JD Vance has had to answer some big questions surrounding his interfaith family’s religious alignment this week. The US vice president was challenged on the issue at a time when even Donald Trump administration officials, including Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, have been targeted on social media for their Hindu faith, especially in light of recent Diwali celebrations.

On Wednesday (US time), Vance took his late friend and conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s spot at a Turning Point USA event by engaging in fiery conversations with college students. While at the University of Mississippi, one such student came up to the front and pressed the second-in-command on multiple issues currently dividing American masses. The questions circled around his intercultural marriage with his wife Usha Vance and ramped-up immigration policies.

VP opens up about Usha Vance’s religion

Some of the heavy questions posed during the interaction included “When you talk about too many immigrants here, when did you guys decide that number?” and “Why do you have to be Christian to be American?” The student even drew on Usha Vance’s Hindu religion while challenging the divisive ideologies that have especially given way to bigoted hate speech on social media (often targeting people of Indian origin).

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Responding to the issue of different faiths prevalent in his family, Vance disclosed that Usha grew up in a Hindu family, “but not a particularly religious family.” He even went on to reiterate something the Second Lady has admitted to in past interviews herself.

“In fact, when I met my wife… I would consider myself an agnostic or an atheist, that’s what she would have considered herself as well,” he said, while noting that families need to come to their “arrangement.” Highlighting that they’ve always had open discussions on the issue, Vance claimed that they had decided to raise their three children Christian, as they even attend a Christian school.

Admitting that their “arrangement” works for them, he told the many event-goers Usha even comes with him to church on most Sundays. He then foregrounded, “As I’ve told her, I’ve said publicly, and I’ll say now… do I hope, eventually, that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by 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.”

Flipping the situation, he also weighed in on the chance that Usha doesn’t convert to Christianity down the line. “If she doesn’t, then God says, everybody has free will, so that doesn’t cause a problem for me. That’s something you work out.” He again insisted that one of the most important Christian principles is respecting one’s free will.

Vance further went on to divulge that Usha was actually closer to the priest who baptised him. Bottom line, his advice remained that such things should be figured out as a family, while also trusting in God’s place for oneself.

Usha Vance’s faith: Is she Hindu or Christian?

Merely months ago, America’s Second Lady opened up about how she, as a Hindu, and her husband, as a Catholic, were raising their kids in an interfaith household. Speaking to Meghan McCain on the podcast ‘Citizen McCain’ in June, Usha Vance disclosed that when she and JD first met at Yale University he wasn’t Catholic.

Much like what the former Ohio senator said this Wednesday, Usha told McCain back then that the couple had “a lot of conversations” as he made the decision to convert. “When you convert to Catholicism it comes with several important obligations, like to raise your child in the faith and all that,” she said during the podcast appearance.

Contrary to JD Vance’s hopes of wanting to see his wife convert to Christianity, Usha expressed her disinterest in the idea at the time. “We had to have a lot of real conversations about how do you do that, when I’m not Catholic, and I’m not intending to convert or anything like that,” she added.

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While she too spoke about sending their kids to Catholic school, Usha Vance emphasised that they had given “them each the choice.” While hoping to make a “family experience” out of their church-going tradition, the second lady noted that her children knew well enough where she stood on the matter.

“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 recent trip to India, and some of the religious elements of that visit,” she went on.

Weeks before the Ohio politician was formally picked as Trump’s running mate for the 2024 presidential election, he and Usha came out for a joint Fox News interview. While the VP now says that his wife wasn’t brought up in a “particularly religious family,” she had different words to share at the time.

Confessing to having grown up in a “religious household,” Usha told the Fox News interviewee, “My parents are Hindu and that’s one of the things that made them such good parents and really good people. And I have seen the power of that in my own life.”

JD Vance initially felt bad about bringing Usha to church

As opposed to his high hopes now, there was a time when the former bitter critic of Trump admitted to feeling bad about taking his Hindu wife to church on Sundays. During a prior interview with the New York Times, he said that while Usha “didn’t sign up to marry a weekly churchgoer,” she was “more than OK with it.”

“We go to church almost every Sunday, unless we’re on the road,” he said at the time, adding, “I feel terrible for my wife.” The Republican politician’s own faith has long been in flux.

Following the release of his New York Times bestseller, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” Vance shed light on his religious background in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. The 2016 write-up noted that he used to be a conservative, evangelical Protestant in his formative years. He further spilled that by the time he started law school in 2010, he called himself an atheist.

However, after graduating in 2013, he started exploring his faith again. Moreover, Yale exposed him to faith groups that shifted his previous constricted perception of religion. “You can be a member of your faith and still be a reasonably successful person. That’s not the world I grew up in, but maybe that’s true,” he said years ago.

At the time of the 2016 interview, Vance hadn’t yet converted to Catholicism, but was seriously considering it. Years down the line, he bared his heart, saying that Usha’s support helped him make the big leap, while she also acknowledged knowing that her husband was “searching for something.”