Pence’s political conversion was more clear cut. In subsequent interviews, Pence has spoken freely about how his 1978 conversion gave him a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” that “changed everything.” But he has tended to avoid labeling his religious views when pressed, referring to himself as a “ pretty ordinary Christian” who “ cherishes his Catholic upbringing.” He has attended nondenominational evangelical churches with his family since at least 1995. At the same time, he and his future wife Karen were part of a demographic shift of Americans who “had grown up Catholic and still loved many things about the Catholic Church, but also really loved the concept of having a very personal relationship with Christ,” as a close friend put it.īy the mid-1990s he was a married father of three who identified as a “born-again, evangelical Catholic,” an unusual term that has caused some consternation among both evangelicals and Catholics. It was as a freshman at Hanover College in 1978 that Pence experienced an evangelical conversion while attending a music festival in Kentucky billed as the “Christian Woodstock.”įor some years afterward he remained active in the Catholic Church, attending Mass regularly, serving as a youth minister and seriously considering joining the priesthood.

Kennedy and was a youth coordinator for the local Democratic Party in his teens.

Growing up in an Irish Catholic family with five siblings, working-class roots and Democratic political commitments, Pence attended Catholic school, served as an altar boy at his family’s church, idolized John F. In fact, one can trace three distinct conversion experiences in his biography. religion and culture, I believe that Pence’s faith and political identities are more complex than these statements suggest. I don’t know anyone who’s more consistent in bringing his evangelical Christian worldview to public policy.”īut as a scholar of U.S. Richard Land, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and current president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, told the Atlantic in 2018, “Mike Pence is the 24-karat-gold model of what we want in an evangelical politician.

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