US Vice President JD Vance faced criticism heading into the weekend, after his recent remarks to university students in which he expressed hope his wife, Usha, might one day share his Christian faith. The vice president said he hopes Mrs. Vance, who grew up in a Hindu household, “is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved by in church.”

Hindu American Foundation director Suhag Shukla responded on the social media platform, X, saying “The Vice President of the United States @JDVance just said that the Hindu traditions that his wife and millions of Americans share is just not good enough. Not a winning strategy for someone who wants to be President for ALL Americans.”

Shukla’s post quickly received its own criticism, with observers noting that JD Vance had not said anything about Hinduism. Shukla retorted: “In his ‘hope’ for his wife’s conversion, his damaging, un-American insinuation is that Hindu traditions are not enough for her—that she should affirm loyalty to the path he has decided is the ‘correct’ one.”

Vance made the initial comments on Wednesday Oct. 29 at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi honoring slain conservative media personality Charlie Kirk.

The TPUSA event was conceived in the spirit of Kirk’s willingness to engage interlocutors across a broad spectrum of opinion, especially in cultural spaces – like university campuses – in which the conservative viewpoints Kirk championed do not always find natural purchase.

Vance later clarified – in a post on X to another comment from a different user, which appears to have been deleted – that his wife has no plans to convert. Mrs. Vance, meanwhile, has not publicly commented on the contretemps.

The original question came from a young South Asian woman at the TPUSA event, who asked about Vance’s faith and his inter-religious marriage to Usha as well as the Trump administration’s policies on immigration.

Responding to the young woman, the vice president said Mrs. Vance goes to church with him on most Sundays.

“I’ve told her, and I’ve said publicly, and I’ll say now in front of 10,000 of my closest friends, do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that, because I believe in the Christian gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way,” he said.

“But if she doesn’t, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me. That’s something you work out with your friends, with your family, with the person that you love.”

“First off,” Vance said in the response posted on X, “the question was from a person seemingly to my left, about my interfaith marriage. I’m a public figure, and people are curious, and I wasn’t going to avoid the question.”

“Second, my Christian faith tells me the Gospel is true and is good for human beings,” Vance also said. “My wife–as I said at the TPUSA–is the most amazing blessing I have in my life. She herself encouraged me to reengage with my faith many years ago,” he said.

“She is not a Christian and has no plans to convert, but like many people in an interfaith marriage–or any interfaith relationship–I hope she may one day see things as I do. Regardless, I’ll continue to love and support her and talk to her about faith and life and everything else, because she’s my wife,” he said.