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| Clip-art image of a bride and groom. Image source. |
So JD Vance said that he hopes his wife Usha (who is Hindu) will become a Christian. Here's a link, from Hemant Mehta: JD Vance wants his Hindu wife to convert. It’s Christian Nationalism: Home Edition.
When asked about this, Vance said a lot of things that sound nice, like how he loves his wife, they talk about this together and work out something that works for their family, he respects that people have free will and can believe what they believe. He's good at saying things that sound nice and reasonable but then when you look at the overall picture of what he's doing, the things he is actively supporting, it's the opposite of that. (JD Vance creeps me out for this reason.)
Anyway, he says they are raising their children as Christians, and that he hopes his wife will become a Christian eventually.
First of all, I want to say I don't find this surprising at all. In my experience with evangelicalism, of course we believed everyone is supposed to become a Christian. Vance is Catholic so there might be some differences between his view and the evangelical view, but yeah overall I get it. We believed that non-Christians are all going to hell. And that knowing Jesus makes our day-to-day lives so much better, and everybody else must be suffering so much, living without Jesus.
There's something kind of ... weird... about being in a marriage and believing that there's something fundamentally wrong with your spouse and they need to change. I'm not sure how to describe it. Disrespectful?
I was taught that Christians shouldn't marry non-Christians- then you will be "unequally yoked" and the non-Christian will be a bad influence, causing the Christian to "water down" their faith. This is an extremely normal thing for evangelicals to say, but I find it really offensive. They use the analogy "what if you were standing on a chair, and you were trying to pull someone up- wouldn't it be much more likely that they would pull you down?" WTF, why are we framing this like Christians are higher, better, more moral than non-Christians. Like a non-Christian can only be a bad influence on you.
I'm a Christian and my husband is not, and we've been together for a really long time and it just really isn't an issue? Because I don't believe he needs to change. Why would he need to change? What reason is there to think that it would be beneficial to him to convert to Christianity?
(A key part of this is that I don't believe in hell. Or, rather, the evangelical version of hell, where the criteria are one's beliefs about Jesus. But surely there has to be some kind of judgment for people who, for example, go around making up dehumanizing lies about immigrants.)
Sure, if someone is interested in becoming a Christian, then yeah it would be a good thing for them to do so. But if they have no interest in it, then ... why try to convince them? How would that help anything? Even if you make the argument "well it's true, and it's better for people to believe true things than false things"- okay, so if it's true that Jesus was raised from the dead, what are the implications of that? Christians have all sorts of different opinions on what it means for us, what it teaches us about the nature of the world, morality, etc- and some of these interpretations are harmful. It's not clear that the truth of the Resurrection is enough to say that it would be a good thing for people to convert to Christianity- what if they convert to one of the anti-human varieties of Christianity? (Like, for example, one that teaches that non-Christians are lower than us and are only going to pull you down.)
For our kids, my thinking is, I want them to be able to make an informed decision for themselves. I want to teach them enough about the bible and Jesus and Christianity that they can understand why I'm so excited about it, why I find it so amazing and life-giving, why I think about incarnation all the time. To know what I love about it, so then they can decide for themselves.
Sometimes I'm reading a book about Christianity with our son, and my husband walks by and makes some kind of snarky comment about the bible. I appreciate that; we need people who make snarky comments about the bible.
I also want to tell our kids about other religions, and atheism, and that people have all sorts of different beliefs about God, and we can't ever know for sure, BUT the important thing is, we should do good and help people. We can be sure about that.
So no, I'm not sitting here in my marriage, thinking about how I've waited so long and I just hope my husband will become a Christian- no, I don't think like that at all. If he doesn't want to, then why would I want that for him? It's not a matter of "well I want him to, but I'm polite enough to not say it out loud"- no, I genuinely don't believe it's true that everyone would be better off if they became Christians.
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Related:
My Marriage Is So Good, I Forgot "Unequally Yoked" Was Supposed To Be A Problem
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