I don’t imagine Jesus was the litigious type, but if he were on the planet right now, I’m pretty sure he’d sue JD Vance for false association or identity theft.
At the very least, he’d violently flip the tables of the entire Trump Administration and him along with it.
Vance, a professed Christian, was stumping through Texas recently, where he continued to demonize and dehumanize undocumented immigrants in a pathetic, dangerous attempt to distract voters from the myriad ways he and Donald Trump have decimated our economy, dragged us into an illegal war, and abandoned the needs of the people.
This follows a week where the Vice President slandered and misrepresented pastor Adam Hamilton and James Talarico, two men running for Senate as both Democrats and Christians. Over the past year, Vance has also unleashed a steady stream of venom against Pope Leo for his critiques of the Trump Administration’s partnering in genocide, war, and the persecution of immigrants.
The fact that Vance is intentionally targeting undocumented human beings, some of the most vulnerable people residing here, illustrates his full contempt for Jesus’ clear directive to care for the least of these as if we were caring for him, and the VP’s abject refusal to love his brown-skinned neighbors as himself. He is willfully preying upon the very people Christ claimed solidarity with.
JD Vance claims to be a follower of Jesus.
In fact, he never shuts up about it.
He wears his religion openly, brandishing it at every opportunity in performative piety and finger-wagging condescension, while justifying the harboring of pedophiles, the rolling back of human rights, and the indiscriminate assaults of brown-skinned people by government-funded, masked mercenaries.
Vance is doing all of this while breathlessly doing the bidding of a man he only a couple of years ago compared to Hitler: a court-adjudicated rapist and 34-count felon indicted several times for high crimes; a man whose racism, misogyny, and immorality are at stratospheric levels.
JD Vance’s God isn’t an empathetic street preacher from Nazareth, but a narcissistic, racist former slum-lord from New York City.
Vance has been bending the knee to his vile, belligerent, spray-tanned savior for so long that the actual teachings of Jesus are no longer a concern at this point, which is why he now spends his days trying to connect dots between mass violence against immigrants and a poor, dark-skinned, itinerant minister commanding his people to love everyone in their path.
If the Vice President actually gave half a damn about the non-American, non-English-speaking, “blessed are the peacemakers” center of his faith tradition, he’d fully denounce Donald Trump’s profane, sociopathic violence and condemn ICE’s brutal persecution of immigrant human beings.
If Jesus truly meant anything in his life, he’d fall down in repentance over the ways he has partnered in taking food from the starving, withholding care from the sick, funding a genocide, pillaging the planet, and bearing false witness against political rivals, Democrats, and refugees.
If his faith were anything other than a costume of convenience, he’d work the rest of his life to undo the grievous damage he has done in such a short time to so many beautiful human beings created in the image of God, who do not share his pigmentation, native language, or nation of origin.
JD Vance despises men like James Talarico and the Pope and Pastor Hamilton for the same reason he vilifies refugees and immigrants: because the former actually aspire to the teachings of Jesus—and the latter force him to face the truth that he has no such motivations.
JD Vance may be able to B.S. Trump’s final holdout sycophantic disciples with this hateful, heretical, Jesus-less parade of hypocrisy, but the rest of the world (Christians and non-Christians alike) knows he’s really playing for the other team.
Literally and figuratively, to hell with JD Vance and his fraudulent, phony faith.
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Previously Published on The Beautiful Mess
Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
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Currently, yes, all this is true about the VP. Next month his Christianity will be different, and it will change the month after that, then the month after that, etc. If history is any guide, he will also change his name again in a year or two.