Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance became a Christian after considering himself an atheist, but he still gets in trouble for his habit of swearing around his young children.
That habit, he said, came in part because his grandmother, who had the classic Appalachian name “Mamaw,” cursed constantly as she tried to keep young Vance on the straight and narrow.
The story emerged when the Ohio senator spoke to a group of Christians in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday night about the origins of his faith.
The 40-year-old Catholic says he accepted Christ in 2019 and during the event he noted how the late Billy Graham, a son of the Tar Heel State, whose grave Vance had visited hours earlier, influenced his own conversion.
During his speech, he strongly warned the evangelicals present and bluntly claimed that Democrats are attacking religion.
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, takes a moment of silence during a campaign event in Charlotte, N.C., Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. During the event, he spoke about religious freedoms and how Christianity is under threat in the U.S.
“We need to show people that this election, I think, will determine the course of religious freedom in our country,” Vance told the crowd at Freedom House Church in Charlotte.
‘Because when we talk to our friends about how to persuade people, or when we go door to door and talk to people about our faith, or when we try to raise our children with the same values, then we actually live in a country that is blessed with religious freedom.
“This election is fundamentally about whether Christians are allowed to live our faith, whether Christians are allowed to defend our principles, and whether Christians are allowed to raise our children and build communities that are consistent with our values. And I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.”
The vice presidential candidate said he believes Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world, saying hundreds of millions of believers live in countries where they are prevented from practicing their faith.
“If it can happen anywhere, it can happen anywhere,” Vance reasoned.
“And I think we live in a time where we have the greatest opponents of religious freedom and people of faith running for public office that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime.
“When you have Kamala Harris, the greatest threat to religious freedom in at least a generation, you better care about politics.”
But Vance’s path to faith was anything but normal.
Vance warned that Christianity is now the most persecuted religion in the world, with hundreds of millions of followers being prevented from practicing their beliefs.
Vance also claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris poses a threat to religious freedoms in the US.
He grew up in a Christian home, but faith wasn’t always a priority for his mother. Growing up, Vance struggled with opioid addiction, but she quit drinking ten years ago.
“I was raised in a Christian home, with a grandmother who loved me and cared for me very much. My own mother couldn’t do that anymore, because she was addicted to opioids for a large part of her life,” he explains.
“And it’s incredible because one of the people who first introduced me to the Christian faith was Billy Graham, who was traveling with my grandmother.”
Vance said that Mamaw would be watching Graham’s speeches on TV and that he would go with her.
That made his visit to the pastor’s grave extra special, he said.
Post from May 21, 2015 shows the late Reverend Billy Graham and daughter Anne Graham Lotz
Former British Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher welcomes American evangelist Billy Graham at 10 Downing Street in London
“She was, again, a woman of very deep, profound Christian faith. She also really loved the F-word. And those two things could coexist.
“I think the only thing my wife will change about me is that sometimes I talk a little bit like my grandmother,” he told the audience, joking about his own penchant for swearing.
“And the problem is we have a seven-year-old, a four-year-old, and a two-year-old, so they’re starting to talk like their daddy does. But honey, I promise you, I’m going to honor the swear jar. I’m going to get better, and the kids are going to stop talking like me and stop talking like Mamaw.”
Despite being raised in the religion, he says he often thought he was smarter than the religion and didn’t take it seriously until he left the Marine Corps in 2007.
He described how devout Christians used to be superstitious and backward.
Beverly, mother of vice presidential nominee Senator JD Vance (R-OH), gets emotional in the VIP box as her son speaks on Day 3 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
But Vance eventually returned to faith when he thought about what kind of husband and father he wanted to be after meeting his wife, Usha.
“Although my grandmother was not an educated woman, she was a very brilliant woman, and there was a lot of wisdom in the faith, which I gave up as a young man,” he said.
“God didn’t care how much money I made, God didn’t care where I went to school, God didn’t care if I wrote a best-seller or ran for vice president. But God did want me to be a virtuous husband and a virtuous father. And that made me realize that the Christian faith I had given up was actually the best solution to the problems I was facing.”