Vice President JD Vance shared a Turning Point USA stage with its late founder’s widow, Erika Kirk, at Ole Miss and delivered remarkably clear and articulated defenses of Christianity in America and the misguided notion that religious and political neutrality can ever be achieved in governance.
For context, many of Charlie Kirk’s legacy programs – ranging from his eponymous podcast to college tours and open forums through Turning Point USA – have hosted some of the biggest names in conservative and America First circles since his September 10th assassination. Vance in particular has been noticeably visible, carrying the slain giant’s casket, crediting him for helping him become the vice president in a powerful eulogy, taking his turn hosting the Charlie Kirk Show, and doing several events with Turning Point.
At this particular event, students took to the open microphone following the Vice President’s remarks and asked surprisingly impressive questions. While their own politics and disagreement with the current administration and its corresponding worldview bled through the questions, they were at least coherent and corrigible during the process.
In response to one young person asking about Christianity’s role in society and how the modern left ‘perverts’ well-intentioned and indeed important Christian values. “So much of liberalism, by the way, so much of the far left, is a sort of, if you really pay attention to it, it’s a kind of perverted version of Christianity, like there’s nothing wrong, of course, with focusing on people who are disenfranchised,” Vance responded to the student.
“For example, that’s the focus of liberalism. But if you completely separate it from any religious duty, any civic virtue, then that can actually become, for example, an inducement to lawlessness. You can’t just have compassion for the criminal. You also have to have justice too, which is why I think that a properly rooted Christian moral order is such an important part of the future of our country,” he finished.
Watch that moment below:
In another impressive, off-the-cuff remark, the Vice President gave one of the best apologetics of Christian faith by a politician that this country has seen in generations. “Christian values are the idea that you should respect every single person as an individual, whatever their the color of their skin, created in the image of God. That’s a Christian concept,” the Vice President began.
“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.”
“A lot of the things human rights, 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.”
“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.”
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video