JD Vance Says He Hopes Usha Vance Embraces Christianity, Setting Off Backlash

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.”

The comments, which were made in front of thousands of students as part of a Turning Point USA event honoring the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, were widely reported by news media outlets and quickly criticized on social media.

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.

Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, described Mr. Vance’s remarks as “basically saying that my wife, this aspect of her is just not enough.”

“If you were any ordinary pastor, then whatever,” said Ms. Shukla, who has been critical of both Democrats and Republicans in the past. “But he’s not the pastor in chief, he’s the vice president wanting to be president.”

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the community,” Ms. Shukla said. “This just added kind of fuel to those fears.”

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.

It is not unusual for people in interfaith relationships, and especially for Christians across denominations, to hope for their partners to convert. And the Roman Catholic Church teaches that baptism is required for salvation.

Raised in a loosely evangelical family, Mr. Vance has described himself as going through an “angry, atheist phase” before later converting to Catholicism. Mr. Vance’s embrace of the Catholic faith is evident in his politics, as seen through his frequent emphasis on traditional family principles, social conservatism and economic populism.

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.”

These family issues, though, can take on a different valence when placed within a broader political and historical context.

There is a sensitivity in India to proselytizing by non-Hindus because of the long history of Muslim rule and Christian missionary work.

Mr. Vance’s comments also appeared to have struck a nerve at a time when rhetoric against immigrants has been growing. An August report from Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition that tracks acts of violence against Asian Americans, documented recent spikes in online hate rhetoric against South Asians related mainly to the mayoral run of Zohran Mamdani and the ongoing debate around H-1B visas.

Earlier this month, a City Council member in Palm Bay, Fla., was censured over a series of social media messages in which he disparaged Indians as coming to the United States to “drain our pockets” and called for them to be deported en masse. The member, Chandler Langevin, is now suing the city of Palm Bay saying that the censure restrictions violated his First Amendment right to free speech.

Sangay Mishra, an associate professor at Drew University and the author of “Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans,” said that Mr. Vance’s comments may have come from a deeply personal place, but they were interpreted by some as effectively “nodding to these larger politics of anti-immigration, anti-migrants, anti-replacement theory and white Christian nationalism.”

Not all Indian Americans were bothered by Mr. Vance’s comments.

Rami Reddy Mutyala is chairman of Shri Mandir, a Hindu temple in San Diego that Mrs. Vance’s parents occasionally attend. Even though he is a Republican, he said that he disapproved of President Trump, who he said was acting like a “monarch.”

But he saw nothing wrong with the vice president’s remarks.

“They are adults, they can decide whatever is good for them,” he said. “We cannot force anybody — even I cannot force my children to convert to Hinduism.”

Elizabeth Dias contributed reporting.