JD Vance-Erika Kirk’s ‘Close’ Photo Goes Viral Amid His Conversion Remark For Wife Usha

Washington: JD Vance, the Vice-President of the United States, has ignited a firestorm of debate after publicly declaring his hope that his wife, Usha Vance—who comes from a Hindu-Indian background—will embrace Christianity.

The remarks, made during a public event, have drawn sharp criticism from Indian-American communities, religious-freedom advocates and commentators alike.

At the same event, another controversy cropped up. Photographs showing Vance greeting Erika Kirk, widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, in a seemingly close embrace with Vance went viral. Kirk wore a white T-shirt with the word “Freedom.” Vance appeared in a blue suit.

The photographs were widely discussed alongside his faith-related comments.

The conversion remark

At a recent gathering of the conservative student group Turning Point USA hosted at the University of Mississippi, Vance addressed a question on how he and his multi-faith household reconcile his Christian faith with his wife’s Hindu origins.

“As I’ve told her and I’ve said publicly, and I’ll say now in front to 10,000 of my closest friends: Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do with that. Because I believe in the Christian gospel and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way,” he said.

“If she doesn’t, then God says everybody has free will, so that doesn’t cause a problem for me,” he added.

He also stated that the couple have decided to raise their three children in the Christian tradition.

What had his wife said few months back?

Just months before the Mississippi appearance, Usha Vance herself had discussed their family’s interfaith household and parenting approach. She made the revelations during a podcast conversation with Meghan McCain on Citizen McCain.

“So what we’ve ended up doing is we send our kids to Catholic school, and we have given them each the choice, right? They can choose whether they want to be baptised Catholic and then go through the whole step-by-step process with their classes in school,” she had said.

Usha had mentioned that when she met Vance at Yale University, he had not yet converted to Catholicism. “At the time when I met JD, he wasn’t Catholic, and he converted later and when he converted, we had a lot of conversations about that because it was actually after we had our first child, maybe it was after Vivek was born too,” she recalled.

The backlash

The reaction was swift and strong. Many in the Indian-American community accused Vance of being dismissive of his wife’s Hindu heritage and of signalling that her faith is somehow “lesser” or in need of changing for political gain. A former Indian diplomat, Kanwal Sibal, accused Vance of being “afraid to admit” his wife’s Hindu origin. Some critics labelled the remarks as “Hindu-phobic.” On the flip side, some conservative commentators defended Vance’s right to hope for his spouse’s conversion and to raise their children in his own faith.