US VP Vance defends wish for wife to convert to Christianity

US Vice President JD Vance defended himself by saying he hoped his wife, Usha, who was raised as a Hindu, would convert to Christianity.

Vance, himself a fervent Catholic who converted in 2019, said in a statement Friday that the outcry over his remarks smacked of “anti-Christian bigotry.”

At the Turning Point USA event held Wednesday in memory of assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at the University of Mississippi, the 41-year-old was asked about raising her three children in an interfaith marriage.

“Do I hope that eventually he will be affected in some way by the same thing that I was carried by the church? Yes, frankly, I hope that,” he said.

“But if not, then God says everyone has free will, and that’s fine with me.”

Vance, who was tipped by President Donald Trump as a possible candidate in the 2028 US elections, later responded to criticism of his remarks on social media.

Responding to a critic who accused him of throwing the Second Lady’s religion “under the bus” to appease right-wingers about X, Vance said: “What a disgusting comment, and it’s not the only one along those lines.”

“He is not a Christian and has no intention of converting, but like many people in interfaith marriage or any interfaith relationship, I hope one day he may see things the way I do,” Vance wrote.

Usha Vance was born in San Diego to parents who immigrated from India. He told Fox News in 2024 that his parents’ Hindu religion helped them become “really good people.”

Vance was raised as an evangelical in a chaotic and sometimes deprived upbringing, as he describes in his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”

The couple met at Yale Law School and married in 2014.

Since converting to Catholicism five years later, Vance has spoken frequently about how his faith has influenced his conservative political views.

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