MONROEVILLE, Pennsylvania (RNS) — Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance took the stage at Christian nationalist preacher Lance Wallnau‘s election season revival tour on Saturday (Sept 28), using the setting to make a theological defense of the GOP campaign’s controversial immigration policies and to appeal to Wallnau’s conservative Christian crowd in a hotly contested swing state.
Seated for an interview with Pastor Jason Howard, who leads the nearby the Sanctuary church, he brought up his campaign’s restrictive stance on immigration while answering a string of questions about policy and his faith.
Citing a “Christian idea that you owe the strongest duty to your family,” Vance said Christian leaders also owed a duty to protect the country before citizens of other nations. “It doesn’t mean that you have to be mean to other people, but it means that your first duty as an American leader is to the people of your own country,” said Vance, a Roman Catholic.
He insisted that Trump supporters “should not let Kamala Harris claim the high ground on compassion,” calling Biden and Harris’ immigration policies “a disgrace,” and saying the Trump-Vance’s plans for immigration policy, which includes a pledge to enact the “largest deportation” in U.S. history, will “maximize compassion” compared to the Biden administration.
The town hall with Vance, held in a convention center east of Pittsburgh, was worked into the latest stop of Wallnau’s Courage Tour, “marking the dawn of our nation’s Third Great Awakening,” according to its promotion …