A Man of Deep Religious Principle

There’s something deeply telling about JD Vance putting a cover of a rural Methodist church on the cover of his book about his conversion to Catholicism. First, there is no more Protestant move in the entire playbook than choosing a religion based on your politics. Vance converted to Catholicism not because he believes in the Catholic social justice mission or cares about transubstantiation. He converted because he finds the fundamentalist far-right Catholic ideal of a hierarchical society with rich men on top and everyone else doing what they are told to be deeply appealing and made more powerful behind waves of ritual and tradition that scare people. Never mind that this is not what most Catholics believe, including at the very least the last two popes. It’s a right-wing fever dream based in rich enclaves of Washington with allies in Rome.

But then a Catholic Church in a city doesn’t fit Vance’s bullshit fake wannabe Appalachian populism. The vision of a church can’t be an urban church. That’s THE CITY OMG. There are in fact country Catholic churches (I just a very cute little one near a hiking trail on the Cumberland Plateau in east Tennessee, though it surprised me to see Catholics in that part of the world, maybe their ancestors got jobs in the coal mines back in the day). But it doesn’t work either for Vance’s vision of rural/suburban border land use with sunsets and big yards and trees and a nice big church in the middle of it. So a Methodist church in Virginia it is.

It doesn’t even matter whether Vance himself selected the cover. It fits exactly what a huckster scumbag this guy is. JD Vance is a scary motherfucker and a lot of people helped pave this path to him, including the many liberals who lauded Hillbilly Elegy when it came out. There’s nothing true about the man at all except his craven ambition for power. But that might be enough.