What JD Vance learned about faith, fatherhood from Charlie Kirk

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Monday, June 08, 2026

Vice President JD Vance has opened up about how slain Christian conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a personal friend, provided valuable lessons about faith and fatherhood, reflecting on the legacy of the Turning Point USA founder. 

Vance published an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, in The Wall Street Journal on Friday. The passage, from the book scheduled for publication June 16, discussed how Kirk’s assassination last September changed his perspective on fatherhood and life.

Describing how he traveled to Utah to comfort Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, after her husband was gunned down during an event at Utah Valley University, Vance wrote that “Erika’s thoughts kept returning to her kids.” She was specifically concerned that her children “would have few, if any, personal memories of him," Vance wrote. 

“I realized that in such moments, everything worldly we value fades to nothing,” he continued. “Erika didn’t care that her husband was politically influential or had the president’s ear. She cared about her babies and the fact that an assassin had stolen Charlie from them — so many memories and moments with their father robbed from them forever.”

Vance highlighted Erika Kirk’s testimony that her husband never yelled, cursed or lost his temper with her or their children, which prompted him to reflect on his own behavior.

“In the impromptu eulogy of her deceased husband, Erika convicted me, though I’m sure she didn’t know it. Had I ever yelled or lost my temper with the kids? Indeed.”

“I found myself wondering what my wife and kids would say about me if an assassin took my life. Mostly good things, I thought. But none of them will care that I was the vice president,” he added.

Vance shared that as his wife, Usha, held Erika Kirk on the first day of her terrible sorrow, the widow said that "she regretted having only two kids with Charlie.”

“For years, I had asked Usha to have another baby, and for years she had told me she was done — especially now that public service had elevated us into the national spotlight. But something changed for Usha, and not long after we buried my friend, she became pregnant with our fourth child, a boy.”

“One life was stolen from us, but another was given,” Vance wrote as he reflected on Kirk’s assassination and the upcoming birth of his fourth child. “I don’t know why God does things like this. But I am grateful to Him that there will soon be another source of joy in our lives. Another person added to the communion of our family and hopefully to that of the Church.”

Identifying his late friend as “a person of profound faith,” Vance, a practicing Catholic, said the Protestant Kirk “taught me to love all parts of our Christian communion.”

“I take from Charlie a certain charity about the body of Christ — the Church, defined very broadly. And if Charlie was right, and I think he was, there are things we Catholics can learn from Protestants, and vice versa.”

Vance praised Kirk as “an amazing example of Christian charity” before stressing that “As Christians, we are all, together, part of the same Church,” and listing examples of people who might appear different on the surface but share a common bond.

“Those who suffered and those who prospered. Those who voted for me and those who didn’t. The living and the dead. My grandmother and my father, though they disliked each other. Charlie Kirk and Pope Francis, despite their different views.”

Vance also recalled a conversation he had with Kirk shortly after he became President Donald Trump’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election. In response to Kirk’s question about whether he was “doing OK” amid increased media scrutiny, Vance said his then-7-year-old son was “really struggling.”

“I didn’t anticipate this at all,” Vance told Kirk. “I figured he was so young that he wouldn’t even realize much had changed. But he hates the cameras and the attention. He told me, ‘Dad, I just want everyone to go back to treating us like they used to.’ Sometimes I feel like I ruined his life without even asking him.”

Kirk urged Vance not to “try to convince your son it’s not a sacrifice,” adding, “Just try to take some solace in the fact that it’s a worthy sacrifice.”

Kirk also assured Vance that he would “say a prayer” for him. The vice president wrote that his son “slowly adjusted” after he took the late conservative activist’s advice.