During 2024, but particularly during the election, we were assailed by warnings of the boogeyman of “Christian nationalism.” No one was ever quite sure what it was other than using Christianity as a guardrail for public policy and guaranteeing Christianity had a place in the public square. Both of these ideas were insufficiently inclusive to satisfy the secular left.
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JD Vance appeared on Sean Hannity’s show on Wednesday, and, in my view, he gave a masterclass on how a Christian worldview provides answers to difficult problems. The intertwined issues were immigration and foreign aid.
JD VANCE: There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world
A lot of the far left has completely inverted that pic.twitter.com/XkoTiKgq3g
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 30, 2025
Immediately following this, he was hit by leftists shouting, “No way, that’s not Christian.”
The idea of loving in a hierarchy from family outward isn’t supported by biblical teachings. Instead, Christianity emphasizes universal love:
– Love Your Neighbor: Jesus teaches in Mark 12:31 to love your neighbor as yourself, without specifying degrees of love based on…
— Lucas Baker (@lucasbaker) January 30, 2025
This is not a Christian concept. Vance is just making stuff up and he knows his audience is so ignorant about Christianity that they’ll believe him. You are among that number.
— Dr. Laura Robinson (@LauraRbnsn) January 30, 2025
This is the type of stuff that is not only wrong, but it is such a grotesque misrepresentation of Christian thought that it drives many people away.
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I had to look him up, but Rory Stewart is someone who is supposed to be important when up and has his trousers on.
A bizarre take on John 15:12-13 – less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love… https://t.co/rrsivzGdvT
— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) January 30, 2025
Vance had ignored the ankle-biters but responded to this one.
Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone? https://t.co/otvv5g1wFN
— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 30, 2025
What is ordo amoris? It is the Christian idea of “properly ordered love.” All love is not equal. We are told to love God above all else, something the left ignores. In the same way, they use the English word “love” interchangeably for the eight Koine Greek words for love, those rendering love for God the same as homosexual sex because, you know, “love is love.”
Ordo amoris was defined by Saint Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, but best exposition on this heirarchy is in Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.
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1. There is an order in charity, and God is the principle of that order. God is to be loved out of charity, before all others. The other beings that are to be loved out of charity are, so to speak, lined up in their proper places, subordinate to God.
2. God is to be loved for himself and as the cause ofhappiness. Hence, God is to be loved more than our neighbor, who isloved, not for himself, but for God.
3. And we are to love God more than we love ourselves. What we love in ourselves is from God, and is lovable only on account of God.
4. A person rightly loves himself by charity when he seeks to be united with God and to partake of God’s eternal happiness. And a person loves his neighbor as one to whom he wishes this union and happiness. Now, since seeking to obtain something for oneself is a more intense act than wishing well to one’s neighbor, a person manifestly loves himself more than he loves his neighbor. As evidence of this fact, consider this: a man would rightly refuse to sin if, by sinning, he could free his neighbor from sin.
5. While we love ourselves more than we love our neighbor, we are required to love our neighbor more than we love our body.
6. And we rightly love one neighbor more than another – our parents, for instance, or our children. In this we violate no law so long as we do not withhold requisite love from any neighbor.
7. Our dearest objects of charity among neighbors are those who are closest to us by some tie – relationship, common country, and so on.
8. The tie that is strongest of all is the tie of blood. Hence it is natural that we should love our kindred more than others.
9. And in those related to us by blood there is an order. St. Ambrose says that we ought to love God first, then our parents, then our children, then the others of our household.
10. We are to love father and mother. Strictly speaking, the love of father precedes the love of mother.
11. A man loves his wife more intensely than he loves his parents. Yet he loves his parents with greater reverence.
12. It seems that we love those on whom we confer benefits more than those who confer benefits on us.
13. The order of charity, since it is right and reasonable, will endure in heaven.
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In fact, Aquinas, being Aquinas, even offered objections to his thesis and defended against the objections.
Then Vance returned to Mr. Stewart.
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 30, 2025
Just as the Constitution is not a suicide pact, neither is Christian Theology. Just as we use the Constitution to order our public lives, we should use well-formed Christian thought to order our personal lives and, through those lives, order the nation.
We have an obligation to migrants to feed and shelter them, to accept those who meet our standard as lawful refugees, and to return to their homes those who don’t. We are not obligated to welcome people who have broken the law into our communities. We have an obligation to work with other nations to help with natural disasters and the aftermath of war. We don’t have a responsibility to send condoms to Africa and Burmese elites to school in America.
