It started when VP J.D. Vance told Fox News, “You love your family, and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus [on] the rest of the world.”
The comments about love and neighbour begin at 4:30 in this interview.
Podcaster and former UK Conservative government minister Rory Stewart fired back.
To which J. D. Vance had this to say:
Ordo Amoris, or the order of love, is a concept put forward in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae “Now the order of nature is such that every natural agent pours forth its activity first and most of all on the things which are nearest to it … Therefore we ought to be most beneficent towards those who are most closely connected with us.”
Vance, it would seem, was applying the doctrine when supporting President Trump’s immigration policy, arguing in effect that Americans should love Americans first. that’s Aquinas’ concentric circles of love in very practical terms.
Bible verses cited in favour of the Ordo Amoris include 1 Tim. 5:8, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
The parable of the Good Samaritan, an example of a despised minority from another country coming across a bashed-up stranger – understood to be Jewish – on the Jericho to Jerusalem road and stepping in to help while religious leaders pass by challenges the idea that one’s ethnic group comes first. But it could be argued the Good Samaritan was only responding to what was directly in front of him. But it also suggests that the immigrant stranger can be more worthy than locals, even theologically trained ones.
On Alistair Campbell (Labour PM Tony Blair’s communications chief) and Rory Stewart’s Podcast, The Rest is Politics, the topic was irresistible.
Stewart, in recounting the x/twitter exchange notes, “Of course this is coming just to put it in context at a moment where the US government is announcing that it has stopped all overseas aid, so all international development assistance to other countries [is halted.]” This has been walked back somewhat since, but uncertainty prevails.
Campbell asks: “There’s a lot to unpack in that. So first of all, here’s a guy who is trying to, as you say, ally, his faith to his politics. It’s okay to expel millions of people. It’s okay to say that any immigrant is an illegal immigrant, and they’re all a problem as long as you believe in God. And Ordo Amoris – common sense is what Donald Trump keeps saying. He’s all about moral duties, what he seems to think Christianity is about. But Rory, fascinating. Do you know what your IQ is?”
Stewart: “I did take an IQ test when I was younger. Yeah…”
Campbell: “And what was the result?
Stewart: “No, I’m not going to be dragged down into this because I absolutely think that this thing which Trump and Van are obsessed with, which is saying that you should measure everybody by their IQs and suddenly they refuse to take tests.
Campbell: “I’m going to reveal to our listeners and viewers that you passed the MENSA test. Now, I dunno what the number has to be to pass the Mensa test, but I think it’s higher than JD. Vance obviously thinks 130 is, like, sort of the tops. That’s as good as it can get. And what about your false arrogance and your elite failure? I mean, I’ve got to say, Roy, I’m not an expert on the Bible, but I did think you picked the wrong bit of the Bible, John 15:12–13. This is all about you love everyone the same. Yeah, you treat your neighbour as your family et cetera. But that left him an opening. I think you could have found a better bit in the Bible that actually said, you have responsibility that goes beyond yourself. And let’s be frank: Jesus was a socialist. Let’s be honest. Jesus was a socialist. Come on, admit it.”
Stewart: “So let me try to give the response as I understand. I think the first thing that’s really interesting is the idea that you put yourself first and your family first and your country first; you don’t really need Jesus; that’s basically what Genghis Khan believed. It’s what most of us believe, and it’s a perfectly instinctive, natural, selfish human reaction. Put myself and my family first.
“What actually made Christ radical, was that he pushed us to think well beyond that. And so much of his message is, in fact, directly against what JD Vance seems to be implying, sometimes directly in the Bible. He talks about people turning away from their family to serve God, that he says, unless you hate your father, your brother, your children to love God, you can’t follow me. But he also, of course, uses the parable of the Good Samaritan. The point about the Good Samaritan is that the Samaritan is exactly somebody who wasn’t from the Jewish nation. He was a marginalised, almost hostile people.”
Campbell: Everyone is your neighbour.
Stewart: “Yeah, that’s his answer to the question of who’s your neighbour? And I think more than that, it’s the sense that Christ’s message is radical precisely because it forces us to consider the very marginalised, the very poor. I mean, even love your enemies. Now, whatever you make of that, it’s certainly pushing humans to go beyond the boundaries of what feels natural to them. There’s that part of it.”
Out of the mouths of podcasters. Jesus is too radical to be tied down to be used to support an immigration policy, most of which tends to be justification for not loving others very much at all. Jesus asks too much of us for practical politics to work at all.
One other Bible character worth thinking about is Jonah. He did not want to go to Nineveh, lest those foreign people get to share the blessing God had given to Israel. But God’s love broke through.
Image: Screenshot from Fox interview with J. D. Vance