Mike Pence Went From Roman Catholic to Evangelical Christian

Nov. 15 2022, Published 1:09 p.m. ET

Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s faith is a large subject of his new autobiography, So Help Me God. That identify is a reference no longer simply to the oath of office but to the Indiana flesh presser’s decades-long devotion to evangelical Christianity.

“In So Help Me God, Pence shows how the faith that he embraced as a young man guided his each and every determination,” writer Simon & Schuster says in a description of the 560-page tome. “It is a faith that guided him on that ancient day and that keeps him fortuitously at peace, in a position to accept the next problem.”

Read on for more information about Pence’s religious evolution.

Mike Pence’s religion began moving to evangelical Christianity in faculty.

Pence was raised Roman Catholic and was once baptized at St. Columba in Columbus, Ind., where he and his brothers served as altar boys and attended parochial faculty, as The New York Times reported in 2016. They additionally attended church six days every week, if no longer seven.

“Our lifestyles revolved across the church,” considered one of his older brothers instructed the Times.

Once we got to Hanover College, on the other hand, Pence “started to meet young men and women who talked about having a personal dating with Jesus Christ,” as he recalled to CBN News in 2010. “That had not been a part of my revel in.”

"Standing at a Christian music festival in Asbury, Ky., in the spring of 1978, I gave my life to Jesus Christ and that’s changed everything," he added.

After graduating from Hanover, Pence known as an “evangelical Catholic” as he struggled to reconcile his Catholic enjoy with his converting spiritual beliefs, consistent with the Times.

Pence’s spouse, Karen, was also “very much a part of his faith journey,” as Mark Bailey, a former legislation colleague of Pence’s, told the newspaper. The couple, who met all through his years studying law at Indiana University, were attending an evangelical church in Indianapolis, Ind., by the mid-1990s.

Now Pence is the one one in all his parents’ six kids who is not Catholic. And his mother, Nancy, was dissatisfied by way of his religious shift, in keeping with Rev. Clement T. Davis, the priest at the circle of relatives’s church. “You could see Nancy simply shake her head about it,” he advised the Times. “She used to be upset. She had hoped he may to find his as far back as the church.”

In his political profession, Pence “prioritize[s] the rights of spiritual conservatives,” observers say.

The affect of Pence’s faith on his politics has drawn scrutiny over time. According to Mother Jones, Pence adopted a Religious Right-friendly time table in Congress, balloting towards measures fighting LGBT discrimination and supporting federal regulation prohibiting same-sex marriage. And Reuters Investigates reviews Pence “has been driven all over his political career by way of his evangelical Christian ideals to restrict abortion and prioritize the rights of religious conservatives.”

Pence told CBN News that his modus operandi in existence “all begins with faith.”

“It begins with what matters maximum, and I try to put what I believe to be moral reality first, my philosophy of government 2nd, and my politics third,” he added. “It’s a privilege to serve in Washington, D.C., however I by no means lose sight of what the Lord has known as me to do in my life. And that is to be first a husband, after which a father, and prevail there from His viewpoint, and He’ll take care of the whole lot else.”

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pbXSramam6Ses7p6wqikaKhforassYypnKeblWK%2FprjIoKCopg%3D%3D