Vice President JD Vance has had a busy schedule with the Iran deal, expecting a fourth child with wife Usha, and now a book tour. Vance first rose to prominence with the publication of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which explored his humble upbringings by a drug-addicted mother. The book, written in 2016, was so popular that it became a film in 2020, directed by Ron Howard and starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close (who played Vance’s mother and grandmother respectively). Now he’s penned a new memoir describing his return to faith in Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.

Speaking to Fox News Digital, the Vice President noted how he had essentially managed the American dream from his impoverished roots to law school, yet something was still missing. “I was really worried about where I went to school and what kind of job I had and what kind of money that I made. But I felt like that wasn’t making me a good person, whereas the Christians in my life seem to have it figured out,” he said. With his mother struggling with addiction, Vance had been primarily raised by his religious grandmother “Mawmaw.” However, he didn’t grow up in church as Mawmaw didn’t trust organized religion.

As an adolescent, he became involved in Pentecostalism after reconnecting with his biological father. “I’m not sure if I liked the structure or if I just wanted to share in something that was important to him — both, I suppose — but I became a devoted convert,” he wrote in Elegy. But by his college years and after the death of his grandmother in 2005, he’d fallen into atheism. “I was calling myself an atheist. I had this arrogance about my own reason and rationality, and I just wanted to get the best job, I wanted to go to the best schools, get the most prestigious and best credentials I could. I kind of hit this point in my 20s when I’m like, wait a second, am I actually becoming a better person because of this? And I realized, no, I’m becoming a worse person.” he told Fox.

By 2014, while identifying as agnostic, he married Usha. Although she identifies as Hindu, Vance credited her intelligence for drawing him back to faith, saying that with Usha, he’d had “some of the best conversations I’ve had about faith, about religion, about theology.” As he began to explore the Catholic church thanks to close friends who invited him to Mass, Usha supported him. He officially joined the Catholic church in 2019. “A lot of my own journey back to faith she supported, even though she didn’t necessarily see things the same way I do. She really inspired my journey back to faith,” he said. Regarding his hope that his wife will some day convert, he said, “I think it’s just a totally normal thing for a husband to want his wife to agree with him on some of these issues.” While Usha regularly attends Mass with her family (the couple’s three children are being raised Catholic) she remains Hindu.