Trump's Veep Pick J.D. Vance Linked to Catholic Integralism
Sounding nationalism notes
In my Telling Jefferson Lies podcast series, I briefly examined the varieties of Christian nationalism in two episodes titled Still Searching for Christian America. There are several varieties and probably more evolving as I write. What brings me to the substack today is Donald Trump’s announcement of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate for this year’s presidential election. It is a conventional, yet odd choice. Vance is currently an angry white guy from Ohio which is a battleground state, but Vance is also a former articulate Never Trumper. Those never Trump statements are going to be everywhere from now until November.
Why I write now is to highlight Vance’s apparent friendliness to Catholic integralism. In his rhetoric, he seems friendly to using government to legislate his moral views and he spoke at a conference in October, 2022 at Steubenville University which recommended such a thing. The conference brought together the leading lights of a Catholic version of Christian nationalism known as integralism which calls for the government to legislate Catholic moral teaching. You might think of Supreme Court Justices Alito, Thomas, and Coney Barrett in this context.
The National Catholic Reporter described the conference at the time as promoting “biblical lawmaking.” Here’s a sample.
"Overt biblically grounded lawmaking, a concomitant biblically informed constitutional jurisprudence, and an approach to God in the public square that we might think of as an ecumenical integralism, represents our only hope for recovery at this late hour in our ailing, decadent republic," Josh Hammer, a Newsweek opinion editor, said during one panel discussion.
In the Telling Jefferson Lies podcast, part one of the Still Searching for Christian America duo takes up integralism and distinguishes it a bit from the protestant forms. I invite you to take a listen.
Ultimately, I don’t know if Vance’s apparently support for integralism is anything more than an effort to pander for votes. Vance recently came out in support for Mifepristone which is a very un-integralist move. This stance, of course, was to align himself with the only nationalism he really cares about and that is Trumpian nationalism.
Biblical lawmaking, my foot.
“'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two laws, hand all the Law and the Prophets."
And you can't do the first if you can't do the second. Something that is beyond Christian Nationalists, no matter what they call themselves.
So this is a "small" correction you need to make in your article. You said that the National Catholic *Register* reported on the conference but you linked to the National Catholic *Reporter*. There's a big difference between the two publications.
I put "small" in quotes because it's an honest mistake for anyone, and I take it you are not Catholic. I was confused at first that the Register would even use the term "integralist" which means different things to different people, but it made sense to me once I clicked on the link and saw that this was a Reporter article written by Brian Fraga.
He linked to the FSU page for the conference, and of course the word *integralist* is nowhere to be found on the page. I've been a Catholic for thirty years and the only people I ever heard complaining about integralism were liberals who threw it around like protestants throw around "fundamentalist". Neither word is precise, and they remind me of analogous B-team villains from DC and Marvel.