Vice President JD Vance often puts a Christian spin on the America First idea that undergirds much of MAGA, Trumpism, and the ambitions of the new Trump administration. Speaking this week on Fox News about Americans who have what Vance considers an inappropriate amount of sympathy for migrants arriving in the U.S., the Vice President invoked Christian doctrine saying:
“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.”
Vance’s claim — essentially that love should be prioritized like so many Russian nesting dolls and meted out in diminishing waves as it moves further away from one’s own relations — met strong and immediate objections from many practicing Christians and theologians, who asserted that the Vice President’s Bible interpretations are off the mark.
Slamming Vance’s solipsistic interpretation of Christ’s teachings, Jesuit Priest and author James Martin replied that to take Vance’s view would require ignoring the chief lesson of Jesus’s most famous parable — that of the Good Samaritan.
Martin writes that what Vance claims and what Christ preached are in direct opposition: “Jesus’ fundamental message is that everyone is your neighbor,” Martin explains, “and that it is not about helping just your family or those closest to you. It’s specifically about helping those who seem different, foreign, other. They are all our ‘neighbors.’”
Actually no. This misses the point of Jesus's Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10: 25-37). After Jesus tells a lawyer that you should "love your neighbor as yourself," the lawyer asks him, "And who is my neighbor?"
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 30, 2025
In response, Jesus tells the story of a Jewish man who has… pic.twitter.com/JS8xfKDsA1
Numerous experts joined with Martin’s opinion, as the Baptist News attested titling one article about Vance’s claim: Theologians push back on JD Vance’s view of ‘ordered love’.
In his follow-up, Vance revealed the political reason for his rhetoric, saying that his enemies on the Left — filled, as he often accuses, with “hate” — have twisted what he believes the Bible instructs.
Of his “ordered love” Vance said: “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.”
It isn’t just theologians who objected to Vance’s statements. Vance’s alleged misinterpretation and naked politicization were targets of many dissenters online. Responding to the assertion that both Christ and St. Paul were in actuality defiantly against what Vance said, journalist Joshua J. Friedman accused Vance of technically misquoting Jesus and gave a translation of Vance’s conclusion: “As Jesus famously said, Love thy neighbor a bit less than thyself.”
As Jesus famously said, Love thy neighbor a bit less than thyself
— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) January 30, 2025 at 8:53 PM
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