At AmericaFest, JD Vance framed White Christians as besieged and declared Christianity “America’s creed.” Yet, he didn’t stop there. The Vice President also erased ongoing discrimination with a straight face.
On Sunday, Dec. 21, Vice President JD Vance took the stage at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix and delivered a speech that blended grievance and theology into one tidy political sermon. But his message was how White Christians are the real victims now, and the Trump administration is their deliverance.
“In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore,” Vance told the crowd. He claimed his administration judges people “based on who they are” and that discrimination is a thing of the past. DEI, he said, belongs in “the dustbin of history.” He implied that any talk of structural racism, gender bias, or unequal treatment is either fabricated or overblown. But that assertion collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
Across the country, disparities in policing, incarceration, immigration enforcement, healthcare access, and voting rights show discrimination against non-White people. This inequality does not vanish because a politician declares colorblindness from a podium. Saying “we don’t treat anybody differently” does not make it true. It just makes it easier to dismiss those who are still being treated differently.
Vance’s framing followed the typical MAGA script. They invert power into persecution, then present themselves as the rescuer. In Vance’s telling, White Christians have been under siege for “50 years.” They’ve apparently been victims of a cultural war waged by “the left” to purge Christianity from public life. Schools, workplaces, the public square, everything is allegedly stripped of God.
And then, Vance also declared, “Christianity is America’s creed.” Although he tried to soften the claim by adding “You don’t have to be Christian to be American,” his speech undercut that strongly. He argued that religious liberty itself is a “Christian concept,” and that America’s moral language flows from Christianity alone. In doing so, he effectively rewrote the Constitution, which was deliberately designed to separate church and state.
The most telling contradiction came when Vance praised Christian ministries for helping the homeless, addicts, and the dying. He then used those examples to argue that government protections and social programs are unnecessary or corrupt. He applauded compassion, but only the privatized, voluntary, and explicitly religious one.
Vance insisted that Christians have finally “won” a war that many Americans never agreed existed. That claim disregards people facing real consequences from policy. We have immigrants getting deported, LGBTQ+ people targeted by state laws, women losing reproductive autonomy, and communities of color facing racist attacks every day.
To tell those groups that no one is being persecuted anymore is disrespectful. JD Vance didn’t just defend Christianity; he weaponized a version of it. The version that claims victimhood while holding power. It denies inequality while enforcing it, and insists the country belongs to a single moral lineage.
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