This episode takes a hard look at J.D. Vance's surprising political evolution—from a vocal Trump critic to an ardent supporter—and the broader implications for our political landscape. We don’t hold back in critiquing the mainline Protestant and evangelical churches for their failure to adequately support the working class, arguing that this neglect has contributed to the rise of divisive figures like Trump. Our discussion underscores the urgent need for compassionate, effective solutions to the economic dislocation caused by the loss of manufacturing jobs. The conversation reveals how mainline churches often overlook economically distressed communities, focusing instead on middle-class congregants with higher education.
Required Reading:
Why I Still Like J.D. Vance (2016 Version) by Dennis Sanders
Learning to Love “Bubba” by Dennis Sanders
Why the Left Gets J.D. Vance Wrong by Zaid Jilani
Donate: Venmo- @churchandmainpod |TipTopJar- https://tiptopjar.com/electricparson
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/churchandmain
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/churchandmainpod/
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@churchandmainpod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@churchmainpodcast
Website: https://churchandmain.org/
In Defense of J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” by Michael Mohr
[0:13] Music. Hello, and welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in seeing where faith, politics, and culture intersect. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. So today's episode is a solo episode, and it's kind of a, well, I am somewhat taking a break during the month of August. I'm actually doing interviews, but not really doing any, putting out interview episodes right now, kind of trying to take some time off from all of that work of production, and And, um, we'll be working on, uh, that during the rest of August, I'll be doing some interviews and, um, then I will be, you'll see new episodes coming up in September. But in the meantime, I did want to do, felt like I wanted to do an episode one, just so you know, I'm out here. Um, but also because I kind of wanted to talk about an issue. And part of the genesis of wanting to talk about this issue is because I can't find anyone to talk about this issue.
[0:41] Thank you.
[1:58] And that is kind of the role of the church and the working class. I mean, I've tried to find people who might be interested in talking about this, but I just can't find theologians or pastors or anyone that can really talk about this issue. And it's an issue that has been front and center in my mind. And I may have done some older episodes on this on solo episodes again, because there just doesn't seem to be anyone that's interested in the topic.
[2:37] What I'm going to be talking about here is based off of some writings that I've written. One that is very recent that I wrote about... Vice presidential candidate and Senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance, and kind of where he fits into all of this. But then I want to also kind of talk about the role of the church and the working class. So I think what I will do is start to talk a little bit about my thoughts about Vance. And they are complex and kind of go from there. But then also talk a little bit about where I think the church has not been doing well when it comes to kind of dealing with the working class.
[3:37] And that includes, I think, also So not just kind of what you come to expect on this podcast, uh, mainline Protestant churches, but I think also evangelical churches. Um, I just think that we have not done a good job. And I think the result is that is people are people like Donald Trump. Um, so I'm going to be kind of riffing off of this article that I wrote that is called, um, let me actually get it up here for a second. While I still like J.D. Vance, and then in parentheses the 2016 version, and you can find this on my sub stack, Church in Maine, and I'll put a link in the show notes. But I will be kind of riffing off of that, and then I will be talking a little bit about the church specifically and the working class.
[4:35] So I want to start off by asking this question, you know, what do you say to someone that loses a factory job? And what do you say to people who are living in communities where there are manufacturing jobs and or maybe those they live in communities where those jobs have left and there is very little prospect for other good paying jobs? Jobs. It's been interesting because when I read people, especially on the center right, kind of where I kind of find myself, the answers are interesting. And when I mean interesting, I mean that they're not good. That's either that they will say and be honest and say those jobs aren't coming back, or that if they came back, they're going to raise the price of consumer goods. I about um some talk about with with uh jd vance talking about toasters and the pricing and all of that um.
[5:41] Another way of how people will say is that, well, you just need to find a job, any job, even if it pays much less than your previous one. Or, you know, maybe you just need to move to a new place where there is work. All of this is really kind of this whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And I want to stress that there's nothing wrong with that in some ways. There is a sense that you do have to, if you want better things in life, you do have to push and work hard for them.
[6:12] But that is not the total answer. And sometimes the way that that is brought about is really in a almost uncaring manner. Um, and maybe the worst thing that we tell people who are working class and they've lost jobs or they're upset that they see their job going away is that we then kind of make fun of them or say that they're lazy or that they're druggies or, what have you. A lot of times when we talk about the economy, and conservatives do this, but I think liberals do this as well, sometimes we talk about it in the aggregate. So we talk about growth, and we talk about the affordability of goods, but there is something missing there, and that is people, more or less workers. Now, I was probably among many that wasn't, I thought it was a bad choice for Donald Trump to pick JVD Vance as his running mate, as a vice presidential running mate. Vance has received a ton of criticism, and I think a lot of it is well-deserved criticism.
[7:30] The junior senator from Ohio, who's, of course, written the widely read book, Hillbilly Elegy, has really become an object of derision among, I think, some more kind of traditional or never-Trump Republicans and also Democrats, of course. Course, um, his change from a never Trumper to Donald, Donald Trump's vice presidential, uh, running mate really has sent the, the kind of the chattering classes, the political channeling crafts into orbit. They're angry. They're angry for a lot of different reasons, but one of them is a sense of betrayal. And I'm one of those people that felt that sense of betrayal as a never Trumper. And I wrote this back in 2021. I said, what makes Vance's switch so hard is because it feels like a betrayal. This was someone who a few years ago simply wasn't anti-Trump, but gave clear and moral reasons as to why following Trump was so wrong. He appeared as an avatar of integrity at a time when other conservatives were trying to take the easy way out and support Trump. That's what I wrote back in 2021.
[8:57] And, you know, I think, again, I think he deserves some of the criticism that he's getting. Um, he's tried in some ways, especially after he made his switch, uh, to be kind of a online edgelord. Um, you know, of course he's been widely known for the whole childless cat ladies thing. Um, things that I think might help you win online, but, um, aren't going to win your votes in Wisconsin.
[9:30] But while I think he deserves a lot of the anger that he's receiving right now, part of me also has softened my scorn for him. And as I always need to stress before, because people will start freaking out, I'm not becoming MAGA. I'm not voting for Trump. I'm not voting for Trump. But his machinations and the reaction from former friends have made me wonder, really, about Democrats, about anti-Trump conservatives. Because I keep thinking that they haven't really learned why Donald Trump is such a force. Why people are willing to vote for him, even with all of the problems. And even the how you can know this from space that he is not fit for the office. I think to understand Vance and Trump, you have to understand what's going on with the working class and how I think both parties have ignored them to their detriment. And I think actually to the detriment of American democracy. Now, if you don't know this already, I will share it again, that I'm the son of two autoworkers, Both my mom and dad worked for General Motors in Flint, Flint, Michigan. They were both proud members of the United Auto Workers.
[10:57] Most people know the story of Flint, but if you don't, let me just repeat it. And this is, again, referring to something I wrote four years ago.
[11:11] Beginning in the early 1980s, Flint underwent a massive downsizing of General Motors. In the late 70s, General Motors had 80 employees working for them in the Flint area. Today, there are around 8. Such a massive change left Flint reeling. Once well-kept houses were now trashed. Stores closed and people moved away. In the space of a decade, the city became so deep in debt that the state had to come in and help right the ship. And actually, they had to do it twice. One of the times the state intervened led to the now famous Flint water crisis, where the water supply became contaminated with lead. Flint had a population of nearly 200 in 1970. That was a year after I was born. Today, it is around 99, and actually, I've done some checking, it's now actually around 80. The city I grew up in was relatively prosperous. It wasn't perfect, but people took care of their homes and life seemed great. That Flint no longer exists. All that's left are memories.
[12:29] Whenever I return back home, and I did that in July to bury my mom, I end up seeing a lot of boarded up buildings that are actually sitting next to others that were just really left to rot and decay. Flint has become one of those forgotten places that dot the Midwest and other parts of the United States. And, you know, while we're talking about candidates being weird or not knowing that a presidential candidate is black, there are places like Flint or Youngstown that are dealing with rising rates of inequality. And that's something that I think John Halprin has noted, I think, wonderfully at the Liberal Patriot Substack.
[13:23] Now, I'm not going to go into a long explanation of the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. There is an excellent essay out there. I will put a link in the description that kind of talks about defending hillbilly elegy, but not defending Vance. But what struck me, and I read this book back in 2016, was really the similarities between the folk, mostly white, who are moving from Appalachia to find work in other parts of the country. And in many ways, it was very similar to the migration post-war of African Americans from the South to factory towns in the North. One of those people that made that move was my dad. He moved from central Louisiana to Michigan. And, you know, if you went back home to Flint, there was a time, especially on the east side of town, there was what we called an enclave of hillbillies. And these were people that came from places like Kentucky to work at General Motors.
[14:35] I think what's important here is that it's a reminder that as much as race has framed American history, so has class. And what Vance did in that book is put a face on working class Americans. And I would say not just white working class. I think maybe that was what he was writing about what he knew, but I think it was working class as a whole and how really the economy has affected them. But he did it from a conservative viewpoint.
[15:07] As someone, again, who is on the center right, I've always been frustrated by the lack of attention, especially in the last 20 years or so, given to the working class. And I thought that was why this book, Hillbillyology, was such a game changer. Here was someone who was a conservative, who talked about personal responsibility, but also wanted to find ways of seeing how the government could help. And it also was a good thing that he didn't like Trump. And I thought that this person was someone who could understand why people voted for Trump and how to find a way of best countering Trump and provide a viable alternative.
[15:53] But of course, Vance took a different path. And the question is, why? Why did he change? Now, it would be easy for me to just see him as an opportunist, and at some level he is. But it was interesting, back in June, there was an interview by the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat that kind of tried to explain his journey, or at least was trying to ask what was his journey. And so he talked about meeting a CEO at a conference and it was in 2018 he was invited to an event hosted by the Business Roundtable and there were all these CEOs and, one of them actually came up and told him that the labor market's tight that Donald, because of what Trump had done on the border forced him to change how he interacts with his employees and then this CEO said, looked at Vance and said, well, of course you understand this, and he basically said that these people, the workers, have to...
[17:05] Uh, basically that there were people, actually, I'm going to try that again, that there were people out there that just need to, as he said here, get off their asses, come to work and do their job. Um, and that he has to, because he can't hire immigrants and, um, he has to hire them at this, at these higher wages. Um, and so Vance saw that and he saw that as someone sympathetic to his problem, but not the problem with the workers. Um, that made him think that he had to get off this train. Um, that he wasn't, people weren't getting what he was thinking about.
[17:51] Um, and that I think was something that was interesting because. It said something about how we all, or how this economy, how the society looks at the working class. None of this excuses Vance's choices in following Trump.
[18:08] But it's interesting to read, even after he wrote this book, even after we've faced four years of Trump, that the upper classes, not just in the Republican Party, but in both parties, especially in the Democrats because they have become more upper class don't get it they still see the working class as lazy.
[18:36] If there's anything that I have watched, learned in my years seeing Trump's rise, it's really how the anti-Trump coalition of Democrats and Republicans have really talked forever about how Trump is a threat to democracy. And I will agree with him. I think he is. I don't think he will destroy democracy, but I think he could weaken it. But I've heard very little talk about why is he so popular. Why is there no curiosity that this man who has done all these things, who has said all these things, that could have ended the careers of other politicians, who is inciting a riot in the hopes of stopping the certification of an election of his rival, why are people wanting to vote for him again? Why is someone who could do damage to American democracy not sending working Americans into a panic? Why do they still want to vote for him? And I think it's because they've given up on the idea that American democracy is for them.
[19:51] There's another sub-stack that I read, Renew the Republic, by Frank DeFestano. And he was talking about the recent, um, revoke a national convention in Milwaukee and how a lot of people were rankled about the fact that, um.
[20:10] The Republicans were supposedly moving away from free markets and that this was an abandonment of principle. And he takes some time to explain why this shift may not be a bad thing and basically why working class Americans really don't feel that this system, this country is for them. Um, um, and he talks about the fact that, um, what makes you working class in America is if you have access to, uh, or, uh, influence inside institutions, most working class people don't have that. And when he talks about access, excuse me, he's talking here about whether or not you have access to power. When it comes to the working class, sometimes you don't have those social networks that are available to help you.
[21:15] You know, in the past, you could say that there were unions that could help you find work and stay in work. But those aren't really there anymore and people don't have access to institutions, to help them to find uh and when they when they try to get those access to institutions to finding a job or or um you know if you have a kid that wants to be let's say have a certain job that can arrange someone that can arrange to find an internship for them you don't have those kind of back doors to get in instead what you do is that you find those front you have to go in through the front door and those front doors are locked republicans for a lot of, cases especially in the years since ronald reagan left office have really just been interested in things like tax cuts and uh cutting the federal budget and free market and free trade, and none of those things are bad i think i think that those are good things but too often the party has become interested in theory and not in real people and i could say a lot about.
[22:32] What's been going on within the democrat democratic party that has moved away from things i think that were much more geared towards the working class and more towards things like especially identity politics that...
[22:50] The working class are just not as important or don't feel as important to them as much.
[23:00] Now, there are groups and there are people out there that are interested in trying to do more. There was a book that came out about 15 years ago called Grand New Party by Raihan Salam and Ben Roth's outfit, talking about the fact that the party needed to focus more on what they then called Sam's Club Republicans. There are groups out there now, like American Compass, led by Oren Cass, that want the party to move away more from market fundamentalism, that are much more interested in using tariffs. Something I'm a little wary of, but that's where they're at. But there are also traditional conservatives like Glenn Hubbard, who is a former economics advisor to President George W. Bush, but also believe that there should be policies that can help retrain workers who lose jobs because of economic change. He is much more place-based in his focus. He's not as much interested in things like tariffs, but he has some interest in all of this. Um, but that's something that I feel like the political system needs to focus more on, but we're not there.
[24:27] So that brings me back to Vance. I mean, I, I really missed the Vance of 2016. Um, and I wonder what would happen had he stayed, not changed his mind.
[24:36] Music. I'm a little bit more cynical about that. I think that too many Republicans are set in their ways. They're not willing to change. The system benefits them, so why would they change? But I think Hillbilly Elegy and J.D. Vance remind us there are places in America where things aren't going well. And these are places full of actual people living actual lives that are in need of some assistance and how is our political system going to deal with this? I don't know.
[24:40] Um, But then I also wonder, could he have really made a difference?
[25:28] The Vance of 2024 in some ways isn't that interesting because of the things that he's done, especially the broad and bad media. Though there is still some part of him that I think is that Vance of 2016. And that part still matters. Because that Vance is still talking about those forgotten places. Places, where both parties have nothing to say when someone loses their job. And I want to believe that change might be coming, but I don't know. I want to believe that there is hope for working class families back home in Flint and for other places across the nation. And I want to believe that political parties might notice working men and women again. But the blindness of the left and the right the blindness of Donald Trump and the cynicism of J.D. Vance tells me that change isn't coming at least it's not coming anytime soon.
[26:40] So I want to talk now in looking at this from, the challenge of the church, and I've always wanted to know why the church doesn't seem that interested on working class issues. There are a few. Sometimes I may have heard of some guy who's involved in the labor movement, but I've.
[27:09] That's a little bit different. We don't see churches... Let's go back to Flint for a moment. I'm not seeing any of mainline churches that are thinking, hey, let's plant a new church in this economic distressed area and see what can happen.
[27:31] I just don't see that. And I think it's been interesting last year as I was reading, um, Ryan Berge, who many of you know, is a, uh, kind of a, um, political scientist. He does a lot of stats concerning religion, wrote a good article, um, that has said that religion has become a luxury good. Um, he is an American Baptist pastor. Actually, he kind of made news just a few weeks ago because the church that he pastored, um, closed, um, and just kind of the, the angst that he is dealing with, with that. Um, but he wrote this article in 2023 about just noticing, you know, how much Jesus talks a little bit about the outcasts, the people who are poor.
[28:37] And granted, the working class aren't necessarily poor, poor, but he just kind of talks about the fact that, you know, this is what the Bible talks about. But what he sees in the data, being, again, that he is someone that looks at statistics, is that the church has now become really an enclave of people, as he says, that have done everything right. And he says they have college degrees and marriages and children and middle class incomes. comes.
[29:14] And for those who don't check all the boxes, religion is just not for them. And I found that interesting because again, I'm going to go back to looking at Donald Trump and it's not a perfect thing, but I mean, people have talked about this ever since he first ran in 2016, that a lot of his followers are people that don't go to church. They consider themselves kind of cultural Christians, but they don't consider themselves, um.
[29:48] They don't, but I should say they consider themselves cultural Christians, but they are not part of a regular church. And if you look kind of at the, at his article, which I will again, you have a lot of reading to do in the show notes. It just talks about the fact that religion in America these days has really become about the successful. And in fact, he says here, the most likely to be non-religious, those who didn't finish high school, the group, and this is important, the group with the highest level of religious affiliation are those with a master's degree. Let me repeat that again so you can hear. Here, the group with the highest level of religious affiliation are those with a master's degree. So basically, the people who might have the higher incomes or at least higher class, because sometimes, as I can attest as a pastor, you don't make a whole lot of money, but you are part of a certain class.
[31:07] Music.
[31:16] That's where the church is. There's something wrong with that. There's something wrong, in fact, because there are a lot of people who will say and talk about the poor, but there are no poor people in their churches. And what I mean is that they should help the poor but there are no poor people in their churches because it's not for them there's something wrong with that.
[31:51] Music.
[31:56] As proof of how this has kind of been a part of my shtick, is that I wrote something on a blog, on my blog 12 years ago about learning to love Bubba as in, you know, the working class, especially the white working class. And I do want to share this, read from it, because I think it's important to kind of talk about concerning mainline churches.
[32:35] So, this is what I wrote. The thing is, I don't think people who make up most mainline churches who tend to come from a more professional background like these folks very much. I know this because I hear how pastors talk about working class whites in meetings with other pastors, and I can tell you that they aren't looking at them as some kind of salt-of-the-earth figure. I've also heard it from people in the pews of mainline churches as well. This kind of contempt for them. We look down at them because we see them as racist, homophobic, sexist, and any other is and ism you can think of. The thing is that working class whites can be all those things, but they can be more than that as well. As George Packer notes in his essay, these are people who see very little hope in it and take it out on everyone for their lot in life.
[33:34] When we talk about planning new churches to reach young adults, we mostly mean reaching out to people of the same socioeconomic class that we are part of. And as much as we want to talk about caring for the poor and for the workers, I sometimes wonder how accepting we are of those who actually fit this description. How willing would folks be to accept a man or woman that you can tell has lived a hard life and whose moral life is kind of a mess? My own opinion is that the mainline church has a class issue, and we don't know it, or at least don't want to acknowledge it. A number of mainline churches I know exhibit the values of the middle and upper middle classes. We don't have any way to connect it culturally with the working class.
[34:24] You're probably wondering why a black gay guy is so interested in white working-class people. It's a good question, of which I have no good answer. And 12 years later, I should add, I still don't have a good answer. But continuing on maybe it's because i grew up working class there was always a tension between the working class blacks and working class whites maybe it's be it's coming from michigan which has gone through such an uh so much as the economy changed that you're more sensitive of those who lose good paying jobs and are trying to pick up the pieces after the auto plant closed, well blacks have always relied on the church during challenging times for whatever reason and working-class whites don't have the church to lean on in hard times.
[35:17] Where is the church? And I think that that's kind of how I wanted to end this essay. The whole point of this is, does God love the working class? I think the answer, actually, is yes. The question though, that most of us here in America, especially as the election continues, and it is something that we need to really, really, really think hard about is does the church love the working class? Because I'm not so sure, not so sure in how I've seen, uh, our economy work. I'm not so sure at all.
[36:02] Music.
[36:09] Really think hard about how do we care and show up for people who may not have a bachelor's or a master's degree, but who want to work hard. Because if we don't answer, if we don't care about those people, if we ignore them, if we think that we have them have their votes or that we don't need their votes, we shouldn't be surprised when they decide to support demagogues. And we shouldn't be surprised when we see American democracy threatened, because in many ways we might have helped them.
[36:49] So that is this, my essay, which you can now start sending your flaming emails towards me. Um but i do want to hear your viewpoints um what do you think now granted i said this mostly from the center right but as i said i think both parties have not done a great job when it comes to helping the working class and when i talk about the working class even though in that essay i talked about the white working class the working class is is multi-ethnic multi-racial um, And what affects white working people affects others. So I'm talking about the working class as a whole. If you want to reply, I'd love that you would send me an email. And you can send that to churchinmaineatsubstack.com.
[37:56] If you want to learn more about the podcast, please check us out at churchinmaine.org. If you go down to the bottom of the page, you can fill out a form to make sure that you get when a new episode comes out that it will show up in your inbox. So you don't have to continuously check to see if there's something on your favorite podcast app. And speaking of that, subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app. And I really am looking and hoping that you would leave a review that helps others find the podcast. So, as I said, that is it for this episode, solo episode of Church in Maine. Um i'm dennis sanders your host um we will be back uh in a few weeks with uh starting up again with more interviews uh coming up um but in the meantime uh i'll be kind of a bit quiet during the month of august but um i hope that you enjoy the rest of your summer take everyone godspeed and i will see you very soon.
[39:18] Music.
Related Episodes
Sociology in the Age of Trump with Jesse Smith | Episode 213
What sociology gets right and wrong about Trump voters.
About the Purple Church Initiative with Beth Crissman | Episode 212
How Methodists are trying to reach across the political aisle.
Discovering Dwelling in the Word with Tessa Pinkstaff | Episode 211
Revitalize your congregation by reading the same Bible passage over and over again.
