Vice President JD Vance has admitted that his Hindu wife, Usha, has no intention of converting to Christianity.
Speaking to NBC News to promote his upcoming book Communion, about his 2019 conversion to Catholicism at age 35, Vance addressed criticism he received for telling a Turning Point USA crowd last year that he hoped his wife would “eventually” become a Christian.
Vance said the comments were a “pretty simple observation” that a Christian would naturally want to share their faith with their partner, while accepting that the second lady may never convert.
“And I’m OK with that,” Vance said. “What I’d say about Usha is that one of the things I love about her is that she’s brilliant, but she’s also fiercely independent.”
“You know, fundamentally Christianity is a faith where, if you believe in it, you would like other people to believe in it, too, and that’s going to be particularly true for those that you’re closest to and those you love,” he added.
Vance sparked controversy after publicly saying he wished that his wife, who is of Indian descent, would convert to Christianity.
While taking questions at a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi in October 2025, an audience member asked the vice president about raising three children as Christians in an “intercultural-racial-religious household,” and how he was “teaching your kids not to keep your religion ahead of their mother’s religion.”
Vance began answering the question by stating that he and Usha were largely atheist or agnostic when they first met, but that now “most Sundays, Usha will come with me to church,” he added.
“As I’ve told her, and I’ve said publicly, and I’ll say now in front of 10,000 of my closest friends: Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved by in church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that because I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way,” Vance said.
In a scathing opinion piece, CNN-News18 editor Shubhangi Sharma wrote that Vance “felt compelled to declare that his wife was indeed raised Hindu, but not that Hindu.”
“He wasn’t responding to the questioner; he was responding to the crowd. The MAGA crowd,” Sharma added.
Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, described Vance’s comments to The New York Times as “basically saying that my wife, this aspect of her, is just not enough.”
Vance also caused a stir after he weighed in on Donald Trump’s feud with Pope Leo XIV amid the Iran war.
While speaking at a sparsely attended Turning Point USA event in Georgia last month, he suggested the pope was wrong to say that disciples of Christ are “never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs,” and that the head of the Catholic Church should be “careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
In response, Bishop James Massa, America’s top Catholic bishop, issued a statement condemning Vance’s remarks, adding that Catholic Church has taught for “thousands of years” that wars can be justified “in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.”
During a National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in February, Vance described himself as a “baby Catholic” who is “not always going to get it right” when it comes to religious teachings.
Elsewhere in his interview with NBC News, Vance said that although his new book is mainly about Catholicism, it “wouldn’t exist” without Usha.
Vance said the second lady helped “harmonize different chapters” and remove parts that “didn’t add anything of value.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Vance’s office for comment.
