By his own account, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s conversion to Catholicism in 2019 gave him the spiritual fulfillment that his Yale education and career success didn’t.
It was also a political shift.
WATCH: J.D. Vance’s political views and how they’ve changed in recent years
His Catholic teachings gave him a new perspective on addiction, family breakdown and other social pathologies that he described in his best-selling 2016 autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“I longed for a worldview that understood our bad behavior to be social as well as personal, structural as well as moral, a worldview that recognized that we are products of our environment and that we have a responsibility to change that environment, but that we are nevertheless moral beings with personal obligations,” he wrote in a 2020 essay.
Vance’s conversion also led him to become closely associated with a Catholic intellectual movement that some critics see as reactionary or authoritarian in its tendencies, but which was little known to Americans until he rose to the national stage as the Republican vice presidential nominee.
They are not Catholic conservatives like your father.
The network’s professors and media personalities don’t agree on everything — or even what to call themselves — but most call themselves “post-liberals.” Vance describes himself using that term, but the Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to questions about where he fits into the movement and whether he shares some of the beliefs promoted by many post-liberals.
Post-liberals share long-held views of Catholic conservatives, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
But whereas Catholic conservatives of the past saw big government as a problem, not a solution, postliberals want a strong government – a government they can control.
They envision a counter-revolution in which they would take over government bureaucracies, universities and other institutions from within, replacing entrenched “elites” with their own and acting on their own vision of the “common good.”
“What is needed is regime change — the peaceful and forceful overthrow of a corrupt and degenerate liberal ruling class and the creation of a post-liberal order,” Patrick Deneen, a prominent author on the movement, wrote in his 2023 book “Regime Change.”
Vance has signaled his agreement with some of the ideas advocated by Catholic post-liberals. He said the next time his allies take control of the presidency or Congress, “we have to be really ruthless in the use of power,” and that Republicans should take over institutions, including universities, “to make them work for the people.” He has advocated for pro-birth government policies, a view reflected in his criticism of “childless cat ladies” who he believes have no stake in America’s future.
Scholars of the movement caution that Vance is an original thinker and does not necessarily accept everything proposed by post-liberals and the part of them they call integralists, who want the state to work in tandem with the Catholic Church – a moniker Vance did not use for himself.
WATCH: Intersection of faith and politics is central message of Republican convention
But Vance has spoken publicly alongside prominent post-liberal figures and praised some of their work.
“I respect you from afar as some of the people who I think are most interested in what’s going on in this country,” he told fellow speakers at a 2022 Ohio conference of a who’s who of Catholic post-liberal leaders.
Vance praised Deneen’s book during a panel discussion with the author, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame in 2023.
Vance has also met privately with prominent post-liberal figures, who posted photos of the meetings on social media and praised his nomination as the vice presidential candidate.
Catholic journals have been filled with discussion of postliberalism for years, but because it has few adherents and its views are far from mainstream, it has received little public attention.
But now post-liberals have an eager audience in Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee.
“In less than 10 years, you can have someone writing an unusual Catholic theology blog becoming a vice presidential candidate,” says James Patterson, a political science professor at Ave Maria University in Florida.
Vance’s concerns, he said, citing comments about childfree people, show the impact of the movement.
“Most average Catholics in America wouldn’t look with such disdain on a single, childless woman who owns a cat,” Paterson said, adding that even if Vance isn’t steeped in the philosophy, “he’s got a post-liberal vibe.”
Some Catholics, including conservatives, have expressed alarm about the people Vance has been associating with, saying postliberalism has historical ties to 20th century European movements with ties to authoritarian regimes such as Spain’s Francisco Franco.
“We’re talking about people who favor right-wing authoritarian regimes,” Patterson said.
In an August op-ed for the online journal The Dispatch, Paterson wrote that in a post-liberal society, citizens become “subjects” and individual freedoms are subordinated to “executive tyranny.”
Vance has recently sought to downplay the influence his Catholic faith has on his policymaking.
Supreme Court justices appointed by President Trump provided a decisive majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide, but the issue has become politically charged, with voters in several states rejecting abortion restrictions.
Vance has been a vocal opponent of abortion ahead of his 2022 Senate run, previously saying “two wrongs do not make one right” about exceptions for rape and incest. In an email Wednesday, his campaign said he supports “reasonable” exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
But Vance aligned himself with the first post-Roe Republican 2024 platform, backing away from his longstanding support for nationwide abortion restrictions, and he vowed that he “can absolutely promise you” that a Trump-Vance administration would not impose such abortion bans.
President Trump has been inconsistent about a ballot measure that would repeal Florida’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
After receiving backlash from anti-abortion activists for suggesting he supported the bill, President Trump said he opposed it.
The bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States have declared opposition to abortion “our top priority.”
Vance told the New York Post in August that Catholic social teaching “certainly influences how I think about issues,” but he acknowledged that “there are a lot of teachings from the Catholic Church that, frankly, Americans will never accept.”
He added that in a democracy “people must have the ability to influence public policy with their own moral values. There are many people in America who are not Catholic, and I accept that.”
Julian Waller, a political science professor at George Washington University, said Vance draws on a host of influences beyond Catholic post-liberalism, from Trump-style populists to his guru, tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
It remains to be seen whether Catholic post-liberals will hold key positions in the Trump-Vance administration, or how often they will get called upon.
“Someone like J.D. Vance can read those books, be interested in them, attend their talks, know them personally and gain insight from them,” Waller said, “but he’s under no obligation to follow them.”
Waller pointed to the state of Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to remove diversity efforts and critical race theory from public higher education as an example of what an administration using state power for post-liberal ends might look like.
“If you want a model that someone like J.D. Vance is really interested in, it’s probably the Florida model – forcing institutional change and seizing control of the system,” Waller said.
Postliberal thinking is diverse, but there are common themes, said Kevin Vallier, author of “All the Kingdoms of the World,” a forthcoming 2023 book about the modern postliberal and integralist movements and their centuries-old roots.
Depending on who is speaking, changes in a postliberal system might include encouraging childbirth, relaxing or eliminating the separation of church and state, banning adult and child pornography, reinstating laws restricting business on the Sabbath, supporting private sector unions, and strengthening safety nets for the middle class.
We often hear post-liberals praise Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, particularly for his use of economic incentives to have more children. Orbán has advocated for an “illiberal democracy” that includes restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights.
WATCH: Hungarian PM Orban lays out ‘illiberal’ road map for American conservatives to Trump
Vance praised Orbán for subsidies for couples with children in Hungary and for his “wise decision” to take control of universities.
Vance repeated the rhetoric of regime change, using a government led by like-minded officials to further his post-liberal goals.
“We need a functioning state that can accomplish some of the things we care about, and we need talented people to work in that functioning state,” Vance said at a 2022 conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, that was attended by prominent post-liberals such as Deneen and Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule.
Vermeule argues for “public interest constitutionalism,” in which the government enacts “strong governance to achieve the public interest.”
Messrs. Deneen and Vermeule declined interview requests.
Vallier said Vance’s choice to speak in Steubenville underscored his affinity with post-liberal causes.
“He could have given that talk anywhere,” said Vallier, a professor at the Institute for American Constitutional Thought and Leadership at the University of Toledo in Ohio. “Why is he speaking with these intellectuals if he’s not in tune with their ideas?”
Vance’s faith journey began in a family that rarely went to church during his childhood, he writes in “Hillbilly Elegy.” But his grandmother, the most stable adult in his tumultuous household, read the Bible regularly and taught him a Christian faith that called for hard work, forgiveness and hope, he says.
For a time, the young JD writes, he accepted the strict literalist interpretation of the Bible of his father’s Pentecostal church, believing it to be a stabilizing force.
But during his college years, Vance embraced what he would later see as an arrogant and fashionable atheism.
Ultimately, he concluded in a 2020 essay for the Catholic magazine The Ramp that “it took God’s grace” to give him the virtues to be a good husband and father.
“In other words, I needed to become a Catholic,” he writes.