The Freedom From Religion Foundation is expressing its concern over Vice President JD Vance’s recent disturbingly apocalyptic remarks.
During a lengthy interview with evangelical podcaster Bryce Crawford released Monday, Vance was asked about his religious beliefs and whether humanity could be approaching the Christian apocalypse. “Do I think that we’re in the end times? I don’t know,” Vance replied. He added that there are “things about the world that make me feel like I’d be not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us.”
But Vance’s comments went beyond speculation about biblical prophecy. The vice president said Christians are “commanded to try to, as much as possible, try to make the world the kind of world that God wants it to be.” Vance then described his own priorities in explicitly religious terms: “I’m trying to focus on doing as much of God’s work as possible right now. And if that leads to the end times, OK.”
Those are chilling words coming from the vice president of the United States.
Vance is, of course, free to hold whatever religious beliefs he chooses. But when one of the most powerful public officials in the world speaks of his work in terms of carrying out God’s will, while expressing apparent indifference to whether that work helps usher in an apocalypse he believes may actually occur, Americans have every reason to be alarmed.
“The vice president’s constitutional duty is to the American people, not to his interpretation of God’s plan,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Our leaders control nuclear weapons, conduct foreign policy and make decisions affecting hundreds of millions of lives. Americans deserve to know that those decisions are being made based on evidence, reason and the public interest — not a desire to advance a supposed divine plan toward Armageddon.”
Vance’s remarks are particularly unsettling because they do not exist in isolation. He has repeatedly blurred the line between personal religious conviction and public duty. Just last year, Vance declared that he makes “no apologies” for promoting Christian values through government and accused those who believe the Constitution requires separation of church and state of “lying.” He went even further, arguing that the Supreme Court made a “terrible mistake” by enforcing this foundational constitutional safeguard.
The vice president’s latest comments demonstrate why the separation between religion and government is not an abstract constitutional concern. It is a vital safeguard against public officials wielding enormous secular power according to what they believe a deity commands.
History provides ample warning of what can happen when political leaders become convinced that they are instruments of divine will. Democratic government requires officials to justify their actions with reasons that citizens of every religious or nonreligious perspective can scrutinize and debate, not assertions about invisible spiritual forces, divine commands or biblical prophecy.
The Constitution contains no mandate for government officials to carry out “God’s work.” Quite the opposite: The word “God” (or any synonym for it) does not appear in our entirely secular federal Constitution, which prohibits religious tests for public office and, through the First Amendment, bars the government from establishing religion.
FFRF reminds Vance that he has taken an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He did not swear an oath to advance Christianity, fulfill biblical prophecy or prepare the world for the “Second Coming.”
The enormous influence of the vice presidency must be exercised on behalf of the American people and within the constraints of the Constitution, not in service of one official’s understanding of God’s will.
Government officials are entitled to their private faith. They are not entitled to transform public office into an instrument for doing what they imagine to be “God’s work” — especially when they suggest they are perfectly comfortable if that work helps bring about the end of the world.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
