Vance says he hasn't yet felt God's call for presidential run in 2028: 'Maybe that’ll change'

Vice President JD Vance says he feels God calling him to serve well in his current role but hasn't felt a divine call either way about whether he will run for president in 2028. 

Vance spoke with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on an episode of Arroyo’s podcast, “Arroyo Grande,” released Wednesday. Among other topics, the interview touched on Vance’s plans for 2028, his Catholic faith and the upcoming midterm elections. Vance’s recently published book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, loomed large in the conversation.

Referring to a possible run for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, Arroyo asked, “Do you feel God calling you to this?”

Vance replied, “I feel God calling me to do as good of a job as I can.”

“I feel God calling me to try to promote the common good in the job that I’m doing right now," the vice president stated, adding that he expects an answer in time.

“When I actually sit down with my wife and with my pastor and with just my own internal deliberation, I … think at that point, I’ll either hear God telling me to do something or to not do … something,” he predicted. In the meantime, Vance said he hasn't felt God telling him he has to do "one thing or another."

“Maybe that’ll change,” Vance acknowledged.

Vance said that after the midterm elections are over he and his family are going to "have to think seriously about it because then that's the point at which me and the family we're going to have to make a decision."

Arroyo also asked Vance about the assertion by John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic elected U.S. president, that his faith would not “inform his public policy.” Vance said he sees it differently.

“Of course my faith influences how I think about public policy,” he said.

Vance agreed with the late author C.S. Lewis’ description of faith as “the filter through which you see everything” and gave examples of how his faith shapes his worldview and policy positions.

“I think that what my faith calls me to do is to be more charitable towards people,” he said. “It forces me to ask questions. How can we raise up the least among us? How do we ensure that people have good access to jobs, even if it isn’t always the perfect thing for a corporate bottom line?”

“I do think that while I’m an imperfect practitioner of my faith, I think the very best version of myself is that which listens to that voice in my head that I ultimately think comes from God,” he added.

Vance described a moment on the drive home from his grandmother’s funeral that led him back to the Christian faith after he had drifted from it.

“There are a lot of these mountain roads, and I just kind of hit a curve the wrong way. Maybe it was wet, but the car starts to sort of spin out of control,” he recalled.

He described the road as one where “you go off the side of the mountain, and you’re probably not going to make it.” Vance thought he was “about to go over the side of the mountain" but the car came "to a completely restful stop, like God put His hand on that car and made it stop.”

Vance called the “supernatural” experience “one of those things that’s always gnawed at me."

“God was trying to talk to me; I just didn’t know what He was trying to say," Vance said.

He said it was “definitely a door opening” and one of “many little things that happened like that.”

"We are ultimately God’s ambassadors here on Earth," he added, pointing to an “amazing parable of the stranger that I talk about in the book that was very, very powerful to me.”