Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Religion News
Why Do Americans Convert to Catholicism (JD Vance Included)?

Why Do Americans Convert to Catholicism (JD Vance Included)?

Last updated on: July 7, 2026 at 11:38 pm by Richard Ostling

0 Comments

Why Do Americans Convert to Catholicism (JD Vance Included)? 2026-07-07T23:38:05-04:00 Richard Ostling

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Heavily centralized power: Pope Francis at the Vatican greeting pilgrims / Ágatha Depiné @ unsplash.com

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

This turns out to be a surprisingly big year for the U.S. Catholic Church winning converts. After taking classes about the faith, most inquirers join by baptism or profession of faith in rituals on Easter Eve, which provide good statistics on what’s happening. The Catholic prayer site hallow.com collected the 2026 numbers from four-fifths of U.S. dioceses, showing an impressive 38% increase in converts compared with 2025. A New York Times feature depicted such gains in two dozen dioceses.

Each convert has a story, and readers now get one of the most intriguing ones in recent years, in Vice President JD Vance’s best-selling memoir “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith” (from Harper). Journalists are treating this as a customary campaign book to set up a run for president in 2028, but it’s an unusual example since it focuses on why he was baptized Catholic in 2019.

The Religion Guy explores the Veep’s narrative. To summarize, the chaotic boyhood depicted in his first book from 2016, Hillbilly Elegy, included sporadic attendance at various sorts of hard-shell Protestant churches (e. g. King James Only, 6,000-year-old planet Earth) or watching TV preachers. He floated into superficial atheism during years with the Marine Corps, Ohio State University, Yale Law School, legal practice, and business.

Why Reconsider?

Why, then, did he reconsider Christianity? A careerist lust for credentials and status failed to satisfy Vance, as he confesses in notably candid terms. He realized he turned atheist without thinking it through. He observed beauty and morality in the universe for which God was the most plausible explanation. Pondering what worldviews have produced the most wholesome civilization, he concluded that Christianity is far and away the best option. He undertook serious reading and re-examination. His “best friend,” the late evangelical activist Charlie Kirk, talented Catholic priests, and others nudged him along. When he began attending weekly worship, his wife, Usha, a Hindu, said he became a better guy.

This was very much an intellectual process, later joined by fleeting mystical moments. The specific choice of Catholicism among various Christian options was made difficult by accumulating scandals of bishops coddling priests as sexual predators. However, an observer can suppose that given his difficult youth, Catholicism represented the ultimate in continuity and stability. Vance offers no thoughts on the many Catholic aspects that conflict with his spotty Protestant upbringing, whether in doctrines or in the heavy centralization of power in the Popes and the Vatican bureaucracy.

Vance was unlikely to embrace liberal Protestantism, but he definitively left behind the evangelical/fundamentalist faith he had sampled as a youth without embracing it. Remarkably for a politician who’d need such voters in 2028, Vance looks back upon that type of Protestantism with affection for ordinary believers but irritation at emotionalism in worship, weak sermons, over-emphasis on the End Times, under-emphasis on people’s real-life problems, and unwillingness to honestly face such perennial issues as how to understand human suffering if God is good and all-powerful.

No Typical Saga

The Vance saga is not typical. Beyond his and other individual cases, what’s the broad Catholic conversion situation nationwide? We learned about that in a June analysis from the perpetually valuable Pew Research Center, using data from its massive (36,908 respondents) Religious Landscape Study from 2023-24 and two 2025 polls, also with large samples.

As you might expect, by far the most common reason adults convert to Catholicism is that they are marrying a Catholic, cited by 49%. Among all Catholics, a fourth are married to a non-Catholic, including 1% who like Vance are married to non-Christians. Vance provoked some blowback when asked if he’d like Usha to convert and responding: “Yeah, honestly, I do wish that, because I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way. But if she doesn’t, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me.”

Other reasons Pew’s respondents listed for converting Catholic (note that more than one answer was allowed so these total more than 100%): Belief in the church’s teachings or its historical foundations (cited by 13%), finding spiritual fulfillment (12%), influence of family or friends (12%), made sense or aligned with one’s values (7%), attracted by the worship or by the community (6%), simply returned after dropping out for a time (3%), dissatisfaction with one’s prior church (3%), influence of Catholic schools or institutions (1%), and then other or unclear answers or no answer (11% ).

More Outs Than Ins

Among all U.S. adults, 19% identify themselves as Catholic, and 1.5% are converts to the church, some 4 million people. If 2026 sees an upward trend, the following could change, but Pew calculates that, in recent times, for each adult converting to Catholicism, there have been 8.4 raised Catholics who no longer identify with that church. Divorce is doubtless a factor. The comparative ratio for Protestants overall is far less dramatic, 1.8 people who leave for each one who joins.

Converts make up 8% of U.S. Catholics. The remaining 92% are so-called “cradle Catholics” raised in the faith who still identify with it. Among Catholic converts, 59% were raised as Protestants, 9% in other Christian traditions, and 4% in non-Christian religions, while 22% had no religious upbringing (6% did not answer the question).

Also: Converts are more likely to attend Mass weekly (38%) than are lifelong Catholics (28%). There were no significant differences between the two categories in the frequency of prayer or in attending confession. Hispanics make up a smaller share of converts (20%) than of Catholics raised in the faith (37%). As with Vance, 60% of converts align with or lean toward the Republican Party, compared with 52% of lifelong Catholics.

For more about JD Vance’s journey, see his article for The Lamp, a lively new Catholic magazine, at Easter 2020.

Catholic

Previous Post

June 20, 2026

What Was American Religion Like in 1776? What Came Next?

Next Post

July 31, 2026 How Do We Understand the Huge Lifespans in Biblical Genesis?

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"(First off, a correction: telescopes were invented about 1,300 years after Ptolemy's death.)Skeptics have been ..."

Ray Ingles

UFO buzz: Will life on distant ..."

"NIPs... spurn labels and are averse to “organized religion” with its expectations about moral lifestyles ..."

Ray Ingles

How do categories differ among America’s ..."

"Atheists are those who are certain God does not exist, and the same for all ..."

Brian Westley

How do categories differ among America’s ..."

"We already know what happens, Christianity is the only worldview that has completely answered all ..."

Lekrikrekral

Why doesn’t the Bible mention dinosaurs?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Old Testament book does not mention God?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Ruth Esther Ecclesiastes Song of Solomon