JD Vance hopes wife Usha, a Hindu, will eventually embrace Christianity

US Vice President JD Vance has said that he hopes his wife, Usha Vance, who is Hindu, will one day come to share his Christian faith, even as he emphasised that their interfaith marriage is built on mutual respect and understanding. This is interesting given that it was Usha who helped JD Vance, then an agnostic, find his Christian faith.

Speaking at a Wednesday night event at the University of Mississippi honouring political activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September, Vance reflected on his spiritual journey and how it shaped his family life.

The couple, who met at Yale Law School when Vance who was not Christian and called himself agnostic, decided to raise their three children in the Christian faith.

He also expressed hope during the event that his Hindu wife, Usha, would embrace Christianity in the future.

“Most Sundays she will come with me to church. As I’ve told her, and I’ve said publicly, and I’ll say now in front of 10,000 of my closest friends, ‘Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly, I do wish that,” he said while addressing students at an event at the University of Mississippi.

“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, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me,” he added.

He was responding to a query from an Indian-origin woman about his Hindu wife and their “intercultural household”.

“We decided to raise our kids Christian,” he further said, adding that their two children are enroled in a Christian school, and that their elder son, aged eight, received his First Communion last year.

HOW USHA VANCE, A HINDU, HELPED JD VANCE EMBRACE CHRISTIANITY

The Republican leader was brought up as a protestant but by 2016, he had started to consider converting strongly to Catholicism.

Finally, in 2019, he was baptised and confirmed in a church ceremony at St Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati, Ohio, according to The American Conservative magazine.

In 2024,he revealed how his wife Usha Vance, a Hindu, helped him in his religious quest.

“I was never baptised. I was raised Christian but never baptised. I was first baptised in 2018. Usha was actually raised non-Christian. She is actually not Christian. But I remember when I started to re-engage with my own faith, Usha was very supportive,” Vance once told Fox News in an interview.

During the interview, Usha was asked why she was so supportive. She gave three reasons.

“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,” said Usha Chilukuri Vance.

She had also said that they as a couple also agree on family life and how to raise their children.

– Ends