Driving back to his Marine Corps base in North Carolina after his grandmother's funeral, a despondent J. D. Vance was steering through Virginia's Appalachian Mountains when slippery roads and bad luck sent his car hurtling toward a guardrail. Instead of crashing through and sliding off the mountain, the car mysteriously stopped - an experience Vance now describes as almost "supernatural."
"Even during my later years as a strident atheist, the experience sat there inconveniently in the back of my mind," Vance writes in his new book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, obtained in advance of its release tomorrow. "It was as if it existed to annoy me, to challenge the confidence I had in the laws of the universe."
The book, a sequel to Hillbilly Elegy, is billed as a conversion narrative reflecting Vance's 2019 embrace of Catholicism. But it also tells the story of his other conversion: from ardent Never Trumper to Donald Trump's vice president - a shift he insists was driven not by ambition but by the belief that Trump proved himself an effective president. "To my critics, it was a politically cynical maneuver to gain political power. I doubt I'll ever change their minds," he writes.
Much of Communion is a rumination on ethical and spiritual matters - a perhaps not-so-subtle way to show how he's different from the man currently in the White House, whose office Vance is widely expected to seek in 2028. The book offers a notably softer tone than Vance's social media persona, and the man White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles dubbed a "conspiracy theorist" is not much in evidence.
Vance ventures beyond his own faith journey to diagnose America's spiritual health, describing a nation that has lost its Christian foundations. He calls Christianity "America's creed" while allowing that one doesn't have to be Christian to be an American. Both political parties, he writes, are "guilty of casting aside the Christian inheritance of our civilization," which he links to declining marriage rates and population: "Our abandonment of Christian culture has coincided with an apparent decline in our collective will to live."
The book traces Vance's path from religious drift to Catholicism, noting an upbringing where faith was deep-rooted but untethered from the Church. His grandmother Mamaw, central to Hillbilly Elegy, embodied an unconventional religion: "She loved to say the f-word, and when she died she owned nineteen loaded handguns. Mamaw's God suited her: loving and forgiving, but tough, demanding, and possibly packing."
Vance acknowledges his grandmother believed abortion should be legal - a striking contrast to his own self-described "100 percent pro-life" views. He describes bouncing among Pentecostal and Southern Baptist congregations, all broadly conservative, before Catholicism engaged him intellectually "more than anything I'd seen in either the secular or religious worlds I'd previously operated in."
After Hillbilly Elegy's 2016 publication, Vance found a "comfortable niche as a Trump skeptic," criticizing Trump "from a conservative perspective while defending his voters." (The account soft-pedals his earlier references to Trump as "reprehensible" and an "idiot" who could become "America's Hitler.") He explains his stance then as social ritual: "I was rewarded for saying bad things about Donald Trump even though my background and politics made me an odd fit for elite media culture."
By his 2022 Senate run, Vance was fully on board with Trumpism, perpetuating claims of a stolen election and downplaying January 6. He recalls being stunned to make Trump's vice-presidential shortlist and describes a jarring vetting process that scrutinized everything, including his marriage.
Vance credits his Hindu wife Usha with propelling him back to Christianity through her openness to exploring the world. "There is at least a little irony in the fact that my non-Christian wife helped lead me back to my own Christian faith," he writes. "The Lord works in mysterious ways, indeed."
On immigration, Vance tries to reconcile his record - including spreading unverified rumors about immigrants in Ohio eating pets - with Christian beliefs. "Real engagement with the immigration issue requires real engagement with the trade-offs," he writes. "The difficulty is applying these principles in a messy world with competing values."
Vance also reflects on his meeting with Pope Francis, who died a day later, and conversations with Cardinal Pietro Parolin. He found Vatican criticism of Trump administration immigration policies "unsettling" and disconnected from governance's hard choices. The Vatican's stance has become more tense under Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, who has emerged as a sharp critic of the administration's immigration policies and Iran war - prompting Vance to publicly defend the White House.
Asked if he feels well placed to bridge emerging cracks in Trump's MAGA coalition - over the Iran war and Epstein files - as a possible Trump heir and onetime Never Trumper, Vance's answer was carefully calibrated.