Vice President JD Vance delivered one of the most powerful apologetics ever heard from a prominent elected official during an event with Turning Point USA, as the late Charlie Kirk’s legacy continues to host A-list conservative thinkers and politicians at college campuses throughout the United States. Vance previously engaged with youth in Oklahoma.
Sharing a stage with the widowed Erika Kirk, Turning Point’s newest CEO, Vance took questions from the audience after their prepared remarks concluded, with one Christian skeptic prompting the Vice President to launch into one of the best defenses of Christianity’s presence in both society and governance their generation has likely ever heard.
Vance began by establishing a critical premise, that Christian values are rooted in the belief that all human beings are created in God’s own image. This single belief historically separated Christianity from every other worldview and helped those nations adhering to Biblical principles set forth the entire notion of inalienable rights and morality.
“Christian values are the idea that you should respect every single person as an individual, whatever the color of their skin, created in the image of God. That’s a Christian concept,” the Vice President began in response to the question, before pointing out that the evils of slavery and child sacrifice were ended in the West as a result of, again, the belief that all people are sacred and holy.
“And in fact, it was a Christian empire, Great Britain, that abolished slavery to begin with the idea that we should eliminate child sacrifice. What did the Christian settlers find when they came to the new world? They found a lot of civilizations that were murdering babies in weird religious rituals. It was Christianity that said we don’t kill children just because they’re somehow inconvenient to people.”
“The very idea that human beings have rights, are a Christian concept. And so I’d ask you, my assumption based on the question, is that you’re skeptical of Christianity, or at least of certain public professions of Christianity. One of my favorite Bible verses is by your fruits, ye shall know them. And I think that the fruits of the Christian faith are the most moral, the most just and the most prosperous civilization in history.”
It was after this stunning refutation of separating Christianity from society that Vance saved his best comments for last. Normally milquetoast American voters want to hear banal pablum about how they are religious but it doesn’t interfere in their policymaking or some empty trope like that. Vance went in another direction. He stood by Christ. He defend his faith. And he observed how he can’t be a leader without leaning on those things.
“I make no apologies for believing that Christianity is the pathway to God. I make no apologies for thinking that Christian values are an important foundation of this country, but I’m not going to force you to believe in anything, because that’s not what God wants, and that’s not what I want either,” his remarks concluded.
Take a look at Vance eloquently lay out his vision of faith: