When a husband publicly rejects his wife’s religion

If Usha is your greatest blessing. Why wouldn't you then appreciate the spiritual heritage that helped lead her to be that blessing in your life?

Suhag Shukla, Executive Director of the Hindu American Foundation

Religion can be a strong obstacle to the success of any marriage, particularly when the faith of one is diametrically opposed to that of the other. Some couples solve this by taking religion out of their lives, but others attempt to work through it on their own terms.

This can lead to friction, and when one partner publicly questions his wife’s faith, the conflict can be exacerbated. That happened this week on a stage when the vice president of the United States said that he hoped that his wife would leave her faith and join his.

The outrage was intense regardless of people’s political views.

Background

Vice President J.D. Vance was raised in an evangelical Christian family but a few years ago he converted to Catholicism. His wife, Usha, was raised by a couple of immigrants from India and practiced a Hindu religion.

These are very different religious backgrounds, and the comments by the husband appeared to denigrate the religion of his wife,

Vice President JD Vance provoked a broad backlash this week after he said that he hoped that his wife, Usha Vance, who is of Indian heritage and was raised in a Hindu family, would eventually convert to his own Catholic faith.

“Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved by in church?” he said during an event at the University of Mississippi on Wednesday, in response to a question from the audience. “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.”

Amy Qin, “Vance Says He Hopes His Wife Embraces Christianity,

Setting Off Backlash,” New York Times, October 31, 2025

The reaction from people on social media was primarily negative since Vance has talked about the importance of freedom of religion in America. In addition, Vance, a convert to Catholicism in 2019, does not know his religion very well, according to a highly-ranked authority.

Pope Francis condemns American immigration policy

Prior to his passing earlier this year, Pope Francis informed the Catholic bishops in America that the policy of the Trump administration violated Catholic principles. In addition, he even questioned Vance’s interpretation of some Catholic theology,

Pope Francis has released an encyclical to U.S. bishops that insists on assistance to migrants as an obligation as old as the church itself and seems to take a pretty firm whack at Vance’s theological defense of an “America First” approach to immigration matters.

Vance started this fight with his recently acquired faith, blasting those same U.S. bishops (many of them conservatives on other matters) for resisting ICE raids on Catholic churches and schools that provide services and shelter to undocumented immigrants. He even suggested on Face the Nation last month that the bishops were acting out of concern not for migrants but for “their bottom line,” the government money they have received for helping refugees resettle.

Vance went on to explain [to right-wing activist] Sean Hannity that his relative lack of charity for immigrants was rooted in the early church concept of ordo amoris (rightly ordered love).

Ed Kilgore, “Pope Informs J.D. Vance He’s Wrong About Migrants,

Christianity,” New York Magazine, February 11, 2025

It was that concept that found Vance in hot water with the late pontiff.

Pope educates Vance on theology

When Pope Francis learned of the use of Catholic theology to battle migrants, he was outraged,

Having presented basic church teachings on immigration, Francis briskly turned to Vance’s ordo amoris defense of nativism:

Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups … The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception …

Catholic writer Elizabeth Bruenig put it more plainly in a recent meditation on Vance’s version of the faith:

The decision to love and serve the stranger, the refugee, and the foreigner with charity is a hallmark of the Christian faith, such that a government crackdown on this work seems to be a threat to Christian practice itself, or an attempt to reshape it into something else altogether.

Kilgore, New York Magazine

How can a husband contradict his wife’s religion?

The obviously angry people were those from India who practice Hinduism, but it went beyond them,

Beyond partisan salvos, there was also criticism from some Indians and Indian Americans across the political spectrum who said that Mr. Vance was not respecting his wife’s religious decisions. Some also said his remarks suggested that Hinduism was inferior at a time when aggressive immigration enforcement has left many South Asian Americans and people of non-Christian faiths feeling uncertain and afraid of their place in American society.

The backlash reflected worries by some in the South Asian community over the Trump administration’s immigration policies and its embrace of conservative Christian groups.

Win, New York Times

“The most amazing blessing in my life”

Vance called the reaction to his condemnation of his wife’s religion “anti-Christian, but his wife has not issued a public statement about it,

Mrs. Vance has not responded publicly to her husband’s comments or the backlash. But on Friday, Mr. Vance responded to the upswell of criticism. In a reply to a commenter on X who accused him of throwing his wife’s religion “under the bus,” Mr. Vance called the message “disgusting” and full of “anti-Christian bigotry.”

He also called Mrs. Vance the “most amazing blessing” in his life, noting that he had also said that at the Turning Point event. He said that she had encouraged him to re-engage with his faith and that while he still wished that she would convert, he would “continue to love and support her” regardless.

Win, New York Times

The battle in families of different religions

The Vances have apparently compromised on a number of issues. For instance, Catholics are supposed to be baptized shortly after birth, something that is different from Vance’s early evangelical beliefs. Mrs. Vance has expressed some of the challenges,

Mrs. Vance, who was born and raised in Southern California by parents who immigrated from India, has spoken about growing up in a religious Hindu household. The couple, who first met when they were studying at Yale Law School, have spoken publicly before about her role in Mr. Vance’s conversion and their approach to raising their three children in an intercultural and interfaith household.

In a June interview on Meghan McCain’s podcast, Mrs. Vance said that while the children went to Catholic school, they could choose whether they wanted to be baptized.

“The kids know that I’m not Catholic, and they have plenty of access to the Hindu tradition from books that we give them, to things that we show them, to the visit recently to India and some of the religious elements of that visit,” she said. “So it is a part of their lives and they know many practicing Hindus as a part of their lives in their own family.”

Win, New York Times

Irony of the Vance anti-immigration stance

The strange part of his anti-immigrant status is the fact that his in-laws are brown-skinned Hindus. He appears to see no contradiction that his wife’s family are immigrants just as the president’s wife became an American citizen under questionable means.

However, this conflict is going to continue because so many in his political party are white nationalists, particularly Christian nationalists. And the Catholic hierarchy in the U.S. must follow the precepts of the church in regard to migrants.

After all, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were migrants.