Vance

VP JD Vance, Dr. James Dobson and the Long Reach of Focus on the Family

During an appearance on Tuesday at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Georgia, Vice President JD Vance was asked by a student to name someone who helped shape his conservative views while growing up.

“Okay, so that’s, that’s very interesting,” replied the vice president. “When I was a kid, and I was kind of developing my politics, there was actually a radio host, a guy who founded this organization called ‘Focus on the Family’ – James Dobson, who was really influential to me.”

At the mention of Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family, the crowd erupted in a cheer.

“He was a good Christian guy,” said Vice President Vance. “He talked about the family. He talked about things I cared a lot about, and I came from a broken home.”

Vice President Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, was addicted to drugs – first painkillers and then heroin. During one drug-fueled rage, Vance’s mother threatened him. “She could go from zero to homicidal in a heartbeat,” he once reflected. “I was terrified of my mom. There were moments when I wasn’t sure I was safe in my own home.”

Vance’s father, Donald Bowman, was largely absent from the family. As a result, JD was largely raised primarily by his grandparents and was forced to navigate a series of boyfriends and stepfathers given his mother’s emotional and physical unevenness. 

Speaking at the University of Georgia, the vice president suggested that it was because of the chaotic background that he found himself resonating with Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family’s message.

“When he talked about the ways in which a broken home had a negative effect on kids, it made sense to me because I was seeing it in my own life,” he shared. “Here was a guy who was actually talking about it.”

Vice President Vance was born in 1984, so his childhood recollections of Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family encompass the 1990s and early 2000s. It was during those years that Focus on the Family’s daily radio program and outreach were being heard by more than 7 million listeners here in the United States and more than 200 million around the world.

During that time of Dr. Dobson and Focus’ ascent, critics often accused the man and the ministry of being dogmatic and harsh – simply because both were willing to unapologetically share God’s truth. The claims of mean spiritedness were bogus, but the media nevertheless ran with it. Sometimes, when a journalist or an activist would mock and malign Focus’ founder and the wider ministry, Dr. Dobson would challenge them to present evidence of hateful rhetoric. It was never produced.

Keep that in mind when you see how Vice President Vance concluded his reflections on his childhood mentor:

“What I liked about him [Dr. Dobson] is that he didn’t talk about it in this judgmental way, right? He wasn’t attacking a kid like me who didn’t have everything handed to him. He was just explaining in a very real world, with a fundamentally Christian underpinning, here’s what happens when things are broken.”

Since the ministry’s founding in 1977, Focus on the Family has strived to help couples with their marriages, assist parents with their children, defend the defenseless, and encourage and empower believers to boldly and lovingly engage the culture.

It’s notable that Vice President Vance singled out Dr. Dobson, not simply as a Christian leader or child psychologist, but as someone who influenced him as he developed his politics. There are some who grow uncomfortable when faith and politics are discussed in the same conversation, but there’s no question that one (faith) informs the other.

When Dr. Dobson spoke in Washington, D.C., at a conference on families during the Carter administration, he was approached by Jim Guy Tucker, who would go on to serve as governor of Arkansas. “I never knew anyone like you existed,” he told him. 

What Tucker was saying was that people of faith didn’t have influence in our nation’s capital. Determined to change that reality, Dr. Dobson helped that very night to launch the Family Research Council.

Focus on the Family, now led by Jim Daly, continues to engage and influence countless listeners and friends of the ministry, as well as shape and champion public policies that impact the family. The ministry has never been partisan but rather committed to advancing policies that help families thrive. Might one of the young individuals listening and reading Focus material today grow up one day to be president or vice president? In the Lord’s timing and inimitable way, anything is possible. 

Photo credits: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty, Win McNamee/Getty

VP Vance: ‘You have kids, you figure it out.’

With three children and a fourth expected to be born later this year, Vice President JD Vance’s strong endorsement of parenthood is a matter of personal conviction.

Speaking with the popular podcaster and commentator Benny Johnson last week, the former senator and current vice president acknowledged his only regret was not having more children than he and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, currently have.

“I wish that we had started early and had more, because it’s the most rewarding, it’s the coolest thing,” he said. “Now that our kids are at the ages 8, 6, and 4, where they’ve got their own little personalities, and they’re so quirky and fun. They’re all into different sports, and it’s just an amazing thing.”

Vice President Vance and Mrs. Vance met while students at Yale Law School. Usha Vance was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. They were friends before beginning their courtship. Born in Ohio and raised by his grandparents in Kentucky, JD served in the Marines before attending and graduating from Ohio State University. 

During last week’s sit-down interview with the vice president, Johnson asked him for his best advice to young Christian men regarding fatherhood. 

“My advice to young men who are thinking about becoming fathers, who are about to have babies, is: you’re never ready,” replied Vance. “There’s no point at which you can sort of get all your little ducks in a row and get all your financial situation in a row. Whenever you have a baby, whatever stage of life, it will be shocking, it will be crazy. It will be the most difficult and the most rewarding thing that you’ve ever done.”

The vice president went on to relay a story about a friend who confided in him that it was only after seeing the sleep-deprived Vances in the aftermath of their first child that the friend realized he and his wife could do it, too.

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others,” wrote Albert Schweitzer. “It is the only thing.”

It would be impossible to overestimate the powerful witness that married Christian couples with large families can make to a younger generation that ignores, is unsure, or is otherwise intimidated by the prospect of having children. Couples may not be motivated to have lots of kids to make a cultural point – but that’s an effective benefit and outgrowth of a big family.

“I think our society tells young men that you only have kids after everything in your life is perfect,” observed Vance. “And I think that’s a ridiculous attitude. You have kids, you figure it out. They’re the thing that perfects life.”

Delaying children until you have the degree or a certain amount in a retirement account belies the reality of the way the Lord often blesses His people. He uses our struggles to teach, instruct, inspire and draw us closer to Him. The tragic risk of waiting until all the pieces are in place before marrying and having children is that you might just wait until it’s too late.

One of the great lies of modern life is that men and women are in control. It’s the fantasy that we can call our own shots, right down to the number of children, the month they’re born, and sometimes even their sex and color of their eyes. The Lord does give us some agency, but He is sovereign and always has the final say.

If you’re young and married, take Vance’s wise advice: Ask the Lord to bless you with children. Lots of them. With His help, you and your spouse will figure it out.

JD Vance: ‘You Shouldn’t Have to Leave Your Faith at the Door’

Keynoting the International Religious Freedom 2025 Summit in Washington on Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance pledged ongoing support and enthusiasm for America’s first freedom.

“This administration is intent on not just restoring but expanding the achievements of the first four years and certainly of the last two weeks,” Vance declared.

“In recent years, too often has our nation’s international engagement on religious liberty issues been corrupted and distorted to the point of absurdity. How did America get to the point where we’re sending hundreds of thousands of dollars abroad that are dedicated to spreading atheism all over the globe? That is not what leadership on protecting the rights of the faithful looks like, and it ends with this administration.”

In his first administration, President Trump signed numerous executive orders advancing religious freedom across numerous federal agencies, affirmed the posting and distribution of religious symbols and literature, assured the fair treatment of religious organizations when dealing with the government, liberated groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor from onerous and discriminatory policies, and unapologetically directed the Justice Department to protect religious liberty at every level.

On Wednesday, Vice President Vance observed, “One of the wonderful apparent paradoxes of religion is that in connecting us to the sacred and to the universal, it deepens our commitment … to our neighbors, to our obligations to one another, to the individual communities that all of us call home.”

He continued:

The church was a place, and still is, where people of different races, different backgrounds, different walks of life came together in commitment to their shared communities and, of course, in commitment to their God.
It was a place where the CEO of a company and the worker of a company stood equal before their worship of God. … Are these not the kinds of bonds and virtues that lawmakers today should strive to cultivate? Well, I’m pleased to say that they certainly were in the first Trump administration, and they will be even more so in the second.

The Vice President called the defense of religious liberty a “no-brainer,” but acknowledged that what many faith-filled Americans have grown to expect is actually a very rare right and privilege around the world.

While the new administration is providing assurance that religious liberty will be protected, there are numerous pending cases of concern. 

A Louisiana law requiring public K-12 schools to post the Ten Commandments is blocked while a court battle unfolds.

This past November a Christian woman prevailed in a $12 million lawsuit after she was denied a religious exemption over being forced to take the COVID-19 vaccine as an employee of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. 

On a promising note, this past January the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of several groups challenging a New York law (SB 660) that prohibits “discrimination based on an employee’s or a dependent’s reproductive health decision making.” 

Americans are wise to stand guard against threats of spiritual tyranny, which often come incrementally and under the guise of a supposed enlightened and liberated radical agenda that threatens to rob from our nation its many sacrificially obtained religious freedoms.

Image from Getty.