the Vice President’s choosing.

In this case, it was really in response to a question that came up on the campus of the University of Mississippi when the Vice President was hosting what had been the Charlie Kirk program, and in the context of all of this, a question came to him about his wife who is a Hindu and how the Vice President considered that reality. The Vice President’s response was, “My Christian faith tells me the gospel is true and is good for human beings.” He said that his wife, “is not a Christian and has no plans to convert, but like many people in an interfaith marriage or any interfaith relationship, I hope she may one day see things as I do.”

Now at first glance, I think to most Christians that would appear to be the absolutely normal, if not normative response. I think it’s also something that would’ve been well understood within the history of Christianity and especially in the history of Christianity in the United States. But the Vice President stepped on a theological nerve, and you had to think he probably knew what he was doing. When he responded to some of the criticism and declared it to be anti-Christian bigotry, he said, “Yes, Christians have beliefs, and yes, those beliefs have many consequences, one of which is that we want to share them with other people. That’s a completely normal thing and anyone who’s telling you otherwise has an agenda.” 

Now I’m going to come back and say that is one of the most theologically precise, careful, and clear statements I think made by virtually any American politician at any time. Here he’s speaking of Christianity and Christianity as a doctrinal system. Christianity is a system of beliefs, and yes, those beliefs he says have consequences, one of the consequences of those beliefs is that we want to share them with other people. He came back and said, “It’s a completely normal thing, and anyone who’s telling you otherwise,” what were his words, “has an agenda.” Well, yes, they also have a worldview and that worldview is showing.

And so it’s a situation right now in which the largely secular worldview on America’s college campuses, and increasingly a secular worldview in the larger culture, it has led to a different set of reflexes to certain kinds of statements. Theologically, that kind of statement would’ve meant virtually no controversy a matter of a generation ago, but now it’s a frontline controversy because it steps on one of the primary issues of modern secular orthodoxy which is number one, theology can’t matter, and number two, if it matters it’s a problem. In this case, the Vice President is said to be trampling on the religious sensitivities of his own wife in stating this preference.

In response to the question at the University of Mississippi, the Vice President said, “Yes, my wife did not grow up Christian. I think it’s fair to say that she grew up in a Hindu family, but not a particularly religious family in either direction.” He said that he and his wife were both agnostic or atheists when they met and that they had later decided and decided together to raise their children as Christians. “Most Sundays, Usha will come with me to church,” he said. “Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by the church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that because I believe in the Christian gospel and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way. But if she doesn’t,” the Vice President said, “then God says everybody has free will and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me.”

Now let’s just set some categories here very quickly. The Vice President is speaking not as an atheist or an agnostic. He’s speaking as a convert to Roman Catholicism, and what the Vice President says and what is behind what he says is completely consistent with contemporary Roman Catholic teaching. As an evangelical Protestant, I come from a very different understanding of these questions, but I also come with an appreciation for the Vice President’s candor in responding to this question, and honestly, the blowback the Vice President has received is the same blowback any evangelical Protestant would receive virtually on the same issues.

The Vice President said, “My Christian faith tells me the gospel is true and is good for human beings.” Now, again, he said this comes with consequences. Now that’s just a basic matter of fact, and so if you’re just considering, let’s just try to think of this as a neutral sentence, you consider the Vice President saying that doctrine comes with consequences, the Christian truth claim comes with consequences. Again, that would’ve been absolutely non-controversial throughout almost all Christian history. But something has happened in more recent times, and I think we all know this, the replacement of biblical Christianity with a touchy-feely emotionalism or emotivism. This is something that characterizes much of what is simply classified as American religion and even American Christianity. It’s not. It’s a false doctrine. It’s a false gospel. Nonetheless, the mainstream media like it a lot better than they like the gospel of Jesus Christ, and frankly, they like just about anything better than they like the teachings and convictions of historic Christianity.

So we need to take this apart. As evangelical Protestants, we need to take this apart for a moment. Number one, what is the context that we really come to see here? We clearly see the modern secular context in which if you have a Christian and a Hindu, you just have two people doing their religious thing and no one has the right to say that anyone’s religious thing is better than anyone else’s religious thing, and honestly, the secular criticism or the secular understanding doesn’t rise much higher than that.

There is another dimension here that’s just interesting to think about, and that is that Hinduism, regardless of its variant, it doesn’t pose much of a threat to American secularism. Christianity does. Christianity is what secularism is seeking to uproot and to displace, and for that matter, to replace, and so in this case, you’re also looking at two very different religious systems. So when you’re talking about Hinduism, you’re talking about Hindu traditions, and by the way, that is at least part of what came from Hindu authorities in response to the Vice President’s statement. One prominent Hindu official, Suhag Shukla, who is the director of the Hindu American Foundation, he responded on Twitter or X saying, “The Vice President of the United States just said that the Hindu traditions that his wife and millions of Americans share is just not good enough. Not a winning strategy for someone who wants to be president for ALL,” all all capitalized, “Americans.”

Well, that tells you a lot. You’ll notice that that Hindu official didn’t even reference any truth claims at all. He simply said that what the Vice President had done was to insult Hindu traditions. Okay, so we as Christians need to note that’s not just sleight of hand. That’s an actual discrimination in terms of language, the discrimination between a doctrinal system and traditions. It’s not the Christian who said that about the Hindus, it’s the Hindu official who said that about Hinduism. You’ll also notice that there’s very little attention in the mainstream media to Hinduism and honestly to just how polytheism works, and when we’re talking about Hinduism, basically they’ve lost count of the gods and it’s just a matter of all kinds of pluralism and diversity and all kinds of traditions, and frankly, the mainstream media and I think at least some Hindu advocates probably don’t want you to look too closely at what those idolatrous systems really mean.

But it’s also important to recognize that what the Vice President said is actually grounded in Catholic moral reasoning and in Catholic doctrine, and that’s made very clear in statements adopted by the Roman Catholic Church. But it also sets contemporary Catholic doctrine in a pretty clear contrast with the biblical convictions of evangelical Christians on the same issues.

Part II

Does Hinduism Lead to Heaven? Catholics and Protestants Answer Differently

So the question, for instance, “Can a Hindu go to heaven?,” the practical and doctrinal answers are going to be different. So for example, in response to one question coming from a young person in Singapore, Pope Francis spoke out by saying, “One of the things that has impressed me most about the young people here,” meaning Singapore, “is your capacity for interfaith dialogue.” He then asked the question, “What if this dialogue begins by arguing my religion is more important than yours or mine is the true one, yours is not true? Where does this lead?” Well, that’s the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church saying that he wants to avoid making any such statement.

The pope then, and remember this was the last pope before the newer pope, Pope Leo, he went on to say, “That is correct. All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy,” he said. “They’re like different languages that express the divine, but God is for everyone and therefore we are all God’s children. There’s only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some seek, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.” 

Now I think it’s important to recognize this upset a lot of conservative Catholics, but it’s also important to say that the Cardinal Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Chicago, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, responded by saying that the pope was on firm Catholic grounds in making such a statement. He went on to cite, for example, different Catholic teaching documents. He cited the catechism of the Catholic Church at paragraphs 842 to 843 in which we read, “The church’s bond with non-Christian religions is in the first place the common origin and end of the human race. All nations form but one community. This is so because all stem from the one stock which God created to people the entire earth and also because all share in a common destiny, namely God.” 

Let me just say that some of that language could be said by evangelicals, those last words, not a chance. “His providence, evident goodness, and saving designs extend to all against the day when the elect are gathered together in the same city. The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search among shadows and images for the God who is unknown yet near since He gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as, ‘a preparation for the gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.’” It is also stated in the catechism, “Whatever is good or true in other religions comes from God and is a reflection of His truth.”

The Cardinal also went on to cite the catechism as stating, quote, “For this reason, we also teach that those who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ and his church, but sincerely seek God, and moved by grace, try to do His will as it is known through the dictates of conscience can attain eternal salvation.” So that’s a straightforward statement. It’s also grounded in some of the declarations and statements of Vatican II, and it just shows a very wide divide between that understanding of Catholic doctrine, and this is coming from the church, come the magisterial authority of the church, and evangelical Protestant conviction.

In terms of evangelical theology, the approach that is taken here has sometimes been described as the stain glass theory, and that is that God is light and that light is refracted through different religious systems like different colors in a stain glass window but it’s all the same light. This is where, for example, we consider Paul at Mars Hill in Acts 17 to understand that the Apostle Paul is using that religious background in order to point to the one true and living God and to Jesus Christ and him crucified and raised from the dead. And so there’s a clear alternative, and I say that having stood at Mars Hill and had the opportunity to preach the scripture at Mars Hill right where the Apostle Paul was just yesterday. That’s a moving experience and one that underlines, I think, quite clearly the requirement that we present the gospel in power with authority and clarity.

But I also come back to say, I have personal appreciation and I think most evangelical Christians will for the statements made by Vice President J.D. Vance, and we also understand the opposition that is now coming to him will come equally to us, and if we were Vice President we’d be getting the same attention.

Part III

Religious Allies in the Culture War: Conservative Catholics and Conservative Protestants Need Each Other to Show Up For Battle

Now this raises a related issue. The weekend edition of the Financial Times, one of the most important media sources worldwide, over the weekend, the life and art section included a nearly two-page article that was headlined, “The Ascension of the Catholic Right.” This has primary reference in the United States rather than in England. The article’s by Rana Foroohar, and it really deals with the rise of a very significant group of Catholic intellectuals framing so much of the conservative argument in the United States, and quite frankly, gaining attention not only among Catholics but among Protestants as well when you look at the shape of these arguments. The Financial Times has given this attention because it really isn’t pleased with the development, and this article appears as something of a warning, and it goes to certain meetings, one in particular that headlined a lot of these Catholic figures, but it also showed the union of so many conservative Catholics with potent political forces, and that well could include organized labor. It really gets to several different divides, and it certainly is the believer versus secular divide.

It’s also a class divide in the United States. Let’s just say that the harder you work in terms of a blue collar profession, the more likely you are to be more conservative, even if you’re a member of a labor union than if you are, say, on the faculty of an elite university. I think we can figure that much out pretty clearly. The interesting thing about this article is that it points to Patrick Deneen and a group of other very prominent Catholic intellectuals as having an outsized influence on the arguments concerning conservative thought as we think in the coming age, and certainly Patrick Deneen has done a great great deal of work in this regard. By the way, I’ve done Thinking in Public programs with him and also with Robert P. George, I think one of the most prominent Catholic intellectuals in American culture today without doubt, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. There are a handful of others as well, very prominent Roman Catholics.

As you think about the Vice President, let’s just remember something. The Vice President as a boy was taken to evangelical churches. But from what I can understand, they were churches that didn’t have a lot of intellectual substance or much doctrinal depth, and he went into what can only be described… well, he described it himself as an atheist or agnostic phase, and he was looking for theological substance. Now I will tell you as an evangelical, one of my frustrations is that so many people looking for that kind of theological substance think they have to go all the way to Rome, and I say this with full respect for so many of my conservative Catholic friends. 

But I just want to say the problem is that if you’re going to compare conservative Catholic serious intellectual thought, with a vapid consumerist emotional evangelicalism, that’s not a fair fight. But I’m glad to say there is also a resurgence of conservative Protestant, conservative evangelical thought along the same lines, but it also shows you the worldview divide right now in the world.

When I go to conferences and speak on these things, I am speaking primarily into the secular void over against the aggressiveness of the progressive age, and I’m speaking primarily sharing a platform of conservative Catholics and conservative Jewish friends. And so you have conservative Catholics and conservative Jewish thinkers and conservative Protestants, and we have genuine theological disagreements. As a matter of fact, we may be the last people on planet earth who still have legitimate theological disagreements. And frankly, a Catholic is no use to me unless they’re actually a believing Catholic, and in this kind of intellectual endeavor, Jewish figures really don’t matter to this conversation unless they show up as seriously Jewish, and they fully expect me to show up along with other Protestant colleagues as seriously Protestant.

We have common ground in understanding several different dimensions of our cultural crisis. One of them is the great dividing line between secularism and theistic belief. The other is the great dividing line between secular progressivism and the ideological left seeking to undo the entire fabric of Western civilization and conservative Catholics, conservative Protestants, and conservative Jewish thinkers who are trying to hold it all together. Think about matters of current sexual debate and especially gender confusion, the transgender revolution and all the rest. Who has the capacity to say no to that?  It takes a lot of doctrinal capacity to be able to say no to that and make that no stick, and you’re not going to find that when you look at a church of very thin theology and thin logic and thin intellectual contribution and thin understanding, thin thought. It takes thick thought, it takes serious thought, and that’s what’s got the attention here of the Financial Times in London, that the Financial Times sees this as a very significant development, tells us you bet it’s a very significant development. If it’s on their screen, it ought to be on your screen as well.

But I want to remind you as evangelicals, our participation in this kind of common conversation is not because we’re lowering the theological differences. It is because the theological differences are who we are when we show up in whole, and frankly, you find conservative Catholics, conservative Protestants, and conservative Jewish thinkers in a room together because we share a common commitment to theism. Yes, that doesn’t diminish at all our theological differences, and we also have a common understanding of the cultural challenge. You know something else? We also have a common commitment to marriage and having children. Let’s just say the birth rate statistics tell the story. We actually don’t have to do it ourselves. All you have to do is point to the numbers. Who’s not having babies? Secular Americans. Who is having babies? Deeply convictional theistic Americans, in particular, conservative Catholics, conservative Jewish families, and conservative Protestants still showing up, still building churches that need nurseries.

It’s also interesting for us to note that the Financial Times understands what some of the catalysts are for this realignment in American politics and in American religion, and by the way, it’s not limited to the United States. It’s very much also a European conversation. But one of the things you note is that it’s the gender and sexuality issues, the moral revolution that really has brought about so much of this. You’ll also notice that the secular world knows who its enemies are, and clearly they understand the pro-life conviction coming from conservative Catholics and conservative evangelicals in particular as a major challenge, and they will basically in their own conversation say they didn’t take this too seriously until the reversal of Roe with the Dobbs decision in 2022. Now the battle lines are drawn. Well, here’s what’s interesting for us to think about. We’ve known the battle lines were there for a very long time. The Roe decision itself in 1973 made that abundantly clear.

One final thought along these lines, I do not believe that a secular conservatism is impossible, nor do I want to deny any cooperation with secular conservatives. I simply want to say that secular conservatives have to understand that their conservatism is a chosen political position. It’s a chosen worldview, a chosen set of commitments. When it comes to Christian and Jewish, Protestant and Roman Catholic conservatives, it’s grounded in revelation, it’s grounded in doctrinal responsibility, it’s grounded ultimately in God’s judgment. That’s a very different impetus and foundation behind conservatism, and I think the future of the conservative movement in the United States had better be theologically defined or I think eventually is going to be undefined.

Part IV

Britain is Undermining Its Own Army: Trading Fraternity for Inclusivity is Weakening the British Military

Okay. When you think about challenges faced in the culture, I want to turn to an article that appeared in the Sunday edition of The Telegraph from London. The headline is “Army Orders Officers to Shun Men-Only Clubs.” All right, interesting article, and if anything it shows you how the outworking of the inclusion of women throughout the armed services, how it’s going to bring about massive changes. So one of the traditions in terms of the British Armed Services is that there are men-only clubs that are made up of military personnel, and this has been a long part. It’s kind of like fraternities in college, and now you have senior military authorities, especially I think probably under the influence of the Labour government in Britain, and they’re now being commanded, that is the troops are now being commanded, officers in particular of the army are being commanded, “to disassociate themselves from private members clubs that refuse to allow female soldiers to join.”

Lieutenant General David Eastman, we are told, “told officers to review their affiliations with exclusive organizations that restrict women from joining or bar them from accessing certain rooms, urging troops to advocate for change.” The Telegraph says that they obtained a letter in which the deputy chief of the general staff said it was, “critical to assess the links between army units and the clubs to determine whether they were still appropriate,” “The presence of women in all aspects of army life is not only a reflection of societal progress, but also a central component of our operational effectiveness,” that according to the Lieutenant General.

He went on to say, this is just interesting, “Where affiliations are maintained with clubs whose rules or practices treat members differently based on gender, we risk undermining the inclusivity and cohesion we strive to foster within our ranks.” Now this is not the place to have a complete argument about women serving in the military. Frankly, from a Christian perspective that’s a mixed question because the military includes all kinds of jobs and all kinds of roles and functions, that I think most persons would say are not gender-specific.

But I also think most Christians would say when it comes to combat roles in particular, let’s just define it that way, combat roles, that’s something which we believe on the basis of conviction should not be gender-neutral. Let’s just put it that way. We believe that there is a role, and by the way, we talked about this on The Briefing with the news that came out of Ukraine with women soldiers who are having babies and that’s becoming a complication on the front lines. Well, that is because I think no sane society would choose to put women on the front lines who could become pregnant women on the front lines to be in that situation.

I think the Christian has to risk scandal these days by saying there’s a basic moral instinct that we don’t think comes from prejudice and patriarchy, but rather from an understanding of creation order. Again, I’m not ready to give you job descriptions for every position that’s included within the armed services, but I think this raises a point. Just ask yourself the question, is this going to make the British Army more effective or less? Is this going to increase battle readiness or is it going to put that very battle readiness at risk? I think as you just look at the history of military activity, there’s a certain camaraderie among men, that if you undermine is going to make the entire effort far more difficult, let’s just say, and you endanger the whole point of having a military.

But then again, you look at so much of what’s going on in our progressivist age and the role of a military is one of those things that is being deliberately confused. So at the very least, this kind of story tells us, that if you’re telling men in the army and in particular you’re informing regiments their officers can’t be members of men-only clubs, they can’t even have men-only rooms, then you’re going to have the men in your army who are going to be okay with that rule. I think that in itself is pretty much going to redefine your army. But let’s understand as we close today that there are forces in our society who will not be satisfied until everything is redefined, and as Christians, let’s remind ourselves, if you redefine it, you make it something other than what it was. At least for today, enough said.