JD Vance’s Catholicism helped shape his views. So did this little-known group of Catholic thinkers

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JD Vance’s Catholicism helped shape his views. So did this little-known group of ********* thinkers

By his own account, Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s 2019 conversion to Catholicism provided a spiritual fulfillment he couldn’t find in his Yale education or career success.

It also amounted to a political conversion.

Catholicism provided him a new way of looking at the addictions, family breakdowns and other social ills he described in his 2016 bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

“I felt desperate for a worldview that understood our bad behavior as simultaneously social and individual, structural and moral; that recognized that we are products of our environment; that we have a responsibility to change that environment, but that we are still moral beings with individual duties,” he wrote in

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.

His conversion also put Vance in close touch with a ********* intellectual movement, viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings, that has been little known to the ********* public until Vance’s rise to the national stage as the *********** vice presidential nominee.

These are not your father’s ********* conservatives.

The professors and media personalities in this network don’t all agree on everything — even on what to call themselves – but most go by “postliberal.” Vance has

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, though the Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to questions about where Vance sees himself in the movement and whether he shares some of the beliefs promoted by many postliberals.

Postliberals do share some longstanding ********* ************* views, such as opposition to ********* and LGBTQ+ rights.

But where ********* conservatives of the past have seen big government as a problem rather than a solution, the postliberals want a muscular government — one that they control.

They envision a counterrevolution in which they would take over government bureaucracy and institutions like universities from within, replacing entrenched “elites” with their own and acting upon their vision of the “common good.”

“What is needed … is regime change — the peaceful but vigorous overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting ******** ruling class and the creation of a postliberal order,” wrote Patrick Deneen, a prominent author in the movement, in his 2023 book, “Regime Change.”

Vance has signaled his alignment with some of what ********* postliberals advocate. He’s said the next time his allies control the

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or Congress, “

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when it comes to the exercise of power” and said Republicans should

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“to make them work for our people.” He’s advocated for government

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, a notion reflected in

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at “childless cat ladies” with allegedly no stake in America’s future.

Scholars who study this movement caution that Vance does his own thinking and doesn’t necessarily embrace everything proposed by postliberals — or by a subset of them known as integralists, who want a state working in tandem with the ********* *******. The latter is not a label Vance has used for himself.

But Vance has spoken alongside prominent postliberals at public events and praised some of their work.

At an

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featuring a who’s who of ********* postliberals in 2022, he told fellow speakers he has “admired a lot of you from afar” as “some of the people who I think are most interesting about what’s going on in this country.”

Vance praised Deneen’s book at a

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with the author, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.

Vance has also met privately with leading postliberals, who have

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of their gatherings

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and cheered his vice presidential nomination.

********* journals for years have bristled with debates about postliberalism, but with little public attention — in part because its adherents are few and its views are far from mainstream.

But now, postliberals have an avid listener in Donald Trump’s running mate.

“You can go from people writing on an unusual ********* theology blog to the vice presidential candidate in the course of less than a decade,” said James Patterson, professor of politics at Ave Maria University in Florida.

Vance’s preoccupations show an influence from the movement, he said, citing his remarks about the childless.

“Most ordinary ********* ********** would not treat a childless single woman with cats with this kind of contempt,” Patterson said. Even if Vance is not steeped in the philosophy, Patterson added, “he is picking up on the postliberal vibe.”

Some **********, including conservatives, have raised alarms about the company Vance has kept, saying postliberalism has historical connections to 20th century ********* movements that are associated with authoritarian regimes like Francisco Franco’s in Spain.

“We’re talking about people that prefer right-wing authoritarian regimes,” Patterson said.

In a postliberal society, Patterson wrote

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, citizens become “subjects” and personal liberties subjected to “administrative despotism.”

Vance has recently tried to downplay his Catholicism’s impact on policy-making.

Trump’s Supreme Court appointees provided the crucial majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had legalized ********* nationwide. But the issue has become a political liability, with voters in several states rejecting ********* restrictions.

Vance had strongly opposed *********, in the runup to his 2022 senatorial win, saying at one point that “two wrongs don’t make a right” when referring to exceptions for ***** and *******. The campaign said in an email Wednesday that he supports “reasonable” exceptions for *****, *******, and life of the mother.

But Vance has aligned with the Republicans’

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in 2024, in which it backed off from its longstanding support for nationwide ********* restrictions. He pledged he could “absolutely commit” that a Trump-Vance administration would not impose such an ********* ban.

Trump has spoken inconsistently about a ballot measure repealing Florida’s ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

After facing backlash from anti-********* activists for seeming to indicate he would support the measure, Trump

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.

The ********* *******’s U.S. bishops declared opposing ********* “our pre-eminent priority.”

Vance

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in August that ********* social teaching “certainly influences how I think about issues.” But he acknowledged “there are a lot of things the ********* ******* teaches that frankly, Americans would just never go for.”

He added that in a democracy, “you have to give people their ability to have their own moral views reflected in public policy. There are a lot of non-********** in America and I accept that.”

Julian Waller, a political science professor at George Washington University, said Vance has numerous influences outside of ********* postliberalism — from Trump-style populists to his mentor, tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

It ******** to be seen whether ********* postliberals would get prominent appointments in a Trump-Vance administration — or even how often they’d get their calls returned.

“Someone like JD Vance can read them, be interested in them, attend talks, know them personally, get insights from them,” Waller said. “But he’s not on the ***** to obey them.”

For an example of what an administration using state power for postliberal ends might look like, Waller pointed to Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to rid public higher education of diversity initiatives and critical race theory.

“If you want the model for what someone like JD Vance is really interested in, it’s probably the Florida model, forcefully changing institutions, capturing institutions,” Waller said.

Postliberals’ ideas vary, but there are common themes, said Kevin Vallier, author of “

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,” a 2023 book on the modern postliberal and integralist movements and their centuries-old roots.

Depending on who’s talking, a postliberal regime change could involve encouraging childbearing, easing or removing *******-state separation, banning ************ for adults and children alike, reimposing laws limiting business on the Sabbath, supporting private-sector unions and strengthening safety nets for the middle class.

It’s common to hear postliberals praising Hungary’s nationalist prime minister,

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, particularly for his use of financial incentives for families that have more *******. Orban has championed an

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which includes restrictions on

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and

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.

Vance has praised Orban for

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with children and for “smart decisions” in seizing control of universities.

Vance has echoed the regime-change rhetoric of using government, staffed by likeminded officials, for postliberal goals.

“You need to have a functional state that accomplishes some of the things that we care about. You need good people to go and work in that functional state,” Vance said a 2022 conference at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. It featured prominent postliberals like Deneen and Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule.

Vermeule has advocated for “common-good constitutionalism,” in which the government enacts “strong rule in the interest of attaining the common good.”

Deneen and Vermeule declined requests for interviews.

Vance’s choice to speak at Steubenville underscored his affinity with postliberals, Vallier said.

“He could have given that talk anywhere,” said Vallier, a professor at the Institute of ********* Constitutional Thought and Leadership at the University of Toledo in Ohio. “Why is he appearing with these intellectuals if he’s not sympathetic to their ideas?”

Vance’s religious journey began in a family that rarely went to ******* when he was young, he wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy.” But he said his grandmother — the most stable ****** in his turbulent household — regularly read the ****** and taught a Christianity that demanded hard work, forgiveness and hope.

For a time, the young JD embraced the strict biblical literalism of his father’s Pentecostal *******, crediting it as a stabilizing force, he wrote.

But in college, Vance embraced what he later viewed as an arrogant and fashionable atheism.

Eventually, he wrote in a 2020 essay for the ********* journal The Lamp, he concluded he “needed grace” to provide him the virtues to be a good husband and father.

“I needed, in other words, to become *********,” he wrote.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s

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with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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