Fact check: Vance says Christian teaching backs ‘America First’ view. Is he correct?
Vice president tells Fox News that ‘far left’ has inverted ‘a very Christian concept’
Vice President JD Vance found himself in a storm of both praise and criticism this week when in a Fox News interview he accused the “far left” of inverting Christian teaching in their criticism of the Donald Trump administration’s policies on immigration and foreign affairs.
One criticism of Vance’s comments on the social-media platform X (formerly Twitter), by theologian Joash Thomas, received 3.1 million views, an extraordinary number for a theological post on the conservative social platform: “I am a theologian trained at one of America’s top conservative evangelical theological seminaries,” wrote Thomas, who went on to say of Vance’s interview statement: “This is *not* a Christian concept; it’s a western individualistic one.”
That resulted in literally thousands of responses, mostly in support of Vance, probably to be expected on the conservative-leaning platform. Many disagreeing with Thomas’s view quoted 1 Timothy 5:8 (“But if anyone doesn’t provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever”) or fourth-and-fifth-century philosopher and theologian St. Augustine.
Vance in context
Here are Vance’s words in context, taken from an interview with conservative influencer Sean Hannity:
But there’s this old school — and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.
A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society. And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is the simple concept of America First. It doesn’t mean you hate anybody else, it means that you have leadership. And President Trump has been very clear about this — that puts the interests of American citizens first. In the same way that the British prime minister should care about Brits and the French should care about the French, we have an American president who cares primarily about Americans, and that’s a very welcome change. [Emphasis in original]
I am making no attempt here to evaluate of Christianity of Vance’s politics — Christians living under democratic governments have long debated what their role should be, especially considering that Jesus and his earliest followers lived under foreign occupation and thus never faced the issue of what democratic politics should look like for the believer — only Vance’s determination of what he considers a Christian viewpoint.
So did Vance offer a “very Christian” ethic?
Truth verdict: ❌
The answer is a clear no. If something is “very Christian,” it presumably should be based on the teachings of Christ. And what Vance says here isn’t: In fact, although he accuses his political foes of inverting Christian teaching, he is the one that does that here.
Vance may be offering practical, and even sound, political advice — we can leave it up to voters and politicians to decide that — but his understanding of Christian principles falls far short here.
Vance makes his first mistake by seeming to think that “neighbor” refers to someone who lives nearby, mostly likely someone who is like us. But that’s the exact opposite of what Jesus was saying in one of his best-known parables, that of the Good Samaritan.1 Jesus had reminded a lawyer of the divine command in the Hebrew Bible to love one’s neighbor, and gave this answer when the lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?”:
A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii,2 gave them to the host, and said to him, “Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.”\
Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?
The lawyer realized that the neighbor was the one who showed mercy, an answer that satisfied Jesus. Notably, the person that the Samaritan showed love to was someone from outside his own territory. At the time, the Jews and the Samaritans were enemies, so one point of the story was to include enemies, people who are different than we are, in the category of neighbor. In other words all people are our neighbors.
The principle of love that Jesus taught didn’t allow for the picking and choosing of whom should be valued; love, in this story, was for anyone who needed mercy.
As a practical matter, of course, many of us have responsibilities toward our family members, as the writer of 1 Timothy suggested, and often those needing support can be helped best by those living in proximity. But when Vance suggests that that means it is fine to ignore the humanity of those more distant, he is ignoring, indeed he is contradicting, the teaching of the parable of the Good Samaritan. As was so often the case, Jesus here taught a sort of “upside-down” ethic, one that turns common societal priorities on their heads.
See Luke 10:30-31. Bible quotes in this article are from the World English Bible.
So roughly two days of wages for many workers.